Why shmups are such a niche genre

[qmish]

of course everybody is able to 1CC Ikaruga or Raiden V in 5 hours
shmups are shit

Because it's not "5 hours". It's "5 hours of repetition of game's content's 40 mins" from their viewpoint.

[Kaiser]

Can anyone name some other genre which is like this (while also being popular)?
Keep in mind that 5 hours length for a game is considered short nowadays.

Seriously, 20-40 minutes length for a static game is pretty pathetic, I'm not surprised at all that the mainstream is not interested. These games should be sold at a mobile game price.

Indie platformers, Jet Gunner, Super Cyborg, Oniken, Psi Knuckle, Dual Prism, Savant Ascent, Out There Somewhere, Risk of Rain, there's definitely more but they are out of my head. I don't see people lik you crying over those being that short.

[vvv_stg]

I'm not sure if I've posted in this thread before, but why shmups are niche? My current opinion on the matter is simple:

The reason is not anything other than lack of content.

These games are 20-40 minutes long; after that you've seen all there is to them excluding maybe some true final boss or hidden ending.

Can anyone name some other genre which is like this (while also being popular)?
Keep in mind that 5 hours length for a game is considered short nowadays.

Seriously, 20-40 minutes length for a static game is pretty pathetic, I'm not surprised at all that the mainstream is not interested. These games should be sold at a mobile game price.

Rougelikes don't have that much content and they are not nearly as niche. It's not like Minecraft or Flappy Bird had that much content either.

[Cagar]

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[Despatche]

I'd like to explain just how ridiculous everything in the above post is, but it's obviously just a desperate attempt to troll. When you don't have that daily dose of drama, you make it, I guess.

Go back to Gus, and please stay there this time. One day you're gonna realize just how relative everything is, and then you're really gonna be crazy.

[Blinge]

Actually Cagar's post is on point. Pretty much all of it.

I would argue semantics about his use of 'uninteresting' in the last paragraph, because I'd never want to use that to describe shmups.
However it does make sense from an outside observer's perspective. It makes sense when trying to show a shmup to a dedicated gamer, and seeing zero interest.


There isn't any drama here either? The drama is likely to start now you've taken the stage, already swinging as usual.

[Cagar]

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[trap15]

People do not find playing the same 10-40 minutes over and over again interesting, period.

Fighting games.

Shut up.

[Despatche]

You're a troll too Blinge, and you insist on dogging me everywhere I go, so I'm not sure what you're on about. The only drama around here comes from people like you and Cagar spouting absolute nonsense. I'm positive that if I never made that post, you wouldn't have made yours either.

Cagar actually asked me to respond, so let me get on that. I'm wasting my time again, I know it.

edit: why do i let these people rope me into this shit every single time

[Cagar]

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[Vludi]

That definition of "static" is wrong though, just because something is single-player doesn't mean it lacks depth or variety. That's why RNG, Rank, and different ship/offense options are a thing, to keep the games fresh always ready for new challenges. I'm quite sure that clearing Batrider with all characters and modes is a much richer, varied and demanding experience than say, unlocking all weapons in CoD4 (basically keep playing no matter how bad you are).

[doom_]

I think cagars post might have some truth in it. but I'm not 100% convinced...

for example: what about Jamestown? almost everyone I played that one with enjoyed a dose of multiplayer madness. dodging and shooting stuff, especially when it comes to bullet hellish patterns, doesn't seem boring or uninteresting at all to most people, when it comes to that game. quite the opposite: people would burst out in excitement, cheer for each other when surviving seemingly hard patterns and all... of course the multiplayer aspect caters to this experience - but it is a good example for how a more western- and mainstream-oriented take on the genre can still be enjoyable for larger parts of today's gaming audience.

same with the neat little android game "danmaku death". I used to bring my tablet (with a pen for touch screens) to University and, again, found my friends struggling with the patterns, having fun dodging and experiencing the feeling of beating a "hard" boss. (okay, some people would let themselves be distracted by almost everything on campus, I give you that )

[Vludi]

unwanted double post

[DJ Incompetent]

I believe videogames as a whole are transitioning into an entertainment medium similar to televised sports. There is about to be more people digesting videogames by watching footage raw or alongside a commentator personality then there are people who actually play them in any non-disposable fashion. The results will be a generation of people understanding videogames as trivia knowledge and identifying graphics. It will be understood the same as hockey enthusiasts who have never been on a rink, or Manchester United superfans who have never walked on a pitch.

