"It's like hitting all the black keys on a piano. It doesn't sound bad, but it's not music either."
My favorite story about Jimi Hendrix regards a time he was playing a particular song and hit a wrong note. Instead of just carrying on, he took that wrong note and bent it and twist it until it meant something. That story lit the fire that would become my love of music.
The Discovery Channel is running a pretty cool documentary over the upcoming weeks called "Rise Of The Video Game." In my recent free time, I've filled a lot of it by sitting around replaying my old games, particularly the Legend of Zelda series. The main appeal of video games is the same reasons we go to the movies, or watch television. Games like the Zelda take us outside and beyond life. We may never (literally) slay a dragon and slay a princess, but now we can become close. As the technology evolved, the games did something strange. Instead of becoming more fantastic and outlandish, they moved more toward reality. Dungeons and Science Fiction were still alive and well, but sports games became more and more realistic. Real life athlete specific mannerisms and such became incorporated into the games. Fighting games became incredibly fun. Games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat added fun superhuman abilites to make the games a bit more "alive." I was studying Isshinryu Karate at the time fighting games made their mark. Sometimes during sparring we would goof around and throw a "hadoken." Where fantasy games took us outside of what was possible, the fighting games did something neat and expanded on what was possible. My "trademark" strike in sparring was a high roundhouse kick (waaay before Chuck Norris made it cool), and when I saw that Street Fighter had a "roundhouse" button, The "pig in shit" looked like a manic depressive compared to how happy I was that day. More games that take place in modern day began to spring up. The Grand Theft Auto series lets someone live out their dream of becoming a crime boss and wreaking mayhem that would normally land them quite the tenure of community service.
My favorites were the extreme sports genre games. One of my favorites was on the N64 system, "1080 Snowboarding." Eventually came the SSX series that took the scenery and physics even further. That combined with fun soundtracks and the Video Game staple fun unlockables was bringing reality closer to home than ever.
I think with the release of Dance Dance Revolution, a problem started. Suddenly, everyone became an expert on techno music and j-pop. At the arcades, people would flock to watch the DDR players as if they were actually tearing it up at a real club. DDR was so successful it spawned loads and loads of sequels and spin offs. The strange thing is that the DDR players associated themselves as real dancers more than the 1080 and SSX crowd associated themselves as snowboarders; despite the fact that the latