Virtual dance-game craze ignites devoted cult following, burns calories (10/03)

By Administrator

Oct. 27, 2003

SENIOR JONATHAN PENG sits at home every evening, mulling over math problems with a blunt pencil and an outdated calculator. He needs to focus. Focus is the key to success. It is the bus that will take him down the road of life, from Lowell to Berkeley into happiness and fulfillment. He brings his pencil to the paper and puts down a problem, his mind in focus, when a voice and sounds seep through the crack of his door.

The voice: You are one exceptional guy!

The sounds, synthesizers and dance beats:Do-do-da-do-da-do! Boom-boo! Woooo-oooh! Peng opens the door and sees a room that resembles a low-caliber strip club. Neon! Music! Pounding, rapid, pseudo-sexy dance beats! At the source of it all, his brother is in front of the television, his body swaying to music, his eyes fixed on a screen filled with arrows and flashing color. His brothers feet stamp and pound on a Britney Spears plastic pad connected to a Playstation 2. A wave of anger sweeps Peng as he realizes his brother, again, is partaking in that strange and addictive worldwide phenomenon that has youth culture in its sinister grasp: DanceDance Revolution, or DDR.

DanceDance Revolution is a video game that has grown into something much larger than its virtual brothers since its 1998 inception in Japan. Basically, it is a hyperactive, musical version of that old grade-school standard, Simon Says. The concept is simple: The player must synchronize his foot movements on a floor pad to directions on the screen. Today, the game has become immensely popular worldwide (especially in the Bay Area), spawning a tremendous franchise, numerous websites and, most notably, a strange subculture of fans (DDR-ers, DDRFreaks or simply DDR players) who spend hundreds of dollars on the game, gather to cheer at arcades on Saturday nights and even travel the world to enter tournaments.

Not everybody enjoys DDR, however. Especially not Peng.

Cease fire! The game suXX012zz my b0XX012zz! (translation: sucks my boxers), Peng said. The music is bad and the game is repetitive!

Balboa High School senior Tramaine Carter agreed. DDR? That game is terrible, he said. Why do people play that game?

Senior Stas Goldobin decried DDRers as, among other explicit phrases, mindless scumbags.

These fellows may be missing a piece of the proverbial DDR pie. For all the verbal damnation it has suffered at the hands of nay-sayers, DDR has only gained in popularity. Since 1998, 1,752 registered DDR machines have popped up in America, according to DDRFreak (www.ddrfreak.com). The game holds a special, elusive and addictive kind of appeal that continues to lure new fans.

Its different from most video games, junior Cara Breslin said. With most games, you use buttons and controllers in your hands, but with DDR you move your feet.

Breslin and her fellow DDR-ers also praise the exercise that DDR provides. Though they may not become Atlas men or women, many players find themselves getting into tip-top aerobic shape from playing the game, which features a Calorie Mode in which a meter tracks the number of calories burned in play. According to a July 2003 article in the Anchorage Daily News, some school districts in Alaska actually use the game in their physical education programs.

Its a fun way to get into shape, Breslin said, adding that she can now run to the bus faster than before. DDRing, and doing it exceptionally, can also supply a valuable ego boost.

I like to show off moves and perform, said senior Huy Ma, president of Lowells Game & Entertainment Club, which regularly hosts DDR sessions.

Although Ma mainly performs in front of his friends at his club, a more extravagant kind of exhibitionism is the forte of hardcore DDRers like Paolo Sambrano, a student at Diablo Valley College who frequents DDR hives in San Francisco like the Metreon and Pier 39. I like impressing stupid tourists at Pier 39 (into) thinking I completely fg rock because I can hit a bunch of arrows on a screen, and they stare at me in disbelief, thinking I have transcended the bounds of human existence, Sambrano said.

Despite Sambranos underwhelming description of the game as a bunch of arrows on a screen, he and many DDR-ers believe that the game, with its creative possibilities, qualifies as art.

Using the loose definition of art as a form of expression, Id say it is an art form, senior Garnet Meneses-Red said. People can really go crazy and lose their inhibitions.

Moving beyond the realm of simplistic step-step-step routines, advanced DDR players have invented new playing techniques. The most common method is freestyling, in which the player tries to actually dance/perform while playing by inserting arm wiggles, moonwalks, jumps and various moves into his routine.

"I like impressing stupid tourists at Pier 39 (into) thinking I completely f--g rock because I can hit a bunch of arrows on a screen."

-Paolo Sambrano, DDR-er

Like real dancers, DDR players sometimes choreograph sequences, name them and share them with their fellow players via the Internet. The common Matrix Walk, for example, involves the player vaulting himself on the machine and putting his foot on the screen, holding it there to create a frozen-in-mid-air, Matrix-esque moment.

As in any artistic community, the DDR community also includes more adventurous, avant-garde risk-takers. Sambrano, one of the most colorful DDR players one is likely to ever find, proudly lives on the DDR edge.

I want to push DDR freestyle into evolution, or destroy it in the process, Sambrano said, describing his ideal as a kind of performance art or, in his words, Freestyle Terrorism.

Sambrano said his exploits include repeated humpings of the DDR machine in a public area, lewd exposure of man-titties while screaming about sex with multiple partners and horses emulating the Lord of the Dance, Michael Flatley himself, in the Metreon, Riverdancing and nearly taking off my pants in the process.

Strangely, the exaggerated showboating of advanced DDR does not always translate to actual dance. According to DDRFreak, 59.5 percent of DDR players do not dance on a regular basis. Might this discrepancy illustrate that DDR is only a stage for losers to make themselves look good?

DDR does make me feel good, a defensive Meneses-Red said. But I have a natural sense of rhythm, so I cant really speak for the other losers.

These other losers, though, do not share Menesas-Reds disdain of his peers. In the DDR society, he stands out as a kind of hermit. The DDR world is a tightly-knit and continually growing community. Online, DDR-ers post videos and offer tips to each other. The nationally known and worshipped DDR celebrities, like DJ 8-Ball, famous for his freestyling innovations, demonstrate the strength of the communal culture.

Its a great conversational piece to meet people, Sambano said. Ive met my current group of friends because of DDR and have engaged in conversations with people about it, introducing them to the arrow-smashing game, thus making me look hella cool.

Yet despite all these reasons to admire or at least grudgingly respect DDR, its enemies remain zealous in their disapproval.

I dont have any opinion on DDR because it sucks horribly! junior Devin McLaughlin said.

In response to such harsh antagonism, some DDR players remain diplomatic.

Well, its their opinion, but they should try it out they might like it, Breslin said.

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