Videogames outside of the main ten~ franchises and ancient online communities are perceived more as coffee table books 'n sideshow oddities better serving as a complementing visual to a channel brand's personality.

This is YouTube's new 2 hour Creator Academy course for gaming channels. It is depressingly 100% about personality and engagement. Nothing about setups, mechanics, medium analysis, history, or how-2-get-gud. Videogaming is a flopping, yelling face.

[Despatche]

Basically everything DJ Incompetent said.

[Despatche]

Right, so:

"No, but that's not the point! You have to 1CC! These casuals don't get it, you're supposed to git gud and score!! It's really exciting!! It's how the games are meant to be played!!! "

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this except all the snark you added to it.

People do not find playing the same 10-40 minutes over and over again interesting, period.

People don't find video games interesting anymore. That's why most of them are movie-like experiences that you play once and never touch again. This is old hat.

You cannot cater to the masses, especially not now in an era where mass-appeal games can be very cheap or very expensive. The masses will openly admit that they only care about what everyone else cares about. Ironically, this is why shmups ever mattered to begin with. The customer is generally wrong.

This goes for any genre, and it being the intention of the developers or the basis of shmups doesn't magically make people more interested in doing so. It's like if I made a restaurant that served shit-cakes: No, shit doesn't taste good anywhere, it's usually considered really bad in comparison to other food. Me making a complete restaurant based on serving shit won't change people's tastes, no matter how much I polish the recipe and praise the way 'they're designed to be enjoyed'. If people don't value the taste of shit, then they don't.

Here's an obvious sign of trolling: an asshole analogy meant to undermine this entire genre.

Cagar went crazy and gave up on this genre a long time ago. This is not news and did not happen recently.

Imagine if Nintendo made a new Mario game that is only 20 minutes long, told people that "but heyyyy you're supposed to find all of the hidden coins and play the game faster! See if you can beat the game with no deaths? There's a hidden boss if you succeed!* "

They did. Every single Mario game works like this, other than not having a TLB. They have more stages and are thus longer, but stages in 2D Mario games (because 3D Mario is insane) typically do not have the complexity of a good shmup stage. This isn't even a flaw, it's just a different way of designing sets of challenges; technically speaking, a typical 2D Mario game has eight "stages" (worlds).

*That can be accessed via a training/practice mode whenever you want.

Most shmups can't even do this right.

No they wouldn't get away with it, and shmups having been like this from the start to this day doesn't justify them doing it either. Games are compared to other games, shmups don't get a free pass just because they're shmups. Games around them have evolved in length, features, progression, storytelling etc. while shmups have barely changed. And it's quite hard to even change these, as the gameplay of shmups is so simplistic.

Shmups weren't really like this from the start. You can break down RPGs, action puzzle games, racing games, and any genre of game in much the same way, and that would be just as stupid.

Another problem is that this silly community doesn't recognize the importance of things like run 'n' guns, into the horizon/crosshair shooters, things like Ace Combat, and FPSes. The specific box known as "shmups" is a really big deal, but there's always more to the story.

There's simply no getting over this. The small niche of gamers who like the mastery of static short shooting games does exist, but that's about it. I'm a part of that niche too and I've accepted it, but I'm not anymore expecting (or even hoping) that the majority of people should be like this, as it's completely unrealistic.

No sir, you gave up on it. You left this community, like so many others.

"But Binding of Isaac and Nuclear throne and Risk of Rain and other roguelikes..."

It's not a good comparison.
In these games, their entire value is in that every run gives you completely new challenges. Every run is different. The player has to see and adapt without getting another try (there aren't even continues!).
As a nice bonus, this aspect also provokes discussion, streaming etc. as everyone's experiences differ a lot. There's so much new to share and talk about all the time. People love talking and hearing about what new crazy things happened to them.
(Oh and a nice coincidence, Risk of Rain, the most static one of these examples happens to also be the least popular)

Risk of Rain is less popular because everyone's already on The Binding of Issac. It's also a lot more popular than Nuclear Throne anyway.

"... games like fighting games, LoL, CS:GO. They're also about repetition"

No they aren't. They are multiplayer games where the value lies in the complexity that naturally develops between the players in every match.
The players are not trying to master a single, static experience, as the difficulty and required playstyle vastly varies depending on whoever you're playing against.
Many people who I know that are into these team-games actually find fighting games already too static as they're only 1 vs 1 with relatively tiny amount of possible new situations happening in a match. And even as a high level SF player, having played some of the popular team games I can see their point.

