Article - Is It Too Late? Are We Currently in a Shmup Viewership Black Hole?

I   apologize if this blog post comes across as negative or as a downer,   but this topic is something that has been on my mind for a long time and   today I feel like writing about it. Maybe this is a good idea to get   the doubts off my chest, or maybe this will come across as me being   pessimistic, I guess that is for you all to decide. Anyway, the reason   why I am writing this article is that this is a topic that I’ve spent   the last year having a firsthand experience with and now feel like I   have some personal insight that might be interesting to hear. I might   also record a podcast episode about this topic, depending on if people   want to hear more about it or not.

So,  for the past few months, my motivation for creating the content  that I  do has started to shift. At this point, my change in motivation   will  probably continue to the degree where my original motivations are  no  longer having much of an influence on what I do with the podcast or   what topics I cover on the show. For the original listeners of the show,   or the people curious enough to go back and listen to my early   episodes, my mission statement for creating the podcast was to interact   with the community, have an outlet where I can geek out about shmups,   and do my best to promote the genre to a wider audience. Thirty or so   episodes into the podcast (at the time I write this post), and it’s   starting to feel like I’m reaching some sort of sense of completion. My   show isn’t a popular smashing success, or anything like that, but I  have  completed 2 of my 3 goals now. I have had a lot of interaction  with the  shmup community (much more than I ever expected – in an  awesome way)  and I have geeked out on the genre as much as I could have  ever wanted.  Something about myself that I don’t think is well known  (or maybe it is,  I have no idea) is that, before creating my podcast, I  had no online  presence at all. I did not participate in social media,  online gaming  communities, or anything like that. So this past year has  been a pretty  new and sometimes overwhelming experience for me in that  regard.

When I included that 3rd  goal of my podcast, helping promote the  genre to a wider audience, I  think it’s fair to say that I was naïve as  to how difficult that goal  would be. I’ve taken and explored this issue a  lot deeper than most  people would probably expect, and it’s hard to  communicate just how  many barriers the shmup community has in front of  it right now. Day by  day, episode by episode, project by project, wider  appeal is feeling  less and less achievable at this current time. Let me  stress the latter  portion of that sentence again: at this current time.   This is not something I say lightly, and I am not writing about this  to  feel sorry for myself or anything like that. I’m writing about this   because I feel like I’m finally creating a picture of what the wider   landscape of shmup content is right now, and I think it’s important to   pass this impression onto other people to think about and take into   consideration.

Looking at the  data, from YouTube views of the more popular Shmup  channels (STG  Weekly, Studio Mudprints, Jaimers, Iconoclast, Icarus, and  other super  players), to the general content and attention for the  genre, I  definitely feel like there was a boom of interest during the  Xbox 360  days and a little bit after. Roughly around 2011 – 2015, I  would say,  maybe up to 2016. This is when these channels pulled in the  highest  view counts and were getting a lot of general interest. Fast  forward to  2018 – 2019, the year I wondered out of the mountains and  onto the  System 11 forum and you’ll see that everyone’s numbers are  down. All  shmup content creators, at least that I know of, are  experiencing  drastically reduced view counts. Some are less reduced than  others, but  breaking 1k is not guaranteed and getting above 2k seems  like a  “successful” episode – and this is regarding the popular  established  YouTube channels. In regards to my own content, I’ve just  started  putting some effort into my YouTube channel, so we’ll see how  that  shakes out (probably around a 700 play cap, at the end of the day),  but  my podcast numbers are scarily easy to predict. An average podcast  ep  is around 350 plays. A bombed  crossover episode (all of which  have bombed, btw, for one reason or  another) is 250 plays, and a  successful episode is 400+. Finally, I  have my one relatively popular  (in shmup numbers) ZeroRanger episode  that finally broke the 1k barrier  not too long ago. I’m very proud of  that episode so I’m happy it has  stood out, it just bums me out that my  other content can’t have similar  numbers as well.

No  matter how you rotate the picture or squint your eyes, I think  it’s  pretty undeniable that we are in a shmup content black hole. Only a   tiny group of people are actively watching shmup content. You need   further convincing, you say? Just look at how My Life In Gaming’s   interview with the M2 ShotTriggers team stacks up compared to their   other content. The M2 documentary has 81k views. The ShotTriggers   interview has … 7.3k views, one of the lowest viewed videos on their   channel ever.

There are probably a  number of factors at play as to why I think this  is occurring, but in  the end I think the biggest problem is viewership  burn-out outweighing  viewership renewal. This is a concept I have  observed in my own  behavior, so maybe this extrapolation doesn’t apply  to other people,  but here’s what I think is going on. As a viewer, I  have noticed a  trend in myself where there are certain types of content  that I binge  through and never really return to (just did a ton of that  with Guilty  Gear stuff last year), and there is content that I consider  “staple”  content, where I watch it consistently over a long period of  time. A  notable example of this was, four years ago,  I was a loyal  listener of  the ATP fighting game podcast and pretty much followed every  episode  until it was discontinued.

Anyway,  I think that for most people, other than the hardcore  viewership we  have right now, shmup content is generally binge content  to most  gamers. They find it somehow, go crazy on it for a few weeks,  get their  fill, and move on. Shmups are a great one night stand. This  binging  isn’t necessarily a bad thing if we had a healthy cycle of  viewers  dropping in and out, because for each person leaving there would  be a  new one taking his place. Obviously, retaining viewers is the  goal, but  this cycle is just the nature of the beast and really there is  nothing  that can be done about it other than making really compelling  material  that hooks people into being staple viewers.

However,  what I think has happened is that, over the past years, the  wave of  people who could be interested in shmups have already gone  through and  binged on the genre in the 360 era. This is why the  viewership numbers  are so high during this era. The viewers from this  time know about  shmups, but the mystique is gone, they’ve moved onto  other trendy  things to binge on. Again, this happens all the time in  other scenes,  like the FGC. The big difference, however, is that the FGC  has a strong  power to resurrect these viewers back into their content  because of  all the hype that surrounds new FGC releases, tournaments,  player drama  and all that. The FGC scene also has players and content  creators  cycling in to replenish the old ones. Shmups have no such  power. The  cycle has collapsed in on us. We don’t have a wave of  excitement around  our content because our viewership is small and burned  out, and we  don’t have new viewers because they have nothing in which  to invest  themselves. This makes being a new person making shmup content   absolutely brutal, because you need to appeal to either the most   hardcore battle-tested audience of experts who know the genre very   deeply, or you need to appeal to the random bingers who appear and   disappear in matter of days. Both routes are really tough, and neither   will result in a large viewership.

So  where does this leave us and what can be done about this?  Obviously,  if I had the answer to this question I’d be writing this post  to a much  wider audience. I have no idea how we can grow the shmup  viewership in  the long term. My only strategy at this point is to just  continue  making content that I think could be engaging to a wider  audience and  cross my fingers at least one video or podcast of mine  manages to catch  a wave and put new eyes onto my channel and podcast. Of  course, this  is MUCH easier said than done and really I don’t think  people  understand how depressing it can be to put a ton of work into  something  and have it almost completely ignored. Again, do not just read  this as  me complaining, because this isn’t just about me. Relatively  speaking,  I am happy with the amount of viewership I have gotten, given  the  circumstances. I’m talking more about the people who make a video or   two, receive no feedback (or only negative feedback), get discouraged   and move on. Don’t take this the wrong way,  I am not blaming the  current shmup viewership for this problem. It’s  not like I’m going out  and viewing every single piece of shmup content  and leaving feedback  (though I do try to do more of that these days). A  small burned out  viewership can only do so much. Really I don’t think  there is very much  that can be done on a larger scale to combat this  issue. I sincerely  believe we are in a shmup viewership black hole  right now. All we can do  at this point is just try to survive until the  next wave comes along.

As for  myself and my content, this is all a new experience for me and  I have  no means of predicting my future behavior. I honestly have no  clue what  I will do. At the moment, I plan on continuing making content  because I  enjoy the process and like to view my own videos and podcasts –  as  self-absorbed as it sounds. Hopefully that source of motivation  doesn’t  wear off anytime soon.

In the  end, maybe the takeaway of this post could be that, by  recognizing we  are in a black hole, we can better prepare ourselves for  the challenges  ahead. Ironically, in a time where we have very little  audience and  viewership, this is the time where we need really high  quality engaging  content. Sadly, there is no way of knowing if that  content will ever  be appreciated or recognized on a wider level, but  here’s to hoping we  can inspire a new generation of fans in the future.  Maybe we’ll get  lucky and shmups will somehow randomly become trendy in a  few years,  but I wouldn’t count on it.

Again,  not trying to complain or be a pessimist (I’m not a  pessimistic-type),  but I also think it’s important to be honest and  realistic about the  current viewership landscape.

Cheers (I guess?)

–Mark MSX