Audition Online is an online dance game that’s all about music, fashion and dance. Dancing is a social activity, and what better game to take online than a dance game? Transplanting the mechanics of Dance Dance Revolution to a keyboard and providing a social network to support the gameplay is what Audition Online is about, and the 300 million users worldwide that it boasts prove the success of the game.

I downloaded and installed the game, then ran into server maintenance, so I did not get a chance to play Audition Online before I jumped into the media tour with the community guy and a bunch of QA folks taking me on the rounds of the dance floor.

In its most basic, Audition Online is very easy to learn. Hit the arrow keys in the right sequence and hit the space bar on the correct beat. How easy is that right? Ha! As easy as playing DDR. It takes practice, but instead of fouling up in front of your BFF with half the crowd laughing at a gamer geek prancing around like a monkey while trying to keep up with the beat, you can do this in quiet anonymity behind your keyboard — with your fingers doing the beat instead of your feet.

There are two key control systems. The four-key using the arrow keys and the spacebar, and the eight-key (like DDR) using the keypad and the spacebar. Once I knew what I was supposed to be doing, I got much better. The main difference from DDR is that the spacebar is the real beat pacer.

And there are more than 25 game modes, with both key controls in practice, individual and team, either in a free-for-all to see who the best is or team against team. There’s also a couple mode in which male and female avatars “court” each other and, if both agree, will make a couple and dance together. In this mode, your scores affect each others, and you dance against other couples. If no one agrees to partner up, then the avatars will solo. There are also game modes in which players play against NPCs instead of other players, a “Simon Says” mode and a Story mode — which is akin to a quest. Players are set a series of challenges — various NPCs to outdo in dancing.

How any of the games work is the same (except for Freestyle — but more of that later): a sequence of arrows pop up on screen. You hit the arrow keys in the right sequence and the space bar at the right beat. A grade comes up: Perfect, Great, Cool, Bad and Miss. If you miss, your avatar stands there like a wallflower, doing nothing. Anything else, and your avatar dances. OK, great. You made the level 1, hit the level 2 sequence and so on and so forth until the dance ends. The better you do, the better your avatar dances, and the dance animation sequences are really great.

I heard a lot of that from my hosts in the second dance — once I figured out what I was doing. “Oh, look! Your avatar is dancing! Dancing good, too!” They had picked middling difficult dances with BPM (Beats per Minute) of the 150s. The easy dances are in the 110s; the more difficult ones push 190. Don’t play against the QA guys ... they had their avatars doing head spins while mine did some fancy footsteps.

The games can be repeated for practice, and some players, I am told, play so often that they have the arrow sequences memorized. Freestyle is an advanced mode in which the arrow sequences are random. In some game modes, they are presented by the game, in team versus team freestyle, teams have to match and counter each others moves.

We did a few of the more popular modes. Club Dance, Beat Up and I stood back and watched a Couple Dance, which had the female avatars dancing flirtatiously up to the males and the males whirling out to present virtual flowers on one knee. A very popular mode, I am told, this pseudo courtship.

The social networking aspects supported by Audition Online include guild tools for Fams, as the player associations are called here. Fams can see rosters, share a bank and update their Fam housing and decorations. Events are popular in Audition Online, and many are held by players for all comers, private parties for buddies and Fam dance parties. In-game mail, sending of gifts and IM are all available. There is also the ability to become a couple. That takes both dancing together as a pair through a series of game modes and finally passing the Wedding dance to get a couple of rings and become a couple. “De-coupling” is also available.

Leveling in game is achieved through experience gained in dances. When a player participates in a dance, they gain XP points, Beats (in-game cash) and ladder rank. Then at every fifth level, players have to pass a license test (usually a certain number of points in a specific game mode) to advance.

One thing that stood out in my eyes was that Audition Online was kinda ... “girly.” The avatars are cute but rather androgynous looking. The Fam housing and decorations are particularly “girly,” and I wasn’t surprised to find that that player demographics are about 3:2 female to male and range from teens to mid-20s. The game is free to play and monetizes by selling cosmetics, such as outfits, hairstyles, DJ rigs and other accessories — for showing off. Got to look good while strutting your stuff, right?

Audition Online has excellent dance animations, an extensive playlist and, with more than 25 game modes and constant updates of songs, ongoing events and game modes, it is attractive and compelling. Dang it ... I’m getting better at hitting those sequences. It’s something else to watch my avatar dance, the physical manifestation of my key-whacking success.