Can anyone explain the appeal of this "be a musician" video game? (Rock Star?)

[Acsenray]

@Hentor the Barbarian

Grumpy Old Person card at the nearest location.

I think there’s some unnecessary hostility building in this thread. My OP question is meant to be a sincere question, not curmudgeonly snark.

[Eureka]

@jacquilynne

And for those of you who have more seasonal musical aspirations: http://www.vml.com/handbellhero/

Cute. Not very similar to playing real handbells, which I do regularly, but cute.

[pulykamell]

@acsenray

I think there’s some unnecessary hostility building in this thread. My OP question is meant to be a sincere question, not curmudgeonly snark.

It’s just a fun game. If you played it and it doesn’t appeal to you, that’s fine. First person shooters don’t appeal to me, yet I see that the rest of the world seems to enjoy them. More than enough different games to go around for different gaming styles.

As for me, as someone who plays several instruments with various degrees of skill, GHIII and Rock Band are simply fun games. For me, it’s a very interactive way to listen to music I like. It doesn’t teach you how to play guitar, but I would argue that it does develop certain skills that are helpful if you do go on to learn a musical instrument. The games help teach rhythm and coordination. The drum part is more useful in this respect than the guitar, but both are good.

Playing the drums on Rock Band on Expert is actually not a bad simulacrum of real drums. It’s also not the same as playing real drums, either. None of these games teach you anything about dynamics. None about improvisation and creating musical fills (Rock Band’s “freestyle” section lets you hit whatever you want in whatever beat you want, it doesn’t matter if it goes with the song or not). It doesn’t teach you left foot technique, nor a lot of other things. Playing real drums is different, but if you can get through Expert, you’re probably pretty well-coordinated enough to not have too much difficulty becoming a real drummer. It also sure beats the hell out of practicing to a metronome.

Anyhow, these games are not meant to be teaching instruments. They’re meant to be fun and I think they succeed tremendously in that regard. I do think they will have the side benefit of inspiring and instilling basic music skills in a small subset of the gameplaying base, though.

[Miller]

@acsenray

I like air guitar. It’s a physical manifestation of appreciation of the music. It would be a lot less of a mystery to me if the guys playing the game were jumping around and stuff. Instead they were just watching a bad digital animation of someone jumping around.

Like KRM said, you were watching three guys playing it at Best Buy. If they’re playing it at Best Buy, it’s probably because none of them own the game, and they likely had only marginally more of an idea what the game is about than you do. Even if they have played it before, they’re probably still self-conscious about rocking out in the middle of a store surrounded by strangers. I mean, how often do you see people playing air guitar in public? How often do you play air guitar in public?

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

@Slacker

I’m not sure where the confusion is. It’s a video game. We sit there slowly pushing buttons to make Brett Favre throw a pass, Ratchet & Clank shoot up a space station, or Mario jump around between planets. It’s fun.

The guitar games are awesome if you like music games, which I do (I’ve played everything from Harmonix back to Frequency on the PS2). I’m dying to get Rock Band, but only have a Wii at the moment, so I have to wait. :mad:

Anyone confused should give it a shot. I’ve had a number of people try Guitar Hero on my systems and almost everyone found it to be seriously addicting.

Edit: Oh, and the “point” is usually just to get to the end of the song. Once you get that - go for a higher high score. It’s remarkable how you’ll find yourself improving as you play the game more. When I first picked up Guitar Hero 1 I thought there was no way I’d ever beat the top tier stuff on the hardest level. After a while, it became easier and easier and I finished 'em off.

I’m a gamer. I never got into Guitar Hero.

[kushiel]

@squeegee

It’s a fad, like pet rocks or Teddy Ruxspin, which isn’t said to denigrate anyone who enjoys these things.

And not an undeserved fad – finally, something different than an RPG or FPS on a console! Gloria Mundi, something new under the sun! It’s unique enough to really stand out, kudos to whomever thought of it, and good on the people with sense enough to climb on a new wagon, when the old wagons are rusting.

A fad? I dunno, anything that hangs around for 10 years (an eternity in console gaming) is a little more than a fad. It just got really popular now amongst casual gamers.

[Roland_Orzabal]

@acsenray

I like air guitar. It’s a physical manifestation of appreciation of the music. It would be a lot less of a mystery to me if the guys playing the game were jumping around and stuff. Instead they were just watching a bad digital animation of someone jumping around.

I was introduced to the world of rhythm games via Donkey Konga, which is basically the same thing, only with a set of bongos instead of a guitar, and now I play Guitar Hero and Rock Band as well.

Trust me, if you get a group of friends to play these things regularly, plenty of jumping around, dancing, singing, jamming, and general merriment ensues as you get to know the songs. As others have said, it’s basically the fun of playing music with friends, without the need to spend years learning how to do it.

