Complete Control

[pasithea]

Meh. I've already done a round of pissing people off this week. Why not go for broke and alienate all my friends.

elfs linked to this article, and honestly, it's one I couldn't agree with more. http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/01/complete_contro_1.php Guitar Hero is one of those things that really just totally baffles me. If I'm going to learn to 'play' music, I may as well grab a real guitar and learn to play that. (And in fact, I do practice guitar, flute, and keyboard) Sure, each of these are FAR more complex and difficult to learn than mashing keys in a video game, and certainly I can never look forward to being 'the absolute best' at any of them. In fact, I'm not even at a level where I'm keen to torture my friends with my playing. BUT learning stuff is fun and well... As the article said... For me, it's all about opening possibilities.


Sorry if I'm really down on this whole creator vs consumer thing lately. Perhaps I should spend less time blithering away on LJ and more time creating stuff myself.

Comments

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all those people playing Counterstrike should go pick up a gun and do it for real! I mean, seriously. And those people playing Burnout should go drive a race car for real.

Incidentally, playing the drums in Rockband is very much like playing the drums for real.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

So you're saying rock music is just like stealing cars and killing people? I have heard that viewpoint espoused before but not generally by people I respect.

This game is Klaxx without the randomization. Shut off the music and it's a freakin' boring game. Dance Dance Revolution is far more compelling in that at least it gets you some exercise. The gist of this article was that this game is taking songs about living outside the establishment and stripping them of their meaning.

The two times I've been convinced to play it, I've played the drums for that very reason.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

Okay, people playing Madden should go play football in the NFL?

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

No, idiot! They should become John Madden! BOOM!

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

I did take up golf in RL partly due to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09.

Lately I've been playing Animal Crossing....

[flaredragon.livejournal.com]

I'm still waiting them to release Keyboardmania stateside, and tell all the GH/RB flunkies to go try that. I'm not so sure some of these dudes would pass Beatmania, for that matter.

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

No, he's saying that the game of guitar hero is heavily abstracted, distilled, and watered down the same way that other games are heavily abstracted, distilled, and watered down versions of the things they represent. But that's the point of many games, as the watering down lowers risk, be it physical, monetary, or both.

You don't play Street Fighter to learn how to kick-box. You play it because it's fun, has low risk, and can be easily started or stopped. I only play rock band with the wife's family because it's a social thing that doesn't require years of training and hundreds of dollars.

Yeah, so it's not realistic and isn't like the real thing. That's why it's a game, not a simulator.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

+1 on the drums thing. I have a friend who enjoyed drums in Rock Band so much, and got so good at them, that he decided to buy a real drum set. Now he practices by playing real drums along with RB, as well as playing with other songs he likes.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Just so. Also, I like drumming more than I like strumming, specifically because I learned to play the bass viol, and I keep wanting sheet music instead of onrushing color blocks.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more.. GH is a game, and has little or nothing to do with music. It is proving to be a gateway drug as people are getting excited by the idea of playing music for real and going out and signing up for guitar lessons.

Most of the real musicians I know who have tried it suck at GH and Rock Band, cause again they have very little to do with music, though I expect the drum section of RB could amount to a certain amount of translatable practice.

[read-alicia.livejournal.com]

Guitar Hero is one of those things that really just totally baffles me.

Different strokes for different folks. Guitar Hero/Rock Band are about stripping out the technicalities and focusing on the sheer joy of performing music. If you read interviews with the Harmonix staff, the original chords and finger movements are all there, just in derivative form (i.e. like derivatives in calculus, "simpler" expressions of more complex patterns). You can't get a good percentage in a song by mashing.
It is air guitaring but it tricks you into feeling that you are participating in the music, and it does it so well for someone like me who is not musically inclined. Hell, it does it for lediva who is a semi-pro musician.
If it isn't your thing, that's cool but even circuit_four has had a good time with it, and rarely enjoys console games.

So don't harsh on my enjoyment ;) I quit playing music as soon as I could because I don't have it in me. But I do enjoy playing at lediva's.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

*shrug* People like doing what machines tell them to, especially if they get pretty pictures. Guitar Hero is selling the quick and easy fantasy of being a ROCK STAR, with a lot of happy colors and randomly-scheduled rewards to hook you into it. The reality of learning a guitar is weeks and weeks of making unpleasant noises, versus maybe a half-hour before you can win a song on easy.

I can't stand being in the same room as a game of Guitar Hero or Rock Band; I'm disinterested in learning the skill of playing the game and don't find it to be a compelling spectator sport the way I can watch shmups or fighters or whatnot. The fact that I vaguely dislike most of the music doesn't help either, nor does the fact that it seems to have that "can't stop looking" effect on me.

But I've decided it's not worth flaming anyone over. If someone wants to spend a while with the fantasy of being a rock star, that's no better or worse than me spending a while with the fantasies of the games I like to play. If someone wants to play it in the same room as me with nowhere for me to escape to, I've got to do some negotiating. Otherwise, fine, it's just a game, enjoy your fantasies of playing top-40 hits from the eighties and nineties but don't expect me to have anything to say about you getting perfect on the expert level of Metal Tune With A Really Long And Complicated Solo beyond 'um, congratulations I guess, is that hard?'

[read-alicia.livejournal.com]

Note that (from my experience) the people who own a copy usually have lots of friends over, like lediva and aprivatefox. Hermits like me do not own a copy, and are not interested in owning a copy. However, I am perfectly happy to play with other people.
Also note that I only play the game two or three times a year, so my judgment may be slightly varied.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not interested in Gaming As A Social Experience at all. If I ever own a console with a heavy net component, I will no doubt be set hidden 90% of the time - my only interaction will be showing up on the scoreboard of friends.

I also want more complicated systems to interact with when I'm playing a video game - I want to have more of an illusion to plot my own course than these music performance games give you. I am aware that most of that is just an illusion and that someone could point out that there's just as much memorization and pattern-playing in, say, R-Type or Ikaruga as there is in Guitar Hero or Rock Band - but it feels different to me as I get to engage a constant decision loop of 'which way do I go to dodge these bullets' along with the pattern-playback of 'okay, chain here, move over, chain here, now for that smart-bomb'. Paying high-speed Simon feels too much like the kind of work we should hand off to a robot.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but - at some level - I think playing the video game removes all the little subconscious barriers to actually doing stuff, perfectionism and social weirdness about having to say the other person is good and that stuff. I think phrasing it as a game makes it easier to want to do well at it.

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

I've always seen GH as short term grat and ego fluffing. *Insert ego fantasy into script here*

Rinse. Repeat. Yawn.

If your friends would be alienated by you expressing your opinion on your El J that doesn't fluff theirs.... They aren't friends.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

My favorite is still the video of Scott Ian playing Guitar Hero for the first time, talking about how it fucks up your hands for playing an actual guitar. :)