Article - Why Shmup Viewer Count Matters (Though I Wish It Didn’t) A Follow Up to Shmup Viewership Black Hole Article

I’ve  decided to write this follow up to provide some clarification  and  background information to my previous article “Is It Too Late? Are  We  In a Shmup Viewership Black Hole?” When I wrote that article  yesterday,  I figured it wouldn’t be very popular or something people  would want  to read about. It’s a downer, I understand that, and I  personally don’t  come to the shmup community to deal with problems and  that sort of  thing. However, I do stand by my choice to write the  article because it  is a problem beyond my goals and interests and I  think it’s better to  recognize a problem and try to adjust and plan  accordingly, rather than  just leave it as a creeping feeling at the back  of people’s minds who  are considering making shmup content in one form  or another.

The  biggest piece of feedback which people have talked about,   understandably, is the question of why having views on shmup content   matters in the first place? A very fair question, and perhaps to most   people out there this sort of thing is completely irrelevant. However,   for me personally, and based on my general interaction I’ve had with   other members of the community, I do think, on some level, getting some   sort of viewership is important.

To  get the obvious stuff out of the way, I don’t think it’s really   possible to leverage shmup content into some sort of monetary endeavor   or anything like that. I’m not opposed to that sort of thing if it were a   reality, but it’s certainly not a factor in what I am talking about   today. The three factors I want to address are clout, motivation, and   engagement. For me personally, these are what I think about when I think   about shmup viewership and why it does make a difference.

I’ll  start off with probably the least relatable issue, which is  clout.  This is something that is not an apparent issue unless you are  actively  trying to interact outside the community with other content  creators  and such. I’ve actually written an entire article about this  issue that  I think does a great job highlighting the problem, but I’ll  reframe  the idea here to connect the concept  (I’ll also link the  article at  the bottom, it’s called “The Prison of Unpopularity”).

To  give some context to the problem, I’ll go ahead and pull back the   curtain a little bit on what I’ve been up to lately. There may be some   disconnect between my desires for the shmup scene, compared to other   people’s, so if you don’t relate to my goals and such I understand, and   maybe this isn’t an issue for you … but it still does affect shmup   development and sales. What my goal has been, especially in the past few   months, is trying to improve how shmups are presented (or mostly   ignored) by the general gaming media. I feel like this is a relevant   issue for everyone because it ties directly into marketing and exposure   for shmup releases. Essentially, the more coverage of these games   receive and the more exposure they have, the higher the sales and   sustainability of the genre.  The M2 ports are obviously a work of   passion, for example, but there is still a bottom line and dev costs and   that sort of thing. Why does CAVE now only make crappy mobile games,   why is AKA to Blue mobile only? Because the market is brutal and no one   in the gaming media cares what happens to this genre. They just check  in  from time to time when it’s convenient.

So  when it comes to shmup representation and exposure in the gaming   media, I think it’s very poor. I think it’s bad, maybe that makes me an   elitist jerk, but so be it. Overall, I think shmups are still treated   like a novelty genre, a “simple” genre that harkens back to gaming’s   “primitive past,” and that sort of thing. Personally, I don’t feel that   way at all and I do think it does the genre a disservice. I don’t think   shmups are any less deep or engaging than other 2d genres and I think   this constant way of describing the genre makes it seem like a gimmick   or just a talking point, rather than legitimate and something everyone   can enjoy. Imagine if Celeste came out and all the articles and reviews   about the game just talked about how “primitive” the 2d platform genre   is on the whole and never really explained what makes Celeste unique  or  interesting. This is exactly what tends to happen with shmup  releases.  There is almost never any involvement from the shmup  community either;  we’re kept completely at a distance. No one in the  gaming press reaches  out to the players or anything like that.  Personally, I’m tired of being  kept in the corner, just waiting for  other people to hopefully promote  the genre and help out releases I  think are important.

So what I’ve  been up to is venturing outside the shmup community to  try and bring  shmups to a wider audience, as I mentioned in my previous  article.  However, outside the shmup community, you’re pushed into an  entirely  new set of rules. In a perfect world, in a beautiful world,  when I  approach certain gaming publications or certain individuals who  are  working on stuff related to the shmup community, but are not  directly a  part of the community, they would take a look at my body of  work so  far, and judge whether to work with me based on that. “Shmup  cred,” I’m  sad to say, is non-transferable. People in the general gaming  sphere  care about one thing and one thing only … and I’m sure you all  can  guess what that is. Whether or not people will respond to you,  whether  or not people will work with you, whether or not people will see  your  content as valuable, collaborate with you, follow through on an   interview, or even consider your opinion at all, comes down to one thing   and one thing only, your plays. That’s it, plain and simple. And so,  as  a result, I’ve been having a bitch of a time with podcast interviews   falling through, walls of silence, or just being flat out ignored.  There  is a ton of content I’ve planned and wanted to produce, but have  not  been able to complete because of this problem. I had an episode  that I  was passionate about that had to do with an inside look at the  general  gaming press’s attitude toward shmups, but guess why I couldn’t  make  that happen? It’s stupid, I hate it, but that’s the beast at hand  and if  you don’t think popularity has anything to do with it, I’ll  just say  that I wish that was the case, but it is not.

