Children disrupting your play?

There are many scenarios with people (not just children) disrupting my play. If it's a kid, most likely they'll jump on out of just being a kid and not being aware. If it's a teenager or young adult who is jumping on the right pad while you're playing on the left, then you have a serious problem. They might try to block your view or try to mock your play style. They don't even have to think about doing this, it's a natural instinct for these people to do this... like it was written in stone. I have one word for these people: Jealousy!

Many people will get jealous if they see you playing a hard song and have a large crowd. They will probably want some attention from the crowd too (and their friends). If I'm playing Initial D, NO ONE will just on the other car controls and mock my driving. There is also this "mob mentality" for them where they will only do it with their friends around and wouldn't think about doing it alone.

One of my ITG friends said that this happened to his buddy and he just talked to him calmly and he stopped doing it before any fight would break out. If you're playing DDR alone, you don't have this luxury of a friend backing you up. Luckily I haven't run into anything too serious, but I'm sure I'll find a way to embarrass them if it ever happens to me. I guess I'm the type to not let people think they can get away with anything they won't without having an unpleasant reaction back at them.

Welcome to the site.

And I can definitely agree, I've never had any issues with older teens/young adults jumping next to me either "ghosting" or mimicking what to them, it looks like I'm doing either for kicks or for some other reason. I have had kids come up and try and be within the area, but I normally either stop playing or I keep playing but I keep my peripheral vision on check with where the kid is at to make sure if he/she suddenly does it again I can act accordingly.

As for older teens/young adults...not that many if I can recall, I mean it wasn't so bad that it got to the point of embarrassment or I just left/got mad at the person..

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It really depends on the situation; I mean I usually play within a Toys R Us where there's plenty of little kids running around and stomping on the first player side.
That's understandable.

The teens/young adults on the other hand...
I've been in many situations where they would criticize my play style (or in some cases say, "Why is this song slow? He sucks.") or make rude remarks.

I remember a teenager with a group of his friends walked up to me and said, "Yo 1v1 me on DDR bitch. You'll get raped." (Right off the bat I knew this teenager wasn't so.... "friendly".)
I looked at the kid and I said, "Uh... Alright..?"
I put the song on Max 300 and told him to play with the same mods I was using (Expert/3x/Dark/Reverse/Rainbow).

The ending result?

The teenager had quit in the first twenty~thirty seconds of the song, and left the Toys R Us with his friends after being embarrassed.

This is why I tend to go to arcades (when I have the chance) like 8otb or PPG where the environment is friendly and people respect each other.

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This, definitely this. I've had countless encounters with young adults/annoying teenagers either jumping onto the other pad (even during a doubles game!), putting their feet under the bar to block the down arrow, walking between the pad and screen etc.
Once they even went so far as to start nudging me to try put me off.
From my experience, the fact that the game is called 'Dance Dance Revolution' probably contributes quite a lot to why people annoy DDR players and not people who play the other games. I mean, I don't freestyle at all unless I get really bored on an easy chart and start messing around with spins and stuff, but otherwise I try to go for PA.
Even then, people see 'Dance' in the title -> see a guy on the machine -> call him 'gay' for playing a 'dancing game' -> no response from guy playing -> they get physically involved and start screwing up the game because they can.
I know that's not always why they mess with you, but 99% of the time for me it's because I'm a guy playing a game with 'dance' in the title.

The first or second time playing DDR in the arcade - on a MAX2 machine - this guy starts jumping around - dunno if it was my tone or not, but after I told him off I saw him - from the corner of my eyes - RUN.

A few years later: Was playing SuperNOVA at the same place. The shock absorber on the P1 pad was so bad that stepping on the front of that pad caused the other side of the P2 pad to LIFT up. Some assholes were jumping around on the pad next to me. I tell them to stop - and get increasingly firmer as the shaking gets worse. Yes, some argue I could have just jumped off, but not only was it song 1, but I was what you call hyperfocused. After a while it gets bad enough that I feel ready to fall off. on the ITG2 machine there I slipped and came within an inch of slamming my knee on the teel pad, so I didn't wat to have that happen again. Purely impulsively, I kick one in the ribs [taking up kickboxing at the same time, coincidentally]. Not hard at all, but enough to spook the sit out of them - and I played it off like a "oops, I slipped [thanks to you assholes]" accident. Then I proceeded to curse them off.

A few years after that I'm playing at the same place - ITG2 machine - some guy who looks like he walked off the set of the Jersey Shore [ugh... ~_~] gets on the pad next to me and starts jumping around like a moron. Impulsively, I say - straight face, monotone voice, "if you know what's good for you, get the fuck off that gamepad"]. He backs away slowly - I saw him walk past the machine once later that day, didn't make eye contact.

Same year, I was playing Summer ~Speedy Mix~ on the ITG2 machine. As I enter the 2nd stream a kid just FLIES across the gamepad, missing my legs completely, SOMEHOW not tripping. At that velocity, that kid would have been hrt badly had he tripped over my leg.



Yes, I've had my fair share of incidents and moments.