More thoughts on music games

I realized after a while that how good you are at a game really changes your perception of what is 'fun' regarding the game. While I can only speak in terms of music games, I'm pretty sure this is applicable to any genre (and in fact any discipline or hobby). At the risk of alienating every reader of this, I'll stick to the genre I know.

For one, you realize a lot more thought went into certain things you overlooked before and how other things actually have much less thought to them. It's the difference between why Lindwurm, Valanga and Vairocana are awesome charts in Reflec Beat and HAERETICUS is anything but - the difficulty is literally thrown in for difficulty's sake because you cannot figure out why this person out there decided that this should be a chain, that should be a hold and this should be a double. If the rationale fits, the notechart becomes an extension of the song very naturally; you can understand the notechart as quickly as you understand the song.

Another example I can think of is how all the relatively noob people at IIDX all go "wow Beastie Starter on IIDX is an 11 this is easy, this is boring stuff" and I see the KACA 2012 IIDX representative comment that it's a really good chart and I tend to agree. Another example is Just Awake on Jubeat and how I can remember Jovian immediately calling it out as a lazily done song and being shot down because it was apparently "fun" - in the sense that you had to press lots of buttons.

For most people in music games they look at one thing first - difficulty. Anything that doesn't fulfill this requirement is a terrible song. You can see the examples everywhere in music games - everyone rushing for Evans on jubeat just to score a C, some kid proudly declaring that he's 'youngest in SG to AAA deadlock' and every other person around looking forward to spam lvl 10+ songs, and people thinking of every song in IIDX as a 12 ("is it me or is this easy?" when you're barely passing 11s on Easy Clear? seriously?)

Once you start clearing all the actually hard songs, however, you start to understand the subtleties of the difficulty and the creativity behind it. All the hardest songs in IIDX are hard for very different reasons - Mei for the legendary slow-to-fast scratchspam, Plan 8 for that highly note-intensive scratch ending, Nageki for its doublescale near the ending, p†p for the hold notes and sudden trills at the ending, DIAVOLO for the ultra fast staircases, Himiko for the entire slow ending. All these have a lot of thought into them to make them difficulty but NOT insanely awkward, where the player can understand how s/he's being challenged by the chart creator in a manner that isn't "I want you to P1 scratch with your right hand" or something equivalently stupid.

Then there're somewhat iffy things like Timepiece Phase II CN Ver where there's a random measure with a hold note on 4 and a 3-5 jack if I remember correctly. It basically screams "I want you to random this because I know it's stupidly hard to hold the middle note and have jacks on the two notes just beside". If you can understand how a chart is supposed to work AND STILL disagree with the creator on why it's bad, the chart is irrevocably bad. Of course this understanding can't be superficial like "fast streams are bad" or other forms of arguments derived more from one's lack of skill than from one's capability. Once again, to rage at HAERETICUS again, it's the difference between the hold notes in Valanga and the hold notes in HAERETICUS - you cannot imagine Valanga without the hold notes because sufficient thought went into it that you imagine the holds as integral to the notechart. HAERETICUS not so.

Ultimately though being good at the game changes your perspective of difficulties and fun - you start to understand the motives and mindset behind certain charts. You can start to see how certain things fit in together naturally (this may be circular logic but nvm) and other things are sloppily thrown together. It may seem somewhat like a case snobby connoisseur-ism, but I do stand by the idea that you should be good at the game before you start criticizing whether something is good or bad, especially against someone else much better who expresses his/her opinion about it.

Thoughts on KAC and SG Arcade

It's a good year for SG music gamers on content and a terrible year on wallet and affordability. And an especially good year for me as far as being a music gamer is concerned, hahaha.

I must say that we have KACA and a very devoted fanbase in Taiwan/HK to thank for Sound Voltex, Pop'n Sunny Park, and presumably RB Colette coming into the Asia region so quickly (And even coming in at all in the case of Pop'n and Voltex).

My personal observation is that gamers there are really quite an amazing bunch of people. Queueing 2+ hours just to get "front row seats" on the floor, bringing the Tricoro poster, drawings of Pastel-kun, every album of Sota Fujimori's Synthesized Series (1-3; 4 only just got released) - no way in hell you'd ever see that in Singapore, seriously. Sure, it's survivor bias but I really doubt we even have enough of such people to make a crowd. The scene just can't compare. You just won't have people screaming "WE WANT SOUND VOLTEX AND POP'N IN TAIWAN" to Sota/Qrispy. In any case, Qrispy did say that they'll bring the issue up to management and see where that got us. It's great to witness it all in action rather than have one lame email saying "Colette will come in March 2013".

Even competition-end they are more passionate. Look at this, a player-organized tournament to commemorate the opening of Colette in Korea. It's been a grand total of two days and everything's done already. None of that bureaucracy crap or team spirit or community, these people are just passionate for playing the game. (I still stand by the opinion that if you really want a successful turnout at any event you organize then you should use any means necessary to achieve it. Trying to act aloof and pretending things are going well will do you no good when said event ends up a failure as far as turnout is concerned. Yes, I'm pretty explicit here if you're in the know.)

It's kind of tragic that all this comes at a time of a revenue-sharing model that makes games $2.50 each.

There's more I'd like to write but argh 3.20am in the morning. Urgh

And before I even knew it I'm already halfway into the "Got Money Got Energy No Time" phase of life.

Although technically "got money" is debatable, uni and all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nif01WZ9aI

If money weren't an issue maybe I wouldn't be in this city at all.

I honestly think that there's something innately tragic about this carpe diem mentality and how it garners support and faith amongst people, even serving somewhat as a panacea for the lost. Better to live a short and full life than a long and miserable one, they'll always say. Just do something that you're passionate in and don't care about the money.

Be my guest, but please don't ever think that this mentality will ever help the world at large. It's interesting because I see top comments on youtube that feel that "There will always be someone that will be interested in what you aren't interested in", extending it to even cleaning the sewers, ignoring the problems that education, proportions of people who want certain jobs, changing perceptions of what is socially acceptable, people to care after and other issues (I'm really tempted to put "economics" as an issue precisely because they say "ignore the money")

The number of people who will truly enjoy what they do for a living right now is without doubt a scarce minority, a drop in the red ocean. To say that this should be the case and that all is fine with the world is almost wronging humanity in itself. But to go about this with a 'everything will solve itself' mentality or even the 'live life fully and quickly' kind of mentality is just a tragic response to the issue - to not attempt to fight your way to a meaningful survival and live instead as the bright spark that shines ever so brightly yet dies ever so quickly.

The very worst would be when what you intend to do doesn't stop at burning you away in passion - it further burns those who believed and had faith in you.Your dreams will cost others dearly.

Of course, once you master whatever you loved, life would be different. But when will that happen? Will you ever make it there?

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Perhaps I am still bitter over it all.

KAC Flight Annoyances

Not being able to make a single arrangement even though I know everything right in front of me because people just aren't getting back to me is probably the most rage-inducing thing in the world.

The thing that kills dreams and hopes and attempts to make them into real life isn't naivete or fear of risk-taking - it's emails that take one week to get back to you and the tape and everything else that will never flow like clockwork that do.

Yes this perfectly fell within my expectations but I went ahead with it anyway fully aware of the insanity that this involves. I just wish that the insanity wasn't because I had only 5 days before the competition before I got a confirmed flight detail and because I was going to do what I was going to do.

Really, I know that real life is a bitch and things never turn out as easy as you'd wish they do but sometimes it gets more annoying than usual. Sigh