Japanese STG maniacs are discussing the commercial struggles of STG once more this weekend, with much of the conversation centred on this one comment from Sawatari of Neotro Inc., makers of the Vritra series and the recently-released NeverAwake: they assert that people like to lament the lack of interest in STG from younger generations, but those same people, who developers might expect to be useful allies, don't really check for new STGs the way one might hope they would (or they way they often say or imply they would), and I've seen a few STG-dev veterans chiming in to the effect of, "yeah, don't take people at their word when they say they want [xyz]".
Anyone who's hung around in these communities has had all these discussions ad nauseum and I think most people understand the commercial realities of why the genre's shrunken to such a tiny niche and why it won't ever recover, but I will say that, unlike a lot of people, Sawatari has put their money where their mouth is when it comes to courting new audiences and attempting to clear the hurdles that keep new STG from finding wider success—NeverAwake is a graphically-competitive game with a structure that immediately promises a sustained play time, several mechanics and general design language from contemporary action games, a conscious minimisation of the commonly-cited frustration points of most STG, and interwoven narrative elements to further hook people, without falling into the euroshmuppy/number-loot-driven traps a lot of "modern shmups" fall into, and it sucks to think they might not have found the success they hoped they would because I think NeverAwake's the most credible of all the "gateway" games in a minute and if it can't do it, I don't know what will.
(NeverAwake's available on PC & all consoles; the Switch version's actually well-optimised, if that's your preference)
I've shared my thoughts on this a zillion times and don't really feel like doing it again atm but feel free to chime in with yours, especially if this topic isn't something you find yourself contemplating every other week: what is it that you want from these games that they stopped giving you, and what would it take for a new STG to really grab your attention?
