I’ve never played the game and only yesterday learned how the game worked, but this blog entry is compulsory to understand the appeal. This video helps, too. Impressive.
Hehe that’s funny.
But it illustrates something I’ve been afraid would bother me if I tried to play GH. In the game you linked to, since there are only four keys, some keys have to be used to play more than one note. And in fact, in the game you linked to, which key plays a particular note differs from instance to instance.
This is a major stumbling block to me, both to successful play, and to enjoying the game. I can’t get over the fact that to play, say, an “A” this time I have to hit ‘d’ when last time I needed to play an “A” I had to hit ‘s’. It just doesn’t feel right.
Does GH have an analogous problem?
Anyway, everyone I’ve ever had this conversation with has said that once they tried it, they immediately discovered how fun it is, whatever they may have thought beforehand. I won’t know til try it, but it is really hard for me to imagine how GH type games can be fun. My reason is pretty much the same as has been articulated in this thread–you have to do things exactly right and that’s all you have to do to beat the game, and there’s not even any puzzle in figuring out what that thing you have to do is!. I hate that idea, or at least the sound of it. My very being rebels against it. I like games with some freedom–or at least, where the lack of freedom is more well hidden! 
-FrL-
Essentially. Since there are only five fret buttons, they are not tied to a particular note. They are linked to relative tones within a song, so that when the music goes up or down, you are consistently moving in one direction or another, but there’s obviously no way to have notes specifically pegged to buttons.
I think this is true of any game, but one thing I’ve noticed with my sons. One is very good at pattern recognition and skilled at other video games, but not musically or rhythmically inclined. He can beat the game on the easy level, where it is much more about timing and patterns. However, in my opinion, when it gets more complicated, you have to have a sense of the music and rhythm. You have to feel the music to do well, and so my 12 year old hasn’t made it far into the second level of difficulty.
My six year old, however, looks like a rock guitarist when he plays, moving, twisting and jumping, and is actually better at the game.
Essentially, however, you still have to do the right thing at the right time. There’s no way that I can see for a game to judge creativity and improvisation, and really, would you want a computer determining how creative you were?
The key to Guitar Hero is about being in the groove. Get in the groove, and it rewards you. And you can hear you’re in the groove. Screw up, and the music dips and you need to get back in the groove. It’s like splitting logs well, or anything else. It’s not easy, but when you hit the zone, it is fun.
It’s not true of a lot of games.
Take tetris, for example. There are any number of ways I might successfully play a game of tetris. And furthermore, it’s not immediately obvious what those ways are–I have to think about it–fast–before the piece hits the bottom.
Another favorite of mine: The Myst series. Here there is indeed exactly one thing you must do and only one thing. But it’s really hard to figure out what that thing is. That’s where the fun is. (And there is an exploration element to the game which isn’t part of the winning of the game per se but does give the “illusion” of freedom I mentioned in my other post.
Another favorite of mine: Diablo 2 and those that copy its style. All kinds of ways you can build your character, all kinds of styles you can choose for combat, etc. There’s many different ways to win the game. Not much of a puzzle figuring any of it out, of course, but plenty of thinking to be done in deciding how you want your character’s skills to be configured.
RTS’s: Of course there are different ways to win. (If the RTS is any good. And even if its not there’s room to manouver.)
Turn based strategy games: Do I need to go on?
In short, I feel I must have misunderstood your claim, because as I understood it, it is trivially and obviously incorrect.
-FrL-
Yeah, the gameplay in Guitar Hero is pretty straightforward. It pits your rhythm, timing, and dexterity to the test by challenging you to accurately play the songs. Doesn’t sound like much fun.
You know what else is stupid? The long jump. You run down a straight track, and then you jump. That’s all you do. Jump far. No options about where to run or jump, just a short, straight track and a sand pit. Hell, at least Guitar Hero has five buttons that you might possibly need to hit at different times. Long jump? Same track, same sand pit, same jumping. Why would anyone ever do that?
Seriously, what the hell? The gameplay in Guitar Hero is different from RTSs, FPSs, RPGs, MMORPGs, puzzles games, sports games, and so on because it is not one of those games. I personally don’t like most (read: any I’ve ever played) of the survival-horror games out there, but it would honestly never occur to me to go around interrogating and starting arguments with the people who did. It’s a TYPE OF VIDEO GAME. Some people like it. Whatever it is about the game that you find uninteresting, those people do take interest in it. Is this really that difficult to comprehend?
There is a little more to the game than just hitting the notes at the right time. Strategy comes in to play when using StarPower, and also when you hit a stretch where you know you can’t hit all the notes, and you have to maximize the notes you can hit. I used to ignore the fifth fret in these situations, because it was the only way to keep from getting booed off the stage if I did a good enough job of hitting every other note.
Well, if you actually think that there are “any number of ways” to successfully fit Tetris pieces together, then my observations will always seem to you trivially and obviously incorrect.
Not to me it doesn’t.
Wait. You think GH is stupid?
I don’t.
Why do you?
Actually, you get a WTH from me. Someone claimed that the way I described GH describes all games. I showed that this claim is false. That’s it. You seem to have read more into my post than that, but I’m not sure why.
You may have mistaken my giving reasons for (and expressing the feelings which lead to) my imagining I would not like GH for my giving reasons why I think GH is inherently a bad or stupid game. But if that’s what you did, that was a mistake. I think GH is a fine game. It’s just not the kind of game I can imagine liking. (Indeed–for much the same reason I can’t imagine enjoying trying to get good at doing the long jump.)
-FrL-
I don’t understand.
Are you saying that in any game of tetris, there is one and only one way the pieces can be placed in order to get an arbitrarily high score?
-FrL-
To sum up a point that seems to have been misunderstood, probably due to communication problems on my own part:
There are two things I like in a computer game. One is an aspect whereby there is something I must figure out. Another is an aspect whereby I am able to explore and discover facts (and experiences) in the “gameworld” whatever that term might cash out to in any particular game.
GH has neither of those.
Therefore, it is difficult for me to imagine myself enjoying GH.
Not only does GH have neither of these properties, but, in a sense I admittedly find it somewhat difficult to articulate, GH embodies a spirit opposite those properties. For this reason, I actually have feelings on the matter–when I think about playing GH, I actually get a visceral “no” reaction. This is a fact about me, I do not take it to be a fact about the quality of the game.
-FrL-
No, obviously I’m not. However, there are 1) a fixed number of shapes, 1) a limited number of ways that any shape can be oriented, 2) a limited number of spaces across the screen that the piece could be placed, 3) a very limited number of orientations that two pieces could be placed in to lead to likely success, and most importantly - 4) no choice about which piece one has to work with at any given time.
So, you may have a number of options about what to do, and they are obviously greater than the choices you have for Guitar Hero, but they are in fact quite limited, particularly if you want to have any success at the game.
All games are inherently limited in the options available to players. All games are essentially variants of Pong. Finding some fun and others not is a matter of individual choice, and if you cannot imagine finding GH fun, there’s nothing anyone can type here that will really make much difference.
Another distinction occurs to me.
In almost all games, there are particular goals that are prescribed. There are goals you must achieve in order to do well at the game.
But the extent to which the actions necessary to reach these goals are prescribed varies widely from game to game.
I prefer more lattitude in the choice of actions. In GH, there is no lattitude at all. (Though I see there is something called “Star Power” in the game which makes this not quite true, but hopefully you see my point anyway.) Not only is the goal prescribed, but each individual action is prescribed.
In the games I can think of that I like, individual actions are not prescribed, only goals.
Does that make sense?
And a further fact is as follows: When my actions are so completely prescribed like this, even in the context of a game, it just rubs me the wrong way.
-FrL-
I think you are not thinking very carefully about how limited your choice of actions for success are in any given game. You must have a very good imagination.
But you have made it clear that you have a visceral dislike for GH. I think we can all now stipulate that this is correct. I don’t feel at all that this is relevant to the appeal of GH or Rock Band, since it is idiosyncratic and could only explain why you don’t like GH (even though you’ve never played it). Indeed, your imagination is impressive.
Frylock, my above post wasn’t really addressed to you. Reading our posts in sequence, I can see where you’d interpret it that way; sorry for any confusion. You, at least, seem to be genuinely interested in finding out why people like the game, rather than going down the “what the hell could you possibly like about this” avenue of questioning, which is clearly less than productive.
To clarify further, suppose I’m having a conversation with someone about music, and he tells me he likes Bob Dylan. Personally, I don’t like Bob Dylan very much; his voice annoys the hell out of me, and that’s enough to ruin my enjoyment of the majority of his music. So, I decide to ask him what he likes about Dylan’s music. I can phrase this question in a friendly manner (“What about his music do you like?”), or, I can ask the question in such a way as to make it perfectly obvious that I don’t like Dylan (“Dylan? Could you explain the appeal of his music? I listened to Dylan once at Best Buy, and all I heard was a warbling, untrained voice over top of some mediocre guitar. Every song I listened to sounded pretty much the same.”), and clearly imply that I’m challenging him to defend his tastes.
So, let’s say that I decide to ask the second question, and the guy takes it in stride. “I’ve heard that before,” he says, “but the thing about Dylan is that he was a master lyricist. His words rang true to the people of his time, yet they still hold poignance to me today, and I think that’s pretty amazing.” Okay, that tells me that he’s a ‘lyrics’ guy. I don’t care one way or the other about lyrics; they’re not the element of music that interests me. So, on noting this, I can either accept it and we can have a friendly discussion about the differences between our tastes, or, I can choose to question him further as to why one would ever judge the quality of a song on its lyrics. I tend to think that doing the latter would not only miss the point, but would also make me a bit of a jerk.
At the end of the day, subjective tastes are what they are. If you don’t like the thing, of COURSE you’re not going to agree with the person’s reasoning behind why they like it, because you don’t like it! I’m not passionate about lyrics; my acquaintance is. You’re not a music gamer; I am. I’m not a survival-horror gamer; you might be. We have different reasons for liking the things we like, and since we like different things, it’s quite obvious that we’re not going to agree on those reasons. The only valid reason to ask for reasons in the first place is curiosity, and once that question’s answered, I can’t fathom a reason to keep pressing, because you’re not going to get anywhere.
Simply put, in Guitar Hero there is no aiming, dodging, discovery or decisions (other than giving up on a fret button or when to use "star power). It’s aaaall rhythm and timing whereas that’s only a component of most other games.
I really can’t understand how anyone could argue different. Guitar Hero is a more rigidly confined/defined game, that’s all there is to it. That doesn’t mean it can’t be fun as hell.
Now, I’m off to start a thread on why the heck long-jumping is so darn popular.
Frylock: have you tried the game? Because I couldn’t understand the appeal at all either. Sounded boring and pointless. Then I tried it and I love it. One of the few video games I actually enjoy, honestly.
And GHIII has a “battle” mode where you play against another player and you get to do things to try to mess them up, like make their notes flip from right-to-left to left-to-right or “break a string” or make their screen shake so it’s hard to see the notes, etc. So there is some strategy and so on involved in at least that mode.
Right – the genre wasn’t that popular or that noticed until 2005 (I’m discounting DDR as not really the same game, an argument that seems to be shared here), and now its a huge phenomena. You can have fads for things that already exist – a “fad” is a reaction by the public, a groundswell, not the existence of the product category itself. To all the people who hadn’t heard about it, and now have, its still “new” in the most important sense.
In any case, Guitar Hero didn’t exist (as the object of fascination and as the winning formula) until 2005. The publisher found the right combination of features and good luck, and it took off. As other evidence of fad status, I’ll point to I Can Play Guitar and other non-console variants that will likely not be around more than one season. On the other hand, existence of a competitor product (Rock Band) makes the case somewhat that the genre is sustainable, but we’ll see. YMMV.
I’ll add the disclaimer I made above: calling it a “fad” is not at all meant to be denigrating to anyone who likes this product.
My husband is an avid gamer and when he bought a PS2 I thought I’d be a gaming widow. So when he bought Guitar Hero II claiming it was for both of us to play, I thought he was just justifying buying another game. I don’t like video games, generally speaking. I don’t mind a little Grand Turismo as long as you get to use the steering wheel controller and I do like Grand Theft Auto though I never actually PLAY, I just carjack and stuff until the cops get me. But I quickly became a Guitar Hero devotee. I am currently stuck on the Hard setting because that fifth note is a real bitch and barely getting through a song after getting used to five-starring the first time you play one is a bit of a blow to the ego. But it is FUN. It is ridiculously fun, I assure you. I have been pestering my husband to get the eighties version but it’s too expensive - he won’t do it. Hmmmmm. Maybe I know what he’s getting for Christmas after all!
Throughout my posts, I have spoken of a range of variation of limitations on choice of actions. I have not implied that a game must be extremely open for me to enjoy it.
What you said is exactly what I said. What’s your point, then?
Look man. I mentioned, by way of conversation, the things that make me think I wouldn’t enjoy the game–at the same time acknowledging that there are alot of people who have expressed the same misgivings but have found the game fun after all once they tried it. My point was just to express bemusement at this fact. I said, I said in that post, I need to go try the game. I need to do that because it will be interesting and edifying to discover how this “change of heart” works.
That’s one thing.
Meanwhile, in your response to me, you made the claim (which I still maintain is quite wrong) that the way I described GH aptly describes all games.
I explained why I think that claim is incorrect.
And that’s another thing.
-FrL-