This is the only thing you're remotely right about and you completely misunderstand the situation.

First and foremost, you're picking the pointless target of singleplayer shmups vs multiplayer fighting games or FPSes. I hate to be all high school debate club, but that's pretty much a strawman.

Any game is in and of itself a single static experience until it gets updated. Having to deal with different situations is all well and good, but they're the same situations that everyone is expected to learn simply being executed at different times. This is why people get bored of these games at some point. The only thing that made fighting games and FPSes even stand strong all this time is that you directly compete with others over the course of gameplay, rather than competing with others by comparing results. Directly competing with others like that, regardless of how good the game is or isn't, is fun... but it's the exact same kind of fun that fueled arcade games.

All that happened is that people were convinced they "shouldn't" have fun with arcade games anymore, that they "must" be timewasters; people who mindlessly supported strictly for or strictly against took their positions. This is how all trends work, and this is how people decide what they like on a day to day basis. None of it is reason. None of it ever considers the merit of a given thing. Ever.

"speedruns?"

This probably comes closest to shmups, and it's what I used to compare shmups to. (and wonder why they aren't more popular).
Then I realized that the amount of active speedrunners themselves is tiny. The streams and events have thousands of viewers because their favorite (or otherwise known) games are played in a highly skilled broken manner, but how many of the viewers speedrun themselves? Or even better, how many people actually buy new games because they want to speedrun them? The supply of games for speedrunners is 99.99% driven by people who play the games in their intended manner, which is completely different from speedrunning. In this sense, speedrunning is niche too. There isn't a market for it per se

Bullshit. The #1 effect of this speedrunning explosion is that it's caused an exponential growth in the number of speedrunners. Now people play anything and everything, because they were told speedrunning was a Good Thing. Every single big speedrunning channel (and many many many smaller ones) have daily discussions about getting into speedrunning.

In the end, all this boils down to shmups being an original, but unfortunately uninteresting genre (to majority). There's nothing else popular that's enjoyed in the same manner as shmups are mainly enjoyed by shmup fans - repetition and mastery of something unchanging - or for some people it might just be that they happen to find dodging and shooting things pleasing. (for me, it's both)
The nicheness is not the fault of the games, they are perfect for shmup players themselves. The "problem" lies in the average gamer or person.
In general, people do not find mastery of a static thing interesting, it's pretty much that simple. Although I hate calling real life things 'static', hobbies that are like this (speedcubing? shooting? archery? speed sudoku?) are very unpopular, it's not just video-games.
We are a niche, accept it.

Real hobbies are even worse. Real hobbies were basically completely killed by the rise of the internet, and they can easily be revived or buried even further with the power of the internet.

You can rationalize anything and everything you want, but you cannot have a serious debate or get a serious answer about why a trend starts or why a trend ends up dead, because there's nothing serious about it.

Jet Gunner, Super Cyborg, Oniken, Psi Knuckle, Dual Prism, Savant Ascent, Out There Somewhere

Never heard about any of these, which I guess is a statement about how niche they are too.

Oh please, you barely play anything anymore. Someone who's invested in a specific field has less of a chance of keeping up with other specific fields. I largely stick to older games and doujins, there's not a chance in hell that I can keep up with most of the newer indie shmups on Steam without it negatively affecting my understanding of older games and doujins.

Most of what you're saying is wrong and misleading, and none of it is even interesting to think about. You're just trying to shitstir, like you always do. And hey, everyone's just gonna tell me I'm the one doing that, somehow. They are going to do it until the end of time and they are going to blame me for every step of the process.

Eventually you're going to realize just how sad and how shallow the world really is. You're going to realize that it's actually a really easy fix, but that "normal" human beings are actively opposed to anything but extremely sad and extremely shallow, except for those incredibly rare bursts of understanding that may cause a positive trend for a while. That's all you will ever get.

[TransatlanticFoe]

"Content" does seems to be the issue, at least when justifying full price to modern gamers. Even console exclusive shmups back in the day were typically 2-3 times longer than arcade ones, suggesting there was already a desire to have "more". Look at the decline of arcade racers in the home market and the rise of the collectathon sim.

A 5 hour single player game barely merits a budget release nowadays - it's a miracle Vanquish got as good reviews as it did. Even "hard" modern games aren't truly punishing, it's like credit feeding Kyukyoku Tiger - you might get pasted back to a checkpoint over and over but eventually you'll grind-memorise your way through.

