The problem with shmups as a genre.

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Shepardus
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Shepardus »

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say with that "treasure-finding" example, but FYI some shooters such as Sexy Parodius have actually included additional missions on top of the basic shooting and dodging. Many, many games have scoring systems that require doing extra things on top of shooting and dodging and that's a large part of what's so great about them. You said at the start that "shmup is just a combat style," but that completely ignores the many scoring systems people have built into their games. So it's not accurate at all to say that shmups are unable to include additional elements of gameplay on top of shooting and dodging without becoming terrible because many, if not most, already do that. If that's your stance, call me a hipster all you want but you really don't get it. It's not necessarily your fault for not "getting it," because as I've said it's the games' fault for failing to communicate what they're about to those who don't already think the same way, but there's clearly a lot for you to learn if you think all shmups boil down to the same thing.
Last edited by Shepardus on Sat May 28, 2016 11:35 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by mamboFoxtrot »

trap15 wrote:Image
ikr
We're on what, the 47th overall, and at least the 9th one this year alone? Okay, one of them was a necrobump of an older one but w/e...
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masterfrog
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

Shepardus wrote:I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say with that "treasure-finding" example, but FYI some shooters such as Sexy Parodius have actually included additional missions on top of the basic shooting and dodging. Many, many games have scoring systems that require doing extra things on top of shooting and dodging and that's a large part of what's so great about them.
Well the point is, there's nothing all that great about most games. But, some games manage to transcend one genre and manage to make a bigger, cooler game in the process. I don't expect for people to know what I am talking about on this, since even most people on the dedicated development forums get lost when I start down that discussion path. But, suffice it to say, most popular games are actually cross-genre, and do away with rigid notions of genre adherence in favor of making people happy while they are playing.

Shooters are so busy proving that they are shooters (in other words... stg developers are so busy proving that they are legit), that they have forgotten that they are also supposed to be games and that, ultimately, the game should meet the needs of the player, rather than giving the player requirements and dealing out life and death on a whim.

Most people on here would never admit it, but you could probably have fun playing Candy Crush for a few hours. Those games aren't bad just because they aren't shooting games. And before you say "nobody is saying that"... let's be real.

I like the idea of shooting at patterns of moving objects, I like the idea of dodging patterns of moving objects. It's all very cool. But if you asked me to make a game just based on that... I would have no choice but to come up with the same basic things that every shooting game ever has already done, and the game would have to be short, or people would get bored and realize it was monotonous. And there would have to be very fancy effects, and the bullets would have to be a purplish-reddish color and/or a light-bluish color to stand out from the background, and it would be the same old thing all over again. So, I would reject the premise that "shooting and dodging" can be an entire game and move straight on to some other game pattern that can utilize shooting at patterns of moving objects in an interesting way. And I would reject the idea that any adaptation of shmup-style gameplay into any other game is a "shoe-horning" and I would reject the notion that "it's been done before, and it always fails" because that's just negative nonsense.

As long as the whole game is flying forward, dodging bullets, collecting stuff and trying to get a high score... it's pretty much going to be the same old thing and a turn-off to that same 99.99% of people I keep talking about. My point of contention continues to be, that I like shooting stuff, I like the bullet patterns, I like the feel of space ships and the serious story opportunities that kind of game presents... and I love sci-fi in general, and space ships = sci-fi... but I feel like the genre itself is a prehistoric, cantankerous, unmitigated disaster of self-limitation and fear of the future.

Why are stg enthusiasts afraid of the future? Well, it is a future in which many long-established norms are challenged and the highly refined skills of the last starfighter become as irrelevant as the ability of a musician to play his own guitar has become to modern music. In other words, for the most part in modern, evolved games... skill takes a back-seat to stats and character customization and how much time and money you have invested into the game. Which kind of sucks, also, from a certain perspective. I get that.

I just don't see why it's not possible to make a game in which there is some compromise between pure skill and having something else to do in the game other than practice for a thousand hours so you can get a 1CC... that is definitely not for everybody. That's for 0.001% of the population, if even.

