The State of ScoreHero

**zsjostrom35** · Joined: 17 Feb 2008 Posts: 2130 Location: Columbus, Ohio

You know, I'm seeing some pretty strong parallels between these types of threads and the community perception of the Guitar Hero series as a whole. In my (admittedly limited) experience talking to people and reading threads in the Miscellaneous GH forum, I've noticed that people tend to like best the game that they were playing when they fell in love with the Guitar Hero series. There's no replacing that feeling you get from finally putting in the time and energy to work your way up from Easy to Medium to Hard to Expert, and when you finally beat Expert you feel like you've conquered the world. You spend the rest of your time playing that game attempting to recreate the feeling; whether by five-starring everything, piling up FCs, or getting really high scores on tough songs, but (for me, anyway, I might not be speaking for most people) nothing ever quite measures up. Still though, you're immensely enjoying yourself because the memories are still there and the new achievements do mean something.

Then another game comes out. You're really excited to buy it because you think it will bring you the same feelings the old one did. But it doesn't; you realize you're just doing the same stuff you did on the old one except it's easy now and tedious. Plus, it's just...different. Things just don't seem quite right. You may still try to go for achievements on the game anyway, and you may even enjoy it quite a bit, but it never makes you feel the same way the old game did. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

I think ScoreHero is much the same way. Although you can't define its eras as clearly as you can those of Guitar Hero (each new non-expansion game obviously brings a new era), these types of threads are a testament to the fact that it's not the same as it was months or years ago. And that is exactly what I think bothers some people; I think almost every veteran poster on here can point to a time that they would view as their personal "Golden Age of ScoreHero," which is when they got serious about being a member here and fell in love with the community. When it changes, they might not even be able to pinpoint exactly what changed (although these threads attempt to), but they know that it's not the same ScoreHero anymore. It's just...different.

I'm no exception. My personal "Golden Age" was last summer, a period I tend to think of as the Guide-Writing Era. The proliferation of (mainly GH3) guides during that time in the Technique, Style, and Gameplay forum during that time was one of the honorable mentions in bjwdestroyer's Top Ten Rant thread, but I loved the fact that it was so popular to take the time to write massive posts in the hope of helping people. Of course, I'm not unbiased in that area; part of the reason I liked it was because I was good at it (or at least I wrote more words than anybody else

). For a few months, I was something of a ScoreHero celebrity, and as selfish as it may sound, I was proud of that. When the era ended around the end of the summer or so (causes are debatable, but I think the main one is that we just ran out of stuff that needed guides), it was very similar to the feeling I got when I first played World Tour: things weren't necessarily better or worse than they were in GHIII; they were just...different. And it wasn't a difference that I liked.

The thing is, T, S, and G used to feel like home for me on ScoreHero, but it doesn't anymore. There are still plenty of threads active there and I post when I feel I have something to contribute, but I don't feel nearly as familiar as I used to with everything going on there. The release of World Tour had a lot to do with that (I don't play it nearly enough to post advice on most songs), but I think the feeling started before then. Again, I don't know if the difference was inherently bad or good, but I didn't like it.

Most of my posts nowadays are in the Accomplishments forum. I definitely agree with the OP (and Graf, for that matter) in his assessment that a lot of posts in that forum are worthless +1 posts, there are also plenty of very well thought-out posts there that deserve to count toward a user's total. I don't really see a way around this unless you're going to impose some artificial requirement on how many characters your post has to contain before it counts (and even that would probably just increase the quantity of spam per post rather than decrease the number of spam posts). Again, though, I am probably biased in this matter. I have a very healthy accomplishments thread with almost no +1 posts in it by me or anyone else. Even that, though, ties into the nostalgia I feel for my "Golden Age." I started that thread near the "height of my fame" (so to speak) as a guide-writer, and I quickly got quite a few responses by people I knew from around the T, S, and G forum. While I'd like to believe that anybody willing to put effort into making a thread look nice and willing to type out their thoughts in complete sentences would get a similar response, I'm pretty sure that's not true. Goodness knows the accomplishments themselves didn't warrant that many replies. I've made some great friends in that thread and had some great conversations, but I have to wonder whether those things would have happened had my particular set of talents not coincided so well with one of ScoreHero's popularity phases.