There's also the "buy - play - clear - trade" mentality of modern core gamers. It's just media consumption but only happens because there is so much content to "get through". Imagine buying a record and only listening to it once before trading it for another one! Replaying a game just isn't on the menu nowadays so shmups just don't stand a chance - stay niche or change. I'd welcome more games structured like Sturmwind (but harder obviously), where you have a series of stages but a main arcade game on top. The new Darius Burst might do that sort of thing to, but I've only just repaired my PC's overheating issue.

[Despatche]

Most of that "length" was derived from true repetition, which strips it of any "content" label.

The collectathon sim is actually a very specific genre that only a few games subscribe to, and it is a one-game genre that is centered around Gran Turismo. As it stands, only Gran Turismo and Forza really work like that anymore, because the various clones made in the early-'00s never sold quite as well and it's a very expensive kind of game to make. Codemasters's games sorta work like this, but the car count in any of those games isn't even big enough to be compared to Pokemon gen 1. You will likely have every car by the time the "career" is over, something you are not meant to be able to do in collectathon sims.

The reason why people are freaking out over "content" and "game length" is because they were told to. Continues had a part to play in this, which chained into buy-play-clear-trade. The genre would be a lot better off if those arcade trappings were finally removed and there was a big push to redefine the genre for what it is. Most people approach shmups like they do any other game: either a grand one-time-only experience, or a mindless timewaster. Any other approach is automatically deemed as too crazy for the masses. Any other successful approach (which is entirely based on marketing) elevates that game and its players to something beyond "video game" and "bunch of nerds".

[Shepardus]

Re: Dota, LoL, CS:GO, fighting games - be careful not to confuse a game's "length" with its "session length." Each session of one of these games is maybe 40 minutes (less for fighting games), but they derive replayability in the eyes of those who play them by being multiplayer games, and also through unlockables (skins in Dota, LoL, and CS:GO, champions and runes in LoL, perks and weapons in many other FPSs). Of these the multiplayer aspect is the biggest thing in my mind, as even co-op games without unlocks have managed to find success (see Left 4 Dead).

Attitudes within the games industry have changed. While it was once considered desirable to be able to memorize a game and learn the layouts of the stages for the next play, I've seen people criticize games nowadays for being memorizable. This tends to come up when procedural content generation is being discussed - people cite it as an advantage that "you can't just memorize the levels." Even within this forum people tend to deride "memorizers," though I think that's unfair to most games to which the label is applied. Of course not everybody's like that (see: many speedrunners), but it shouldn't come as a surprise that people aren't willing to purchase and play a game touting half an hours' worth of stages that are meant to be played repeatedly and largely memorized, especially if they aren't sure that those stages are going to be really good.

[Blinge]

You're a troll too Blinge, and you insist on dogging me everywhere I go, so I'm not sure what you're on about. The only drama around here comes from people like you and Cagar spouting absolute nonsense. I'm positive that if I never made that post, you wouldn't have made yours either.

Nah man, You're reading the whole thing as a huge attack on our beloved shmups. (Look, I used the collective first person! community!)

What Cagar's doing is simply answering the question posed by the thread.

[BryanM]

Multiplayer inherently creates a ton of variance. HEX (budget MTG clone) has a miserable PvE experience because it's so freaking fixed and limited on what you face. But PvP limited modes, those are a joy.

Shoot'em ups are a wonderful genre. And they only have upwards to go from where they are now. Just.. just like with platformers, all the low hanging fruit has already been done. You have to put in a poopload to add value to the library now.

[Captain]

I can see it now. The end of days.

Spoiler

A diabolical but brilliant dev announces a massive shmup. Let's call these brilliant fuckers NEBAG CORP.

They know their stuff. It's a shmup. It has bullet hell levels. It has manic levels. It has classic (eh, non bullet hell? how to call?) levels. It has verticals. Horizontals. Walls/Terrain, or nothing. Basically it's incredibly diverse. It is also balanced well and cannot be cheesed through.

On release it already has a ton of levels and several campaigns, you unlock some cool ships/weapons/etc by beating, it's all balanced though, but you start craving more.

The game is shareware but all updates are free. YES! You think.

The dev updates monthly or so with new levels. HELL YES! You think.

Included are unlockables like powerups, ships/animus that could change the playstyle completely, etc. FUCKING HELL YES you say as you wait eagerly for the new updates.

What's the catch?

