"The Danmaku Game as a New Optical Art, Part I" -rhizome.org

[Special World]

Thanks, KAI. I'll do my best to make sure the extra uploading effort wasn't in vain

ED: Wow, these quotes from Pink Sweets are really risque

[K.B.]

Watching is just as fun as playing. Especially when you're like me, and aren't the best shump player ever.

Depends. If you're watching for the laser light show then sure, no ability is required. Otherwise, you need to know what's going on and the difficulty of various sections and techniques. Without that, you'd as might as well put on winamp milkdrop and zone out.

Playing is better, but SHMUPS are the most fun genre of video games to watch replays of, along with fighting games.

Agreed, although I could see folks going with certain fighters, run'n'guns, or FPSes over shmups. [Or with strategy-based games, but that's a little different.]

But, bringing this back to the topic, it's the appreciation of player skill, not of game "art", that makes it fun. Furthermore, the more you play and the better you become, the more you appreciate watching skilled play and the more intense the vicarious satisfaction becomes.

It all goes back to playing.

-----

Interesting and aesthetically pleasing bullet patterns appear because they're intuitive from a design perspective. The mind naturally categorizes and organizes, so a geometric (or otherwise mathematically based) pattern is a fundamental starting point, which one would then tweak/build upon to achieve the desired difficulty and dodging techniques. A pattern can be (subjectively) spruced up with color, explosions, and such, but its purpose is still to be a challenge for the player. Remove that, and you have pretty-looking shit.

That is: it'd be shit for a shmup, and if that's all you have, then you don't have a shmup. You have a failed attempt at a shmup. If you want to call failure "optical art", go right ahead.

Aesthetics are sometimes incidental and always ancillary.

Look at this man. Look at how right he is.

Sup babe.

[Squire Grooktook]

K.B I don't know who you are but I love you.

And yeah, any genre that has a really high skill ceiling can be fun to watch, though it depends on your tastes and what your looking for.

[Keith]

Even as a dirty dirty Touhou fan (ssssh), I was disappointed that nearly every screenshot (except for the first, which looks like something made in Danmakufu) was from "TouHou" (sic). Even if the article did mention other games and series, a little visual variety is nice!

The article in general feels a bit lofty and overly artsy, but that might just be me wanting to keep things down to earth. Danmaku is nice to look at because geometric shapes in motion do cool things, and also because we people love shiny things. Moreover, danmaku games are fun to play because they're challenging as hell with mountains of replay value. ...at least, if you're the kind of weirdo who enjoys that sort of thing.

I did really enjoy one line from it, though: "an uncountable number of angry magenta orbs settle into an oppressive rolling fog"

[MX7]

STGs are arcade games, and are therefore intrinsically about spectatorship. They are designed to be as flashy as possible in order to get passers by to stand and watch whoever is playing. Remove this aspect, and you're missing the point.

[Squire Grooktook]

I don't think it's "the point". It's a nice bonus that arcade games are often very fun to watch, but the most important thing above all is that they're the most fun for the person playing, regardless of aesthetics.

[EmperorIng]

Attracting potential players with a lot of flash and style is crucial for an arcade success though. I don't think Street Fighter 2 would have been as quite a phenomenon if the game looked like something that came out of an NES.

[shadowbringer]

imho, there are several ways to appreciate a game, for example, for its plot/challenge/gameplay/visuals/music/immersion, etc. There are several ways a player can feel rewarded, and how much rewarded one feels depends on what the game offers and on the preferences of who's playing it.

imho 2, it's okay for a game to be flashy, but to be "sold" to a game solely because of it means either one of two things: the player doesn't appreciate the other strong points of the game, or the game doesn't have other strengths.

imho 3, SF2 was innovative for its time, it felt fresh. It can be said (once again, imho) that it contributed to the dawn of the fighting game boom (along with the other companies which produced them, each trying to surpass the other). Also, at that time, it was (at least for me) difficult to imagine that series like Mario, CastleVania, Contra, Double Dragon, etc., could get so famous, much later (speaking of flashiness, and freshness).
Regarding this sentence, "Attracting potential players with a lot of flash and style is crucial for an arcade success though.", I must say one thing: while it's important for the arcade game developers to increase their income (with means that aren't necessarily limited to flash and style) and chances of commercial success (for example, by making the game accessible to several types of players: kids, girls, beginners, competitive, etc.), how fun or deep the game is, isn't necessarily related with how flashy or stylish it is. If I may add, here's (edit: here) an interesting post which has a point I agree with: how spectator-friendly a game is, or how "successful" (number-wise) a game is at tournament attendance, isn't an indicator of how good/bad a game is.

imho 4: Byakuren, Kanako and certain parts of GFW and DS look prettier (and some patterns in Phantasm Romance and Phantasmagoria Trues too, because this post is mine and I can do what I want on it :V ), I'm disappoint with the choices in the article D: (but still, congratulations for the effort in writing it. Haven't read it yet, though.)

[Squire Grooktook]

imho, there are several ways to appreciate a game, for example, for its plot/challenge/gameplay/visuals/music/immersion, etc. There are several ways a player can feel rewarded, and how much rewarded one feels depends on what the game offers and on the preferences of who's playing it.

I'd say there's more then several ways. Really, video games are art, and depending on plot/gameplay/immersion/whatever, you can really evoke any emotion that can be evoked by a work of art.

[Frenetic]

Apologies for the bump, but part II was relased, rendering the entire article whole.

http://tbwbworks.typepad.com/journal/20 ... l-art.html

--F

[Doctor Butler]

At least someone besides us is talking about shooters.

[Afterbirth]

Its a shame a Danmaku has never featured in Uzumaki. I'm sure theres a great story in there.