But talk is cheap and I've already thrown out several massive walls of text, today with my pseudo-sage-like rambling. I'm learning more about you guys, but I still don't see the difference between Crimzon Clover and Jamestown, other than the aesthetic is different and Crimzon Clover seems to have way more variety and some bombs to get you out of trouble. But it's still apparently super difficult and so... the problem remains, the only quality the game possesses to make people play it is that it is hard to play... haha, kind of like the only thing that is appealing about some particular food item is that it tastes like crap. How popular would that food be?
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masterfrog
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

mamboFoxtrot wrote:
trap15 wrote:Image
ikr
We're on what, the 47th overall, and at least the 9th one this year alone? Okay, one of them was a necrobump of an older one but w/e...
Nothing like contributing nothing new and complaining that it's the same old thing to waste everyone's time and accomplish nothing. 6/5
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

LET ME PUT IT A DIFFERENT WAY

The genre never changes... and this is why it has become a niche.

When someone attempts innovation, those in the niche reject it as "not being a real shooter"... and you lose the support of the niche and the game fails...

smh

So basically, you guys have banned innovation.
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Shepardus
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Shepardus »

For the record "practice for a thousand hours so you can get a 1CC" is also a popular misconception as the vast majority of shmups won't take the average player nearly that long to 1CC. They're really not as difficult as the stereotypes would have you believe, even if people like to use that as a selling point.

Jamestown and Crimzon Clover aren't that different as far as shmups go, but there's a lot of variety in the genre that you seem unaware of, and plenty of examples where "shooting and dodging" is not the entire game (again, a popular misconception). There are even games like Enter the Gungeon that do what you say and adapt shmup-like shooting and dodging into other formats and some even do it well.

As for the genre becoming niche due to lack of change, there is truth to that, but to players like us the commercial success of the genre isn't the top priority; it makes no sense to "resurrect" the genre by sacrificing the things we like about it, because then who are we doing it for?

Edit: Damn autocorrect for changing Crimzon to Crimson every time.
Last edited by Shepardus on Sun May 29, 2016 12:07 am, edited 2 times in total.
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masterfrog
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

Shepardus wrote:For the record "practice for a thousand hours so you can get a 1CC" is also a popular misconception as the vast majority of shmups won't take the average player nearly that long to 1CC. They're really not as difficult as the stereotypes would have you believe, even if people like to use that as a selling point.

Jamestown and Crimson Clover aren't that different as far as shmups go, but there's a lot of variety in the genre that you seem unaware of, and plenty of examples where "shooting and dodging" is not the entire game (again, a popular misconception). There are even games like Enter the Gungeon that do what you say and adapt shmup-like shooting and dodging into other formats and some even do it well.
...so on a scale of 1-10, how surprised are you that I'm not aware of an indie game that was released less than two months ago?

Cause that Enter the Gungeon looks like something I want to play the shit out of, judging only from the trailer.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

Shepardus wrote:As for the genre becoming niche due to lack of change, there is truth to that, but to players like us the commercial success of the genre isn't the top priority; it makes no sense to "resurrect" the genre by sacrificing the things we like about it, because then who are we doing it for?
Hey, there's a reason for everything. Doesn't make it wrong or right. The shooting genre isn't going to be resurrected, it's going to grow tentacles and fly away on a rainbow shooting out of a Unicorn's arse.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Perikles »

I find it fascinating that every once in a while someone who has but a passing familiarity with the genre feels the irresistible need to proselytize those who are actually acquainted with it and seem to be quite happy without any advice on how to "break out of the niche". Why would I care how many people play the genre and for what reasons? That might be a valid point of discussion when you need an active player base but how does it matter with shmups? What's the point in adding "innovations" for popularity's sake when it detracts from the core mechanics that actually constitute the genre? I'm honestly flabbergasted. I've never seen such a discussion on, say, a tabletop forum. Never have I read a comment along the lines of "Guys, chess is a darn old game, it could use a fresh coat of paint. All it ever needed was a random element, that would surely increase the interest in the game even more! Just moving those silly-looking pieces on the board and thinking hard about the next turn(s) gets quite stale after a while, you really need something else to do".
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Shepardus »

Well there are Chess960, Chess 2.0, 3D chess and whatnot. :P Chess 2.0 in particular purports to fix "problems" in chess. But the existence of these doesn't diminish the value of chess as it is.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

Perikles wrote:I find it fascinating that ... someone ... need[s] something else to do (besides playing the standard shmup)".
Fixed.

