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So after reading the Anime Boston post and having a great laugh about QED and his アニメ STEPMANIA PANEL I started to think about StepMania and again about it's general direction in terms of ever garnering the attention of more then just a handful of people again.

It's really funny though because I also wanted to attend the panel too just to see it, because well, it's StepMania. But aside from a few things which I don't really have any ground to speak on regarding QED's performance like pad things and what not, the whole anime keyboard simfile bullshut did bring up a lot of questions for me.

As most of us already know, QED has a pretty decently sized demographic playing his files and has been for quite awhile now, but it's funny because it seems like this is somewhat disappointing for some other simfile authors here, but why? Is it because we (those people I guess) wish that our simfiles were able to achieve that level of playability but failed to do it? Or maybe the feeling you get knowing that the people who are playing these files are "growing up" playing them and are therefore, programming themselves into the logic that QED puts forth as a "good simfile", meaning if they ever came to this community, they would have to face the same, harsh, and shunning atmosphere that QED himself faced when he tried to depute here? I think that there's probably more reasons, and also there are people here that do not even care about anybody else other then the inner circle of friends that has been here playing for years when they are making simfiles for a big pack or w/e.

But even so, it's still funny. Because i'd really love to see StepMania become popular again like it once was some 3 - 4 years ago, but it really doesn't seem like it's ever going to be going anywhere near going anywhere near the general direction on the intersection to the road of where it was back then. Why? Well, maybe because of the people who pioneered StepMania into becoming a very fun and applicable experience in the first place, and how they all left, leaving not many of their type behind, but instead having a small minority of players who have been fine-tuned (not sure if write word) into seeing what they /think/ is the "RIGHT" way of how a simfile should be. Because let's face it, if you rewind your stepmania life to the very beginning, then what would you be able to say if someone were to ask you "What brought you to this game?" anyways?

There's actually quite a number of reasons why you could have been drawn to this game actually, but for now i'll probably be interested in focusing on what I believe (at least) is one of the largest reasons why we started playing StepMania, which is because "I saw one of the songs that I liked on YouTube being played on this mysterious DDR-looking game and it looked fun."
Because let's face it, who wouldn't want to play one of their favorite songs in an interactive rhythm type of game?

It's actually a really fun and interesting concept, but for some reason, this drive or motivation is suddenly cut short when people enjoy playing this game to the point where they would like to interact with other people who also enjoy playing this game. So basically they go out looking for an community website to join so they can talk and play with other people who share this same interest in SM, but what community is left that is not chock-full of the people, who I explained above, who are too hardened to the "common methodology" of how a simfile should be? I mean, it's kind of funny when some dude who nobody HERE has ever heard about suddenly submits a bunch of his own simfiles to a pack that is being held and then gets them all horribly rejected, then decides that since he still finds them 100% enjoyable and fun to play (don't forget along with his small group of people who also wholeheartedly agree with him [small group, but PEOPLE none-the-less]), he then creates his own thread to depute to those people and also try and fish for some other people who might be interested in his "style" of simfiles and then gets totally ragged out by the community who see what he is doing as "wrong", or not right, or just This Shit Is Bad Why Would I Ever Play This Ever.

Because I think that's pretty funny, especially now, since there isn't much, if any, new people coming in to our community who hasn't been playing for numerous years. TBH I think the reason why is basically because of the fact that the majority of the StepMania community is just not welcoming at all to new people, not in the sense that we are not friendly people, but more in the sense that when we find something that is matching our squares into our circles, we uncontrollably react to them in a way that might not warrant any friendly incentive for them to stay with us. Coming back to QED again, we know that probably more people play his simfiles then most of the other "Well Known" simfile authors here, but why?

Well, it's actually due to a number of reasons, one would probably be because JAPAN and everybody loves to be anime song, but also another reason is that some people just find it downright fun to just get down and play one of their favorite songs in stepmania, regardless of if they stepped a really sick jack to that sound-that-obviously-should've-been-a-jack, or don't step a stream where they "should" have stepped a stream there, or even to an extreme extent, their steps don't even make sense with the music itself (think jumps that don't go to any real noticeably larger sound, but rather, they are just fun), and that's probably one of the biggest things that new, potential players would want to see themselves doing if they ever picked up StepMania.

