Thank you for taking the time to read through this post. It is going to change frequently with new ideas and expansions, so reading it again once in a while might be beneficial. I have a request to any and all that read this:
Please dissect this idea. Pull it a part, rip out the areas you dislike, and fill it in with the things that you believe would make it better. Make this idea your own! I will then take your idea into consideration and adjust mine with any strong traits that you're contribution may have.
Introduction
Summary
Music Distribution
Community Link
The Mobile World
Conclusion
Thank you,
Zageron
Note: Constructive replies are required.
Please dissect this idea. Pull it a part, rip out the areas you dislike, and fill it in with the things that you believe would make it better. Make this idea your own! I will then take your idea into consideration and adjust mine with any strong traits that you're contribution may have.
Introduction
Flash Flash revolution has been a powerful player in the rhythm gaming world, especially in the past, and is slowly making its recovery back in to the dying scene. A brand new staffing team, unpaid but very dedicated, has slowly brought FFR into a new standard. Far surpassing that of it's old self, and belittling the achievements of it's previous staff, most of who have moved off on to other projects. This new staff has rewritten countless lines of old code, created a new game engine, and improved the layout over the old profile code. With plans for new games, profile chat upgrades, profile rewrite, upgraded systems on the blog stream, and many other interesting features; though the drive is there the resounding truth sounds that FFR is much less popular than it was before and there isn't much that 'upgrading' and 'enhancing' can do about it.
Summary
FFR can not hold the interest of new players very easily, especially people who are just coming in to the rhythm scene. This is a serious problem that needs to be approached carefully, from a few different angles, in order to tackle correctly. What this community site needs in order to obtain a new height in popularity is a near profitless record label, a community link, and high compatibility with the ever expanding mobile world. This means a complete structural rewrite, which was previous planned, and a solid business plan.
Music Distribution
Another interesting idea to cross the development board is that of a music distribution system. The amount of independent musicians that live at, or come through, Flash Flash Revolution is astounding and the music they produce is very good. FFR has long shared this great music with the community through their games, so why not offer the musicians a chance at some cash for their accomplishments. Having an “Online Store” for musicians to host their music for people to buy, download for free, would be a very powerful way to spread word of FFR. A rhythm game in which to sample the musicians music, a place to buy it, and a community to discuss the music. Musicians would get feedback on their works, publicity, and money! White FFR would gain a possibly heavy following of people awaiting the newest music from their favourite artists! (What else is new?)
Clarification: This is not at all similar to what was done before. The widgets that FFR developed before were a stunt to gain money and support from popular musicians. This would be either an extremely low profit, or a non-profit, way of distributing the music of FFR's users! Many people come to FFR and leave it producing music as the community here gives them the support and guidance they might need, FFR could help make them a small amount of cash and perhaps the publicity they need to take off as a music producer.
Community Link
There have been many discussions about creating new communities within the rhythm scene, and already new communities have branched off such as KBO, SMO, and TS. New ideas pop up every once in a while, and grow rapidly with the support of a small number of dedicated SM/FFR members. FFR has been a long standing hub for SM players to share their scores or discuss their play styles, and seeing people branching off to create their own forums and websites is nice. However, why should they leave? Shouldn't FFR be more dynamic and help support these communities and their needs? Why not host scoreboards for these games? Yes, hosting massive databases is a heavy server load, but out-hosting them on separate servers, while simply displaying them on pages here would work just as well. Other people would most definitely be willing to outsource databases and file hosts.
FFR [dot] com would be a rhythm gaming central station. Where any and all people interested in rhythm gaming would congregate to, to gain access to any and all affiliated rhythm games. These other rhythm games would absolutely in no way be managed or owned by FFR, and be run by their respective creators and staff. For example if KBO was to affiliate there would be a page ffr.com/kbo where all community and gaming aspects of KBO would take place. While on ffr.com/profile the user would be able to select which stats they would like to view, such as FFR stats, KBO stats, or SM stats. All stored on respective databases, and run by respective administrators. This would be, in short, all to consolidate the rhythm scene into a single place. See qqwref's post for another viewpoint.
The Mobile World
This is a tough one, as it would require a lot of very specific programming. One thing FFR lacks is the mobile support. You can't play this game very well on a mobile device. This should be tackled, as more and more people are moving into the mobile world. Building FFR, and its supported games, to work on touch screen or button basis should be a high priority! Imagine the thousands of people currently playing Tap Tap Revenge who could be playing FFR instead? (A much better game, with much better song selection!) As well with tablets becoming more and more popular building these games may be easier as the screen space is larger.
Conclusion
This only scrapes the surface of what FFR needs in order to survive and regain its strong hold on the rhythm scene. Please review the proposal laid out in this short write-up, and make suggestions and critiques. This cannot take flight without large support from the surrounding communities, as well as our own.
Thank you,
Zageron
Note: Constructive replies are required.
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