Of course, if you do want to find some kind of useful, practical purpose in a video game:

1. It teaches you a strong sense of rhythm and timing.
2. The guitar peripheral increases your dexterity—while the actual movements don’t correspond to real guitar playing, the speed and accuracy with which you must press the buttons on the higher levels teaches you to move the fingers on your fretting hand quickly and precisely.
3. The drum peripheral is, as mentioned, basically an actual drum set, and the rhythms you play correspond to the song’s percussion track, therefore the “drummer” gains actual drumming skill.
4. Ditto for the singer…it’s a microphone peripheral, and the input plays on the audio track. It’s just like being the lead singer of a real band during rehearsal.

I think there’s some unnecessary hostility building in this thread. My OP question is meant to be a sincere question, not curmudgeonly snark.

I think that anytime you ask people for concrete reasoning behind their subjective tastes (such as “this video game is fun”), it’s going to come off as a bit combative. It’s like asking a stamp collector what the appeal could possibly be in poring over little colored pieces of paper. It’s a personal choice. They enjoy it. Asking people to elaborate on what they enjoy about their hobbies isn’t offensive, but implying that their enjoyment is baseless and essentially challenging them to prove otherwise does come off that way.

[Gorsnak]

@KRM

In fact, the Romantics are suing Activision because the cover was too good.

Actually they’re suing because the cover sounds almost exactly like the original, not because it is too good. I don’t believe they would have sued if it had been an even better cover that sounded less like their version.

[Brainiac4]

@acsenray

I think there’s some unnecessary hostility building in this thread. My OP question is meant to be a sincere question, not curmudgeonly snark.

Roland Orzabal already responded to this very well, but I will add my two cents. Not so much your OP but some of the other “how can people enjoy this, it’s not really making music” posts in this thread have seemed judgmental to me. One thing you’re apparently unaware of (since you were unfamiliar with the game at all) is that the “it’s not the same thing as playing a *real *instrument” criticism of Guitar Hero and Rock Band is already well-worn. I don’t think your intent was to be critical, but in the plaintext world of the Internet, it’s difficult to interpret tone, and easy to see hostile intent if you expect it to be there.

I’m a longtime gamer, and I originally resisted Guitar Hero because I didn’t think it would be fun. I finally got it for my son, and it’s a blast to play. I can’t make up my own songs, but I can make music happen. The notes play in response to my fingers on the fret buttons and strum bar, so it feels to me as if I am making music.

And in the end, if I’m having fun, isn’t that the whole point? Please don’t take what you saw at a Best Buy as the sum total of the possible appeal of a game.

[Brainiac4]

@Gorsnak

Actually they’re suing because the cover sounds almost exactly like the original, not because it is too good. I don’t believe they would have sued if it had been an even better cover that sounded less like their version.

I think the band is assuming that their original version defines perfection, and therefore being too close to it is being “too good.” I suspect that they would regard the idea of a version being “better” as impossible.

[EllisDee]

@DSYoungEsq

Explain to me why people find games that involve blowing the heads off of people interesting. I’ll never understand that.

@acsenray

I don’t find it very appealing either, but it seems to me that at the very least, it’s up to you to decide when you pull the trigger and where to aim, etc.

@Tengu

No, it’s not, any more than it is in a rhythm game.

You aim here or you miss the enemy.

You hit the button now, or you miss the target, or worse, he hits you first.

Rhythm games just have a narrower window. (Which is why I suck at and thereby don’t like them.)

Sorry, Tengu, but your argument couldn’t possibly be more wrong. Hostile Dialect is also wrong when he applies this same logic:

@Hostile Dialect

The music is “automatically” played because they’re hitting all the right notes. In fact, the football analogy is apt:

In real football, you pick a pre-designed play and then try to adjust to what the other team does, and then make a quick decision to try to make it work. Same in videogame football. The difference is that the real Brett Favre is, well, Brett Favre, so he’s taken the time to memorize the plays, figure out the strengths and weaknesses of opposing defenses, and intuitively know where his teammates are going to be and when, whereas someone playing a videogame has not devoted his life to these things (generally ) and has to be reminded of them on the screen.

In the words of Perry Cox: “Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…You’re wrong!”

There is absolutely no script to follow in any sports or FPS game. That’s the appeal of those genres. While you could map out “golden sequences” to get through side-scrollers like pitfall or mario brothers, sports games are truly undefined.

Here is the core difference:

@control-z

I never did like the rhythm/timing games, because THE GAME tells you what to do and it’s gotta be EXCACTLY FREAKIN RIGHT or you don’t get a good score. I like a more sandbox type of game where you can do things the way you want to.

I could elaborate, but I’d rather not have to. It’s about as basic and fundamental a concept as there is in gaming, and control-z’s explanation should be sufficient.

@Hentor the Barbarian

Which video games are supposed to be equivalent to doing the real thing? If there was one, I imagine it would consist of an image of the game controller on the screen, and the player has to press the same buttons on his own controller that are on the screen.

I doubt that would be a great deal of fun, huh?

