that peak in early-mid 2010s on maplestory youtube where there were a ton of music videos/mmv’s and maple series.
a lot of them had kpop songs because korean. and video game osts like from final fantasy. there were a bunch of digital drawing oc’s videos. some maple stories even had voice auditions. remember bannedstory...3, 4.
there’s that overlap with anime for a lot of games and/or their communities, and here you could tell a lot of maple series creators were inspired by anime, and some series were anime copies but with their own maple oc’s. basically, maple series were a way to make your own mini anime series. all the animations, osts, editing, outside programs like sony vegas, photoshop, even some voice acting...you had the game as a base and a lot of room to be creative with your projects.
there are games that serve as more...flexible is maybe the word for this...mediums for creativity outside the game, specifically when it comes to the potential to make mini series using assets from the game or directly in the game itself. maplestory is one example and another off the top of my head is fantage, though i think the latter and fantage series were comparatively less popular. in fact, what i wanted to point out was that maple series had relatively a lot of views for this...niche...and i definitely find this different use for the game and its popularity very interesting despite its eventual decline.
a lot of maple series were really great and uncompleted and have left me blue balled to this day. i see those little chibis and the nostalgia rush...i fall to my knees...
