Originally Posted by Xenomorph

There are a lot of kinds of people that play DDR. Cults of high school aged kids whose social power is quite largely determined by their current DDR ability relative to others in the group are not entirely uncommon. There are a lot of players that don't really belong to the 'community' though. I've done it for years and play on or near the most difficult songs in the game and my only regular companion has been my brother. Once you find an arcade machine in good working order, it's difficult to go back to a home pad. He and I went in on two of the very nice ones and in just a couple of months we had busted them from overuse.

And it's true that the one thing a DDR player hates more than anything else when he goes to the arcade is...another DDR player. They have a common interest and probably would hit it off at a party, but there's only one machine and there's two of them. Now each has to spend half their time waiting instead of playing. Bad. Still, it's no excuse not to be polite and players are most certainly obligated to alternate when new ones show up.

The early-teens types that gather around the machine aren't really that bad. They'll take their turn and then let you take your turn, even if some are quite visibly miffed that you've had the gall to come use the same public machine that they've been using. The worst are the extortionists. They're very uncommon but if you've played arcade DDR for 2+ years, you'll probably run into one or two. People who will claim that they've put a credit in earlier or something and demand to play on your dollar. The loss of 75 cents in any other context wouldn't bother me but I don't put up with crooks.