So  if you’re wondering why I’m particularly concerned about the   viewership problem right now, part of it might be my own vanity and all   that, but there is also a tangible element of where I want to jump in  on  the conversation about the genre on a wider scale, but I can’t.  Views,  subs, followers, all that BS is the currency that makes or  breaks  certain projects that I want to make happen. Maybe I’m being  overly  ambitious, but there is a ton more I want to do with my podcast  and  content, but I feel completely trapped because of this problem.  It’s  like Scarface: “First you get the views, then you get the   interviews/attention, then maybe you can make some sort of change.”

Ok,  so I’ve ranted on about the whole clout thing long enough, I’ll  move  onto the other two reasons why viewership is important. Motivation,  as I  mentioned earlier, is a big one. This is a trend that I’ve seen  over  and over, so even though it would be great if everyone created  content  completely in a vacuum, this rarely happens. Don’t get me wrong,  there  are people who do this, I’ve seen it happen where a dude is super   motivated and creates something awesome for no other reason than   passion. However, content like this is infrequent and less sustained   than content that has an audience. Again, I can use myself as an   example. Before EUP, I had actually recorded a good number of video-game   related podcasts, none of which I published. I would be hit by   inspiration, record the podcast, plan out additional episodes, but then   never release them. I never had a real tangible reason to continue. I   did this for years. Then I release the 1st ep of EUP and the forum gave   me a ton of support and feedback. I came away from the episode  thinking,  “Wow, people want to hear more, I guess I’ll continue making  more.”

In a way, I’m really glad I  started out my podcast on the forum,  rather than on a large platform  like YouTube, because the interaction I  gained from the community was a  strong source of motivation to continue.  It’s not like this emo thing  where you release and episode, get low  plays, and feel sorry for  yourself. It’s more of an issue of why   would I take time out of my day to work on something that no one will   see or enjoy? Why not just leave it in my head at that point? This   is the exact sentiment I’ve seen from people when I’ve talked to them   about creating content. It’s a legitimate question too. The creative   process itself is not something that everyone enjoys and even if you do   enjoy it, it eats up a metric shit-ton (using the scientific term here)   of time. Hell, even for someone like myself, who does enjoy the  process,  I definitely have had moments of grinding out editing simply  because I  knew there were people looking forward to hearing the new  episode and I  enjoyed providing that content for them. If I didn’t have  an audience, I  have no idea what state my podcast would be in right  now, but I know  for sure there would be fewer episodes and probably  less passion and  enthusiasm on my part. I’m the type of creative person  that feeds on an  audience; it’s my source of energy and motivation. I  can’t speak for  other people, but I’d be surprised if this didn’t play  some sort of roll  for them either. Why I’m like this I guess could be  examined while I  recline on a couch, but I honestly think it’s just my  nature. Humans are  social creatures, for the most part.

So  yeah, plays are a source of motivation. Plays are not as strong as   community interaction, I can say that much, but when you start to get a   combination of increasing plays and increasing community interaction,   it does make you look at your own content as something valid and   something worth your time and energy.

Finally,  I will end this follow-up on the issue of engagement,  specifically  audience interaction. Above, I’ve described the benefits of  plays from  the perspective of the person creating the content, but  plays also  improve the experience of the audience itself. Certain  content appeals  to certain people, and usually, but not always, content  has a tendency  to bring people interested in the same stuff together.  For example,  with shmup content, I’ve always enjoyed going through and  reading the  comments people make on STG weekly episodes. The audience a  piece of  content pulls in can create interaction and excitement beyond  the  content itself, my dead discord was a great example of this. When my   podcast had low plays and low engagement, the discord consisted of   mostly me just posting random thoughts to myself. As the show grew in   popularity, and as more people discovered my show, the interaction that   took place in that discord really took on a life of its own. It was   pretty awesome actually, and it was typically connected back to the   content and feedback of the podcast. It created a strong cycle of   increased viewership, which led to increased interaction and   inspiration, which led to increased content, and so the cycle repeated   and built upon itself. This cycle is what the shmup genre needs, but   right now we can’t get the wheels spinning because we’re caught in the   reverse cycle I talked about in the previous article.

So  in the end, when I talk about the problem of shmup viewership and  why  it’s important to increase it, it all comes back to getting out of  the  negative cycle of the previous article and pushing forward into the   positive feedback cycle I explained above. Plus, in the age we live in,   plays are the currency in which you are judged by other people making   content (yeah, it’s super whack and not something that I do, but that’s   what I’ve run into). Yes, I recognize that there does start to be a   breaking point when it comes to increased popularity and all of that,   but right now we’re so far from that issue it’d be like the people in   Donner’s Pass worrying about obesity.

Hopefully this helps clarify my point of view.

Cheers!

–Mark MSX

Related Article: “The Prison of Unpopularity”