Chess is not a genre.

Honestly, someone literally restrain me. I win too much.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

Perikles wrote:"Guys, chess is a darn old game, it could use a fresh coat of paint. All it ever needed was a random element, that would surely increase the interest in the game even more! Just moving those silly-looking pieces on the board and thinking hard about the next turn(s) gets quite stale after a while, you really need something else to do"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Tactics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactics_O ... g_Together

...
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Shepardus
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Shepardus »

The existence of FFT and Tactics Ogre doesn't mean that these games are "better" than chess or that chess has no reason to exist in the modern world. Whether chess is a genre or not is irrelevant to the point.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

Shepardus wrote:The existence of FFT and Tactics Ogre doesn't mean that these games are "better" than chess or that chess has no reason to exist in the modern world. Whether chess is a genre or not is irrelevant to the point.
Um... it's kind of relevant. But, it's so obvious that if I have to work to prove it to you, then it makes me wonder if I'm not wasting my time in this discussion. It'd be like arguing about the differences between punctuation marks... or something else that really shouldn't need arguing about.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by trap15 »

masterfrog wrote:I win too much.
Win at making everyone think you're a jackass and not convincing anyone, I guess.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

trap15 wrote:
masterfrog wrote:I win too much.
Win at making everyone think you're a jackass and not convincing anyone, I guess.
Name-calling... for the win!

Welcome to 3rd grade, gentleman.

...so do we just whip 'em out and start measuring? Or? Where does it usually go from here?
Last edited by masterfrog on Sun May 29, 2016 2:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Shepardus
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Shepardus »

masterfrog wrote:
Shepardus wrote:The existence of FFT and Tactics Ogre doesn't mean that these games are "better" than chess or that chess has no reason to exist in the modern world. Whether chess is a genre or not is irrelevant to the point.
Um... it's kind of relevant. But, it's so obvious that if I have to work to prove it to you, then it makes me wonder if I'm not wasting my time in this discussion.
I know what you're trying to say, a whole genre being stagnant is worse than a game being stagnant because a game is a single thing that isn't really expected to change anyway (though chess has changed over the centuries). But the point here is that it doesn't matter if the entire genre is stagnant if that's what its fans like. The existence of these shmups which are allegedly all the same thing doesn't preclude the creation of other, more "innovative" games. I'm perfectly fine with it, happy in fact, if people make such games. The fact that Enter the Gungeon can become one of the biggest indie hits this year so far is a great thing. Just don't say that the more "old-school" style games shouldn't be made. Genre lines are largely arbitrary anyway, and how restrictive or devoid of innovation a genre is depends on how you define it. Is Enter the Gungeon a shmup? The answer to that affects how varied, innovative, and aware of modern audiences the genre as a whole is.

I take your lack of response to the first sentence you quoted as tacit agreement, in which case any further argument would just be nitpicking the phrasing of arguments rather than discussing the points being made.
Last edited by Shepardus on Sun May 29, 2016 2:57 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Emuser »

masterfrog wrote:
Perikles wrote:I find it fascinating that ... someone ... need[s] something else to do (besides playing the standard shmup)".
Fixed.

Chess is not a genre.