Multiplayer is based around making levels. This offers an infinite amount of sustenance. The editor is badass and has all you need (with different modes for different levels of expertise, of course)

The system: You make a level pack, essentially a campaign, and pay the dev to add it to the game.

People can try out a portion of it, buy the level pack/campaign if they like it, and you will earn miniscule funds while the dev gets the rest.

Approved levels are shown off in a section to gather popularity to begin with. No scams.

In the end though you still profit if your levels are a hit! Hey, maybe you become a celebrity of sorts!

By now, if you like shmups, this great game would have you hooked enough to buy and eventually try your hand!

Hell, per every buy of your stuff, you could unlock in-game stuff! KEEP THE ADDICTION ROLLING.

Suddenly this horrible yet amazing shmup is popular. People love it because it's approachable, diverse, probably cheap compared to most shmups, has a ton of gameplay, a good community, etc.

Shmups start competing with mainstream games.

People actually start making massive and badass modern shmups.

When the invaders come, we are ready.

[Cagar]

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[Vludi]

Unlocking all weapons in CoD4 is not the challenge of the game

that's the point
And i made the comparison because in both cases you are exploiting all of the game's content, being Batrider much more satisfactory in the long term despite being a "short 30 min game", because the system itself is just more complex and demands more from the player.

[Cagar]

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[Vludi]

Unlocking all weapons in CoD4 is not the challenge of the game

that's the point
And i made the comparison because in both cases you are exploiting all of the game's content, being Batrider much more satisfactory in the long term despite being a "short 30 min game", because the system itself is just more complex and demands more from the player.

See, I, based on what I've read and heard from other gamers, don't think that achieving some goal that you yourself set counts as 'content', it was almost the entire point I made, and why I called shmups mainly '10-40 minutes long'.
Every run of batrider (in a specific mode) is always approximately as difficult and you need to use certain strategies to overcome the hardwired challenges that the game provides (excluding some small things like pattern RNG).
In a single match of CoD4 multiplayer however, the difficulty and strategies that you need to come up with to win, are always different. In general, there's much more variety. You can't have another try at a certain match, things always turn out differently because the players themselves shape the challenge. It's dynamic as fuck, there's barely even comparison.

EDIT: I just realized that I made a mistake by calling it 'lack of content' for shmups, when what I truly meant was 'lack of variety'. (´・ω・`)

"don't think that achieving some goal that you yourself set counts as 'content'"
How different ships and mode isn't content? playing the game with different ships imply quite different strategies depending on your team, even deeper if you count scoring. CoD4's campaign will never feel much different no matter how much you try changing your weapons, because the game wasn't about gameplay variety: the gameplay is simple and repetitive, the only reason to keep playing was to finish the "cinematic" story.
As for the MP, you have very limited options other than typical stuff like communication and FPS fundamentals, because as i said before, the system of the game is quite limited to do much better than that.
Single-player games with deep systems and multiplayer games have quite different philophies, it's kinda dumb to pretend MP are "deeper" per se. Go play Chess with an expert AI and see how well you do lol.

[Mimeslayer]

This thread in a nutshell:

[yudha990]

After letting my friend play deathsmiles i want to actually tell something important here.

The problem is not with the game itself, but the mentality of people nowadays.

Lack of variety, according to me is just a bad excuse. Shumps are the same nowadays. What about CoD, same game each year, with slightly different maps and weapons. Gran Turismo (which is sadly, the 2nd game at least, the best game i've ever played), same gameplay, thousands of cars which happens to be comprised by 30 cars of the same model (BTW, Gran Turismo is dead for me after 3rd game). WMMT, don't even get me started. Same game with different graphics for each iteration. PES/FIFA, same gameplay, same technique, even less variety than shumps. Why those games are more popular, because people think "Ah, shumps are just a old ass game, with no way to play seriously, just another easy game". I asked my friend to play deathsmiles on PC, and he died at the first stage, on level 1 difficulty. It's not like i can play good too (level 3 difficulty and i'm dead). And deathsmiles is one of the easier shump game. Give him gradius 3 (or hell, give him gradius 2 instead) and he will die within minutes.

And it's not like the FPS are very long anyways. Most FPS nowadays can be beaten in 2-3 hours. Hell, even GTA 5 can be finished in just max.4 hours (proven by me), and what makes the game longer, sidequests like finding submarine parts, which is dreadfully boring. People want to play easy game nowadays, they're mostly wimps. They never want to appreciate challenging games.