I just think that whole fun factor seems like it's just been totally alienated from the game, at this moment in time at least, because there's so many terminology and styles and just things that we've found out how to do with simfiles now that it seems like it's totally detracted from main reason we started playing this game in the first place, to experience the songs we enjoyed listening to on this different plane.

And it's really sad to hear when people talk about how QED is wrong, or that his way shouldn't be the way simfiles should be stepped now, because when it really comes down to it, why should anybody have any authority over whether someone else is supposed to enjoy a simfile their way or the highway? It's seems really ridiculous when I lock back on it now, seeing as I was one of the people who actually did this, to QED in particular, and may have been one of the bigger reasons why the whole QED fiasco manifested itself into something of this remembrance.

Because what i'm just trying to say is that, at least right now, it doesn't seem like SM is going anywhere really, because our communites are so disconnected in this sense of what is right and what is wrong in simfiles, when really it shouldn't even matter. I mean, if a simfile you made was fun for you and maybe fun for other people too, then why should someone else have the power to tell you otherwise? I realize that I was pretty much like this back when I started playing StepMania, and through my primitive I-play-because-i-like-the-song motives, I was able to evolve too in the sense that I was able to discover that there are a lot of other ways for simfiles to be made way differently then i'd imagined, not just by being more complex and difficult but other things as well.

But this still didn't work, because I also had to go through the whole "your simfiles are bad, the simfiles you play and think are fun are bad, so make your simfile like this and we (the majority of the bigger SM communities at that time) will consider adding it to our super awesome pack" phase. TBH, i'd probably have just up and left if I was ever called out for my ideas of what is fun being stated otherwise, because let's face it, that's just not nice, and if you yourself find it fun to play, then why is there any reason to change? There shouldn't really be a pressure weighing down on you to change, in the sense that our community will not "accept" you unless you cater to -their- desires and ideals of fun and not -yours-, and I really feel like it's really taken its toll on the SM community the past few years which is, I believe, one of the largest factors to why so many people just flat out stopped playing, dwindling our rather large community to whatever is left now. (Note: There's not much left it seems.)

So I don't really know what to say to be honest. I really believe StepMania has the potential to become a consistently popular game, not because of the mechanical aspect of the game, but rather, because there will ALWAYS be new, fun to listen to, fun to play music appearing, and I really wish that we(I guess just me, at least) had been able to keep to that basic ideal, because that's probably the reason why so many people play QED's files, that's why so many people play or used to play the OD mixes: Because it's fun and people like seeing songs that they enjoy in StepMania, whether they are "stepped right" or not, they just enjoy playing them because they enjoy the song.

I was actually talking with Lain and we were throwing around the idea of making a StepMania panel, not just because it'd be A ****ing StepMania Panel, but because it might potentially be able to attract some people into picking the game up, which is always nice, right? It's kind of lonely seeing the usual stargroups, patashus, etc (there's a bunch of people yes, but also notice how long it's been just those people) I'd probably be interested in making a panel although I could see it being very complex in terms of what exactly we would like to show without totally blowing it for everyone, but the main concept is still there (also note it was also still there for QED's panel, albeit not exactly executed well I heard), which is to allow people to enjoy their music in a different level of interaction, but when I think about it, it does sound like a really neat idea. It would definitely be on my list of things to do for "Reviving" the stepmania community, but i've just gotten back into SM again after not playing it for almost half a year, and i'm obviously not as energetic about working with SM to restore the community as I was back then, but this would still be a pretty cool thing to do. Although right now I have a lot of things going on and I probably wouldn't be able to do something like that any time soon, but still, very good idea.

I just noticed that there were a lot of things I seen funny with my post, but when you're like this then most things are just, well, funny. Anyways.
But anyways, right now the indica is setting in on me so i'm going to have to stop now, but i'll probably wake up to this later and see how ridiculous I was in posting something like this, but I do believe that is a rather large, gaping problem right now with where StepMania is, and where it wants to be or may want to be in terms of overall presence to the world of gaming, and we're probably going to need to work on it if we ever wish to start seeing new people playing this game (I was thinking like Osu, but that might be a little too extreme) anytime soon.

TL;DR: There is no TLDR because there is, just read it because i'd like to see some of the people here's opinions since i'm sure there are other people who want to see other people play Stepmania then just us.