Honestly, someone literally restrain me. I win too much.
Suspicions confirmed here. So let me get this straight. You came onto this forum to argue with people in the development section when there's not even a game or WIP being talked about? All I see are people posting and you pointing out some flaw in their statement. Honestly surprised this is going on still. At least whats his face with Vortex Attack had a game to present before a shitstorm began to brew, or that asshole with Invader Assault 2 or whatever it is didn't come in empty handed (I think anyone who remembers this would be pleased to hear that he somehow rose the price on that game from 19.99 to 29.99 some time last year).
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by EmperorIng »

You forgot the OP where he posted his "experimental shooter" where you don't move and just shoot at things.
masterfrog wrote: When someone attempts innovation, those in the niche reject it as "not being a real shooter"...
I'm detecting some sour grapes. :)
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

Shepardus wrote:Just don't say that the more "old-school" style games shouldn't be made.
It's not about whether I think they should be made... I don't, for the record. But, it's the fans of these shmups that have been driving demand for the genre, the ones that are buying the same exact game over and over again with different colors and scoring systems, that have been stifling the genre and keeping it in a rut for all of these years. Granted, some pretty neat stuff has been made in spite of this rigidity. It's just a shame that games that go on to be critically acclaimed haven't taken root and spawned a bevy of sequels the way, for example, Dodonpachi has. To me, this seems like a snub from the shmup community. When "shoot the fuck out of you and everything explodes" gets 14 sequels, and Touhou is just some endless cultural phenomenon... but Radiant Silvergun is just one game, no sequels, spin-offs. Demand drives the market, right? Makes me wonder if it's just not worth taking risks in the shmup genre, I wonder if the risk-takers all learned the hard way, financially, and just walked away and started making wiggling orb games.
Shepardus wrote:Genre lines are largely arbitrary anyway, and how restrictive or devoid of innovation a genre is depends on how you define it.
The usefulness of a genre is not so much in what it is, but what it decidedly is not. It's the difference between genres that is valuable, not their ability to succinctly summarize what we should expect from a particular piece of work. In the case of the shmup, you have a purist mentality which tends to be more exclusive than that found in many other genres, but for the most part it's pretty irrelevant what the fans think... a game with dodging and shooting ends up being a shmup. The definition of the genre itself is not a problem. Nor should the genre's definition change. The problem is that shmups are largely the same damn thing, over and over again, and this is categorically true across the entire genre with very few exceptions. And it is amazing to me that something that is really so simple and so adaptable somehow winds up being the same damn thing, even after all these years... even after arcades have all but ceased to exist, the shmup library is still densely populated with the same thing... super hard, unforgiving and otherwise quite un-fun games that are mostly about fast-twitch muscle fibers and eye-hand coordination, and very little about thinking. And it's almost like the people who play them know that they are disposable, dime-a-dozen trysts that are fueled by nothing but nostalgia and the fumes of testosterone still rattling around in the old tank.
Shepardus wrote:Is Enter the Gungeon a shmup?
I would say that it is a roguelike with combat system that is one-part twin stick shooter and one part bullet-hell shmup.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

EmperorIng wrote:You forgot the OP where he posted his "experimental shooter" where you don't move and just shoot at things.
masterfrog wrote: When someone attempts innovation, those in the niche reject it as "not being a real shooter"...
I'm detecting some sour grapes. :)
I'm really not defensive about that game. In fact, by all means... I'm not scared of feedback. I won't lash out at you. Tell me what you really think?

It really is an experiment, and people's response to it is a big part of the experiment.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

Emuser wrote:
masterfrog wrote:
Perikles wrote:I find it fascinating that ... someone ... need[s] something else to do (besides playing the standard shmup)".
Fixed.

Chess is not a genre.

Honestly, someone literally restrain me. I win too much.
Suspicions confirmed here. So let me get this straight. You came onto this forum to argue with people in the development section when there's not even a game or WIP being talked about? All I see are people posting and you pointing out some flaw in their statement. Honestly surprised this is going on still. At least whats his face with Vortex Attack had a game to present before a shitstorm began to brew, or that asshole with Invader Assault 2 or whatever it is didn't come in empty handed (I think anyone who remembers this would be pleased to hear that he somehow rose the price on that game from 19.99 to 29.99 some time last year).
So you just sit around... analyzing strangers... forming theories... creating and maintaining histories of assholes who have posted here before... and... I'm sorry. Is that like your thing?
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Shepardus »

masterfrog wrote:super hard, unforgiving and otherwise quite un-fun games that are mostly about fast-twitch muscle fibers and eye-hand coordination, and very little about thinking. And it's almost like the people who play them know that they are disposable, dime-a-dozen trysts that are fueled by nothing but nostalgia and the fumes of testosterone still rattling around in the old tank.
I'm still going to insist that you're wrong about that, if you're relying on super fast reactions rather than thinking and planning you're only doing yourself a disservice. Few shmups require above-average reactions or any more hand-eye coordination than Super Meat Boy and the like.

I don't think Radiant Silvergun goes unappreciated here, as it's consistently voted as one of the best shmups of all time in this forum's annual poll. It is polarizing (you either love it or hate it) for the unusual things it does, but overall it's very much loved and appreciated. But such magic and innovation is hard to capture on a consistent basis; spawning a lot of sequels and spinoffs would dilute its greatness if they're not as different from each other as they are from the rest of the genre. Dodonpachi's take on dense and elaborate bullet patterns was also unusual, even genre-pushing, at the time, which drew people to the game, but people have since made so many bullet hell games inspired by it that making a shmup that isn't bullet hell is more unusual now. For every Radiant Silvergun or HellSinker there's inevitably going to be many less unique games, and that's true regardless of the genre. I think it's fortunate that there's still a market for all the samey "copycat" games since without those the shmup genre would be even more dead than it is and the more unique games would probably never see the light of day.

(Also, Ikaruga is technically a kind of spinoff from Radiant Silvergun and its polarity mechanic has been copied numerous times)
Last edited by Shepardus on Sun May 29, 2016 3:53 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by masterfrog »

Shepardus wrote:
masterfrog wrote:super hard, unforgiving and otherwise quite un-fun games that are mostly about fast-twitch muscle fibers and eye-hand coordination, and very little about thinking. And it's almost like the people who play them know that they are disposable, dime-a-dozen trysts that are fueled by nothing but nostalgia and the fumes of testosterone still rattling around in the old tank.
I'm still going to insist that you're wrong about that, if you're relying on super fast reactions rather than thinking and planning you're only doing yourself a disservice. Few shmups require above-average reactions or any more hand-eye coordination than Super Meat Boy and the like.

I don't think Radiant Silvergun goes unappreciated here, as it's consistently voted as one of the best shmups of all time in this forum's annual poll. It is polarizing (you either love it or hate it) for the unusual things it does, but overall it's very much loved and appreciated. But such magic and innovation is hard to capture on a consistent basis; spawning a lot of sequels and spinoffs would dilute its greatness if they're not as different from each other as they are from the rest of the genre. Dodonpachi's take on dense and elaborate bullet patterns was also unusual, even genre-pushing, at the time, which drew people to the game, but people have since made so many bullet hell games inspired by it that making a shmup that isn't bullet hell is more unusual now.

(Also, Ikaruga is technically a kind of spinoff from Radiant Silvergun and its polarity mechanic has been copied numerous times)
I'm willing to admit that I may be acting a little hasty in dismissing this bullet hell business, however, I have always prided myself on my ability to approach games from an average person's perspective. Granted, if you put in four hours of practice each night (similar to what someone might spend playing their favorite online game) after three months, you will probably be able to sleepwalk through most bullet hell games. And some people have been playing shmups since the late 80's, some even as far back as the very first Asteroids game. So, you see, I understand that there is a great variance in skill levels. However, for the average joe, the shmup genre remains inaccessible and unappealing due to its perceived (even if this perception is skewed) difficulty level.