Well, see, if you mute the tv, that’s exactly what Guitar Hero is, isn’t it? I’d go so far as to say that you’ve articulated the same thought process that inspired the OP to create this thread in the first place.

[Kamino_Neko]

@Ellis Dee

Sorry, Tengu, but your argument couldn’t possibly be more wrong.

Sorry, Ellis Dee, but you couldn’t be more wrong here.

The two games have exactly the same goal when boiled down - hit the right button at the right time.

In Guitar Hero, if I’m too early, or too late, or hit the wrong button, I get a sour note.

In Half-Life, if I’m too early, or too late, or hit the wrong button (or I’m aiming the wrong way), I get shot in the head by the bad guy/other player.

The only difference (other than ‘aiming the wrong way’ not being an in-game possibility in rhythm games) is that with rhythm games you can learn the timing and get better, whereas FPSes you’re always watching the screen, slack jawed, waiting for it to tell you to press the button by bringing a target into your field of view - but it’s still ‘hit the right button at the right time’ - it doesn’t matter whether you’re playing Guitar Hero and trying to keep up with the sequence of notes, or playing Half-Life and trying to shoot the enemy who just rounded the corner before he shoots you. It’s still ‘respond to stimulus by hitting the button’.

You have to leave the twitcher group altogether before you get a significant part of the gameplay that isn’t.

[Kamino_Neko]

BTW:

@Ellis Dee

I could elaborate, but I’d rather not have to. It’s about as basic and fundamental a concept as there is in gaming, and control-z’s explanation should be sufficient.

It is QUITE sufficient.

It just doesn’t happen to say anything like what you think it does.

It’s not saying FPSes aren’t ‘press the button now!’ - it’s just saying rhythm games have a much narrower definition of ‘now’.

In an FPS, you have a few seconds to react to a target. In a rhythm game, you don’t.

Tell you what - point me to an FPS you can win by unloading all your ammo into your own foot, then not reacting to any enemies that you encounter (be that by shooting them, running away, or hiding, all of which are just different applications of ‘pressing the right button at the right time’), and I will concede that FPSes are fundamentally different than rhythm games.

[EllisDee]

@Tengu

Sorry, Ellis Dee, but you couldn’t be more wrong here.

Wow, I’m stunned at how you can actually believe something so incorrect. Your wrongness boggles the mind.

There is no such thing as a “correct” button to hit in sports or FPS games. In all cases, there are multiple OPTIONS, and most of the time those options are further “sandboxed” by being mapped to analog controls.

[EllisDee]

@Tengu

Tell you what - point me to an FPS you can win by unloading all your ammo into your own foot, then not reacting to any enemies that you encounter (be that by shooting them, running away, or hiding, all of which are just different applications of ‘pressing the right button at the right time’), and I will concede that FPSes are fundamentally different than rhythm games.

I’m not sure that you’ll ever get it.

[Kamino_Neko]

@Ellis Dee

There is no such thing as a “correct” button to hit in sports or FPS games.

Yes, there is - there are two or three possible options (in good, recent games), but that’s a ‘narrower window’, not a fundamental difference.

It’s still ‘here’s a stimulus, react’. You can’t win by choosing to run at an enemy without attacking, or stand there doing nothing, or aiming in a different direction and unloading all of your ammo. Or choosing to walk off a platform over a bottomless pit instead of jumping to the next. Here’s a stimulus, react. That you have 5 seconds, not one, and can choose to hit more than one button doesn’t change that.

There is a right reaction, and a wrong reaction, and a window of opportunity to react. That is the fundamental trait of all twitchers be they rhythm, platform or FPS.

Your condescension does not makes you correct, it just makes you annoying to debate with.

[Brainiac4]

@Tengu

Your condescension does not makes you correct, it just makes you annoying to debate with.

Seconded.

Why are people who have not played this game telling people who have played it and had fun that (a) it’s not really a game and (b) it’s not any fun?

Is doing so enjoyable in some fashion? 'cause I gotta tell you it’s not much fun to be on the receiving end.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Ellis Dee

Well, see, if you mute the tv, that’s exactly what Guitar Hero is, isn’t it? I’d go so far as to say that you’ve articulated the same thought process that inspired the OP to create this thread in the first place.

Would you really go that far? Wow, Ellis! I’m impressed with your commitment to the issue.

Of course all video games are Pong, in some variation. It would have been just as foolish for someone to criticize Pong for not really being like playing table tennis or tennis as it is to criticize Guitar Hero for not being really like playing a guitar.

Sports games are no different. The only time a video game gets beyond the “golden sequence” is when you are playing a multiplayer against human opponents.

So I’m left wondering - given just how very far you will go, how far would you go to make an actual point?

[Zebra]

Do they have bonus levels where you get to trash a hotel room?

[Roland_Orzabal]

@Zebra

Do they have bonus levels where you get to trash a hotel room?

No, but when you get your pay at the end of each show, there’s an itemized deduction for “trashed hotel room”. The game assumes you know the proper protocol.