it's been a while I've seen some comments on Just Dance of people complaining that "the game was always the same each year", something that I don't agree, specially because it's hard to think about new ways to interact with a game when dancing is the main input, so I kinda challenge myself to think about ways people wouldn't feel like the Just Dance experience is always the same from the perspective of the game screen, and I thought about some ideas for creating interactive maps for the game (probably the programming and video composition sectors will hate me from now own, but it's just a suggestion that may improve the game experience for players).
Definition
By interactive maps, I mean creating ways for the map people watch on screen can actually change in some way depending on players actions, scoring or in any other way, making the playing experience feels unique for each time you try a song.
The idea isn't to make every Just Dance routine a interactive map, as it would take a lot more of work, but to make some options available to the game or the players change the experience in some way while the song is being played.
To achieve that, I suggest some ways to create that effect.
Idea #1: Layered maps
I had the opportunity to talk with Maxime Montcalm last Sunday and one of the thinks he said was that how JD works nowadays is like a video player and that the team wanted to change this in some way, to give players something more, for sample, depending on how well they're scoring. Even in currently the maps works as video files, I think a good way to change the experience (or at least give the impression) is if there were different video layers, like one for the coach, and at least one or two for the background. Then, if you wanted the player to see a change in the BG after he/she gets 5 stars, you could change only one of the layers.
Idea #2: "Showtime-like" elements
I remember talking about this in my JD2019 review. The idea would be to use a little bit of the idea from Showtime, the JD2016 mode where players could dance and sing freely like they were part of a scrapbook themed after a specific song, and apply this to a JD map. One example of what could be done is getting pictures (like the ones used for Autodance) and applying then to some part of the BG, like pictures in frames for the beta version of We Can't Stop (in which some pictures would appear during the chorus) or some shadows of people dancing could appear dancing with the coaches (in a map like Single Ladies), or, being even wilder, asking the players to do some poses before starting a song to display their images or their faces in the coaches (like in New Face).
Idea #3: Just Dance Bandersnatch
Imagine if the things a player did could affect the background or even the routine itself? The idea is to the map work with 2 different versions, each one with environment or coach changes. As there are gold moves, which player gets a certain amount of points if he/she made the move correctly, there would be "decision moves", that would change the map depending if the player did that movement of not, and the version of the map displayed would change respectively. It could serve to small changes (like colors or elements in the background) to bigger ones (like changing the choreography at that part of the routine, in some way what would happen in Battle Mode). To make this mode multiplayer-friendly, there could be 6 picking moments in the routine, one for each player (picked randomly each time), or the game could pick randomly which player would be responsible to do the picking or even letting the player with the higher scoring until that moment to do the picking.
Conclusion
Again, the idea isn't to apply interactive elements to all songs, not only because it is something new to the franchise but also due to the cost of this idea, but I really hope this idea can help in some way.
Those are some cool ideas. :-) I remember the community remix for Single Ladies in 2017. It was really amazing how they added the community videos, and they had obviously planned that map with that in mind from the beginning.
Reading your post, I could visualize how the background might look different depending on how well you hit a Gold Move. Imagine, if instead of receiving an X or a YEAH, that the background changed and that the effect gave you some information about how well you hit the Gold Move. Let's say that a GM is worth 500 points on a particular dance (I make that up with no idea what GM's are worth currently), and imagine that you would get partial credit of at least 50 points no matter what so players don't feel "embarrassed" or "frustrated," but that you would hit a variable score from 50 to 500 points. Currently, if you hit a GM you just see YEAH, but how well did you hit it? Maybe a background effect could help you tell how well you hit it (and then you would know if that's something you need to work on).
Your interactive map ideas have a lot of potential, and many other ideas could easily spin off them. I suppose they could make a few interactive maps for one game as a start, but they could also add a little interactivity to many maps (versus a lot of interactivity to a few maps). Anyway, I hope the Just Dance team loves your suggestion (and has time to pursue it). :-)