And most companies even cater their wants. Konami, best known for me for gradius, twinbee, castlevania, and newer games like enthusia prof.racing (and if you're into simulation racing on ps2, buy this instead of gran turismo 4, which is so bad as faf as the gameplay is concerned). Now what are they doing? Making countless PES games, which is essentially the same, yet so many people buy it, which is weird.

I love FPS and Racing games as well as shumps. Playing outrun after getting killed over and over in gradius 2 (because of my lack of skill ;p) is like getting a calming Sunday drive after getting an andernaline rush. It's awesome. I love Gran turismo 2 (only 2) as well as raystorm. I love Initial D games as well as Raiden games. But saying that shumps is a genre with lack of variety is a bad excuse.

[Squire Grooktook]

You're a troll too Blinge, and you insist on dogging me everywhere I go, so I'm not sure what you're on about. The only drama around here comes from people like you and Cagar spouting absolute nonsense. I'm positive that if I never made that post, you wouldn't have made yours either.

Nah man, You're reading the whole thing as a huge attack on our beloved shmups. (Look, I used the collective first person! community!)

What Cagar's doing is simply answering the question posed by the thread.

Yeah.

Although one thing I'd disagree with is that the length is "pathetic" and that they should be sold for "mobile prices". The former is relative and the latter is a matter of economics and might not be (and probably isn't) the most advantageous option for developers. I also think his post oversells how badly they're doing. I think stg's have actually been a relatively profitable niche lately, and many publishers and small-time developers have managed to make a fair few bucks off of them with the recent rise of Steam and digital distribution. As far as niche's go, there's smaller and more difficult ones to sell. I also don't think shmups are so completely disregarded by the gaming populace. In my experience, they're well respected by many people who aren't into the genre (or are into it more casually) but who are into other more profitable "hardcore" games and genres.

But otherwise I agree that the perceived "content" issue is one of the main things preventing these games from having the same market value/appeal as other genres. There's a reason it was the first thing I mentioned in my post.

My post was the best, wasn't it.

[Shepardus]

All this talk about what constitutes "content" doesn't matter if it doesn't match up with how the non-shmup-playing gaming audience sees it. You may be perfectly okay with spending full price for a shmup (though even here many take issue with shmups being sold for that price), but others aren't convinced of that valuation and that's ultimately what matters to the question at hand regardless of how "wrong" they are.

I advise people here to think about how they would sell a shmup to someone who has never played a shmup before (but perhaps plays other "hardcore" games). Think about how they would react and what would convince them to play your shmup in lieu of all the other choices they have, including ones that aren't as much a leap of faith as jumping into an unfamiliar genre. What does your game have to offer that they can't get from something else that's less of a risk to them? Your game probably banks on replayability, but how do you convince them that it's good enough to even desire replayability, and how does that replayability differ from replaying The Last of Us because you liked that game and want to see it again?

Multiplayer, especially PvP, creates a lot of replay value in the eyes of many people because 1) the social element, and 2) you can't memorize other people. I think (1) is especially important - look at any multiplayer game and you'll see that people tend to stick around a lot longer if they have other, real people to play with. Unlockables, rankings, etc. are an added bonus but are comparatively small factors - few people would play the same fighting game for years and years if there's no multiplayer but a ton of unlockables.

Unfortunately the benefits of multiplayer are relatively difficult for shmups as we know them to capitalize on. Even if someone were to develop a great co-op or even PvP shmup that weren't actually something totally different from what we call a shmup, it's super risky for an indie or small-scale commercial dev to bank their game's success on its multiplayer community, as that can easily fail to ever get off the ground, as has been the fate of plenty of other multiplayer-focused games. Not all successful games are multiplayer games, though, so there are other options worth exploring.

My post was the best, wasn't it.

Pretty much.

The problem is not with the game itself, but the mentality of people nowadays.

You could say that about any game or genre, though. I could take any game and say that people like it because their mentality is compatible with the game, or that people don't like it because their mentality is incompatible with the game. By itself that statement is meaningless. It only carries meaning if you can identify what it is about their mentality and what it is about shmups that don't gel well. But I do agree with you that lack of variety within the genre as a whole isn't killing it. Lack of variety wouldn't keep people away from the genre entirely, but would discourage them from exploring the genre fully (kind of like someone asking "why play Dota if I already play LoL?"). Though maybe there are a bunch of such people and I just don't have the numbers (how many people pirate a Touhou game and never play anything else?).