I don't really know what my point is as far as action is concerned; we can't make ScoreHero the way it was months ago any more than we can make Guitar Hero II the most recent and popular game again. Fads come and go on the Internet just as they do in real life. But just as we can still play Guitar Hero II, I think we can still spot flashes of what we used to love about ScoreHero. I know I still reread my guides from time to time; often fixing typos that no one may ever see. I can still remember what it was like to write them and be appreciated for the time I spent, and on the rare occasion when somebody posts a thread asking for help on the Nothing for Me Here chorus, I can point them to my sig and smile. Enjoy your moments; you're certainly not going to get them on any other site. This is the community you fell in love with, remember?

Man, I sound like such a sap.

I guess the real test of all this stuff I'm throwing out there is when the new influx of members from World Tour have had a chance to experience ScoreHero to the extent that we did during our "Golden Ages" following whatever game prompted us to join. If, about a year from now, they start whining about how ScoreHero isn't what it used to be, then we can point them to this thread and tell them we know exactly how they feel.

If not, then I guess this whole post was just the biggest +1 in the history of ScoreHero

_________________

Accomplishments Thread--GH80sX: Fifteen new FCs; OP updated with new 80s section and Best Of lists!
Ustream: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/zsjostrom35-s-GH-Show (will appear in green when online; red when offline)

Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series Quote of the Week wrote:

Téa: (Thinking) Look at him undressing me with his eyes! I wonder what he's thinking...
Yami: (Thinking) MAN, I hate milkshakes! (Squeezes milkshake cup) Die, milkshake, die! That's right, milkshake: you have been defeated! Now you go to milkshake prison!

**brad16752** · Joined: 14 Oct 2007 Posts: 770

(long generic post stating my passionate opinions on the situation, with some suggestions that would take a while to write and proofread)

But seriously.......

This has probably been said over 100 times (would rather not read the new novel "Trouble in Paradise" by: Passionate Scorehero members) but there is really no way to resurrect the site to the good ol' days where idiots didn't exist and the the grass was green and the girls were pretty. This argument goes far beyond Scorehero and I'd say the odds of "saving the internet" are low.

"fastens seat belt"

But hey, at least this thread promoted intelligent discussion and well thought out posts, excluding this one.

That's right, I'm a perfect example. Feel free to use me to prove your points.

**Rawrspoon** · Joined: 04 Sep 2008 Posts: 1597

All of you who say that the "internet drove people to do it" are making the same assumption as Jack Thompson. "Video games drive people to do stuff". Makes perfect sense.

Getting threats from the internet? There's still the same chance that it'll happen in real life, just that the HUGE numbers make it more obvious. There's 300k people on Scorehero, that in itself is already a huge number, the size of a smallish city. Now on other sites like Youtube, there are millions of users. Millions as in the size of a large metropolis. Are you telling me that in a city like, say, Houston, there aren't psychotic people? Honestly, you guys talk about sheer numbers making things obvious in Scorehero and can't apply it to the internet as a whole.

Now please, let's have a conversation that's on-topic, lest this be locked.

**PiemanLK** · Joined: 03 Dec 2007 Posts: 4711 Location: /export/home

**Smeddy24** · Joined: 31 Dec 2007 Posts: 1778

This is my second attempt to write something here, we'll see how it goes...

I wasn't here for the glory days, my join date will show you, and it took me a little while to realize how much better SH is than other forums I've been a part of (anyone else from fretsonfire.net will attest to that), but I eventually realized that I wasn't giving this place the respect it deserves. Not sure when/why that changed, maybe when I ventured out of Misc. GH Disc., who knows. Anyway, I still love SH, though I post alot less. I'm alot less interested, or feel like my input will be ignored, I guess.

One thing I think could be done is to restrict posting or new account creations whenever a new game is released. I'm sure we'll see a lot of new members when GH:M comes out, because it's going to be brutally hard and quite popular. If we enforce lurking for say, the first two weeks of the game, maybe new members will understand the code of conduct by the time they can start posting in the forum?
_________________

My YouTube show. Try it. You might like it.