Then there's the shmup fans... :P
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Emuser »

masterfrog wrote: So you just sit around... analyzing strangers... forming theories... creating and maintaining histories of assholes who have posted here before... and... I'm sorry. Is that like your thing?
No you little conceited prick, it's called remembering all the times before this or having a sense of memory. Don't come in here and pretend that you know me or anyone here based on stupid assumptions formed out of your disappointment of Jamestown. I say it because this is exactly the shit that happens when someone with no posts creates an account to troll with. They want to storm in here and stir up everyone to continuously post until the thread gets out of control and eventually deleted. It's even more insulting that this is over a flash game.
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Shepardus »

I was initially quite dismissive of bullet hell myself based on screenshots of Perfect Cherry Blossom, with many of the same sentiments you express now, but I was pleasantly surprised when I tried the demo of that game. It's still a hard game on the hardest difficulty, but I was surprised by how fair it was and how doable it felt despite the difficulty. Imperishable Night was the first full (not demo) bullet hell game I played and I was getting 1CCs of the lower difficulties within a couple hours of casual play during study breaks and the like.

Speaking of difficulty levels, I think multiple difficulty levels are more common in shmups than they used to be - games like the Touhou series and Astebreed have multiple well-crafted difficulty levels with the intent of being more accessible to inexperienced players. No doubt being made for home platforms rather than arcades reduces the pressure to make games hard for the sake of income, but even some arcade games like Deathsmiles and Mushihimesama have multiple difficulty modes to appeal to more players. Unfortunately the effort spent developing these modes often goes unnoticed because of memes like
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which discourage people from touching these modes even if they're quite fun and well-designed. It's a double-edged sword; the reputed difficulty of these games is what attracts many people in the first place, but it also turns away people who could actually grow to love the games. For some people the difficulty is the point of the game, but I've never thought that way and find that attitude offputting, and I'm sure plenty of others (both on this forum and off) do as well. Ideally people would see the wide range of skill levels these games can accommodate but in reality the hardest/highest-level play tends to bubble up and become representative of the entire game, even for games with dynamic difficulty like Mecha Ritz, because it impresses people so they share it.

holy crap look at how many times I used "but" in this post
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NTSC-J: You know STGs are in trouble when you have threads on how to introduce them to a wider audience and get more people playing followed by threads on how to get its hardcore fan base to play them, too.
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Despatche
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Despatche »

masterfrog wrote:Take any kind of combat system around which someone has made a decent game, and think about all the things in that game that were added to the combat system to make it a deeper game, a more nuanced genre. These days, even first-person shooters have RPG elements and character building. Why? Because... why not? If it makes the game more appealing, do it. If it makes the game more accessible, go for it, right? Hmm... this is where shmups get it wrong.
The "added elements" you speak of take away from the rest of the game, not add to it. "RPG elements" in an FPS turns the game into slightly less of a game at all and slightly more into a Skinner box.
masterfrog wrote:See the shmup developer's mentality seems to be... forget accessibility, forget appeal, forget 99.99% of people... and to focus on that one one-hundredth of one-percent of the population who will play a "hardcore" game just to prove how "hardcore" of a gamer he is. And yes, a he... because let's face it, shmups are pretty much a dude thing.
"accessibility" and "appeal" are marketing buzzwords, and the meaning of those terms changes all the time. They are dishonest concepts focused only on the science of making money. The science of making an actually good game means nothing to people who insist on "accessibility" and "appeal". Gaming is "pretty much a dude thing", and it is precisely because of people like you.
masterfrog wrote:If shmup players and shmup developers could just accept one simple fact, things would be a lot better. The simple fact, being: Shmup is just a combat style. A pretty damn cool one, at that. But on its own, it's just not enough for the market place, it's not enough for the 21st century gamer.
The "21st century gamer" does not exist. The vast majority of people who play games are either playing some junk "press button to win" phone or browser game, people who've been convinced to play some directly-competitive game by their friends, or people playing around with some massive "open-world" game as if it were a toy instead of a game. Only the second group is particularly interested in "playing a good game", and that is only because they have been tricked into doing so with promises of competition.
masterfrog wrote:If other genres took the same approach that the shmup genre has, they would die too. But racing game developers were totally cool with letting players customize cars and get under the hood. Fighting game developers keep inventing new characters and experimenting with different things to try to broaden appeal, and the difficulty of a fighting game is determined by who you're up against. I can't think of any other genre that hasn't tried to evolve. Even match-3 games have evolved, for god's sake.
If other genres kept to the same approach shmups did, the problem you see wouldn't even exist, and gaming as a whole would be less miserable. Instead, our industry is starting to fill up with those menial press-button games that give the impression of working in a factory.

Racing games simply added more and more actual automobile-related mechanics, which has lead to a million possible subgenres. Your usage of "fighting game" is poor, as you refer to something that is as equally specific as "shmups". You're clearly referring to 2D and 3D versus fighting games, which have only evolved as much as shmups have. The shift between games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear is very similar to the shift between "old" and "danmaku" shmups, both in execution and in reception. Just like fighting games, there has been much experimentation with all sorts of mechanics in shmups: multiple distinct ways of playing the same game, grazing, heavy experimentation on single-player as well as a recent big push for proper co-op (traditionally the genre has been focused around half-hearted co-op), and so on.

Fighting games and shooting games were already expanded in the same way racing games have; all three terms are very vague, and need to be. When you expand fighting games, you get things like the many different types of beat em ups, and highly experimental concepts like Smash Bros. When you expand shooting games, you get the experimental "versus shooters", FPSes, and flight sims, among other things.
masterfrog wrote:I am really interested in making a shmup that is genuinely enjoyable by a broad cross-section of the gaming populace, including some more open-minded hardcore players and some slightly brave casual players. But "a pure shmup" game will just be another micro-niche serving flop.
You will never "succeed" because you have no idea what you're looking for; neither does the so-called "gaming populace". You, like so many other people, have completely forgotten what a "video game" is. You are misunderstanding the purpose of this genre and what it has done since it was created at the dawn of video games. You then misunderstand many other genres, and gaming as a whole, to rile up some nerds. Most of the members of this forum are not too far off from you, and that's why you've even gotten the response you have. At absolute best, you are a troll who is at no point interested in talking about this hobby, and you should leave.
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d0s
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by d0s »

masterfrog wrote:However, for the average joe, the shmup genre remains inaccessible and unappealing due to its perceived (even if this perception is skewed) difficulty level.
who cares

if you think the genre is missing something be the change you want to see and make it, what's the point of you posting this crap in a forum for fans of the games the way they are? you sound like the hipster here telling people that what they like is wrong and you're the enlightened one
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Shepardus »

Despatche wrote:Only the second group is particularly interested in "playing a good game", and that is only because they have been tricked into doing so with promises of competition.
H-Have I been tricked into playing shmups?!?

The quality of a game is different from its accessibility or appeal, but they don't necessarily go against each other. Developers can make their games both good and accessible if they're aware of both their audience and their potential audience. It is true, however, that going for an overly broad audience is bound to end poorly, because there is no single concept of the "21st century gamer" - "gaming" is way too broad a concept nowadays to satisfy everyone in it at the same time, so to have any success you have to narrow down the audience you seek and focus on that. The days where shmups were the face of video games are long gone, but I do think their potential audience is larger than the numbers they typically get because people can and do miss what makes them worthwhile. Not everybody's going to actively search for their "ideal gaming experience" because it's not like that's their primary duty in life (I myself only stumbled upon the genre because I had too much free time). Video games are just things people play for entertainment, after all, and I don't see shmups as having any higher calling than this.
Last edited by Shepardus on Sun May 29, 2016 6:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
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NTSC-J: You know STGs are in trouble when you have threads on how to introduce them to a wider audience and get more people playing followed by threads on how to get its hardcore fan base to play them, too.
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Despatche
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Re: The problem with shmups as a genre.

Post by Despatche »

Everyone involved with this genre is an exception to what I was talking about. That second group are the FPS/fighting game/etc players, as those directly competitive genres are relatively mainstream (particularly FPS).

I would agree, but making games more "accessible" is no longer about being less harsh and encouraging people to get better. Now, it's about the kind of garbage masterfrog worships. This is why I've said before that we need to redefine what it means to be less harsh and more encouraging; we have to trick people out of what they've been tricked into.
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