Audition, A Game About Dancing: A Nonviolent MMORPG

There are dozens, if not hundreds of massively multiplayer online RPGs, or MMORPGs, and it can be a challenge to find any that don't involve guns, swords and sex. Even Second Life is full of creeps.

Audition, on the other hand, is an MMORPG that focuses on dance. Sound lame? I thought so at first. I soon found out how wrong I was.

Comparisons to Dance Dance Revolution are obvious, but Audition actually plays more like an old Playstation title called Bust A Groove.

Audition uses the keyboard's direction keys and the spacebar: Before the end of the music measure, you must enter a sequence of directional keys and, on the first beat of the next measure, you hit the spacebar. Each measure is rated on how close the spacebar is hit compared to the first beat of the measure, from "Miss" to "Perfect." Perfects are quite difficult to obtain. Getting good ratings is easy at first, with only four or five direction keys, but the action gets frantic on the faster songs and higher challenge levels. Up to six people can play against each other.

So where does the roleplaying come in? Winning games gives you experience points, and after you've reached a certain amount you gain a level. After Level 5, players must complete "license" songs to advance a level. These license trials cost some of the game's currency, called Den.

Unlike many commercial MMORPGs, Audition is not pay-to-play; Den is also awarded when the player wins games, and this often covers license games and the obligatory character modifications like clothing and hairstyle. Players can still buy Den with actual money, to save time and effort, but it is never even close to necessary.

There are lots of game modes, including solo practices, Freestyle mode, which lets players use their own key combos, team battles, boys versus girls, and a couple's game that pits up to three male-female couples against each other. Each game mode also has an eight-key version that uses the diagonal keys on the number pad, adding a great deal of challenge to the game.

Audition was developed by Yedang Online and published by AsiaSoft, the company behind other popular MMORPGs including Maple Story. I think Audition has the potential to reach an even wider audience than Maple Story; its nonviolent nature makes it friendlier for younger players, but Audition has nothing in its content to cap the playing age. On the other hand, many older gamers may be put off by Maple Story's more cutesy graphics.

In terms of graphics, Audition is clean, functional, and quick on modestly powerful computers and cable Internet. Something about the 3D anime look disturbs me -- all the characters remind me of the kid in Toy Story -- but that's subjective.

The audio is solid, plays smoothly, and features a good selection of house, rave, remixes and rap. Parents needn't worry about the last one, as all songs are censored. Tempos are all over the place, from 70 to 188 BPM. There are even remixes of Pachelbel's Canon in D, which most players will either love or hate.

Popular in Singapore, most of the game's users are Asian but people from all over the world can be found. The game is quite social, with teams and couples that can play on servers dedicated to competitions.

Audition's biggest problem is a technical one; its players are often disconnected -- DC'ed -- in the middle of a game. It's particularly bad in team and couples games, where up to half the players who started a game vanish by the end of it. Disconnects dropped significantly in March.

With so much going for it, I don't see any reason for Audition not to gain a huge number of American players. It's exciting, nonviolent fun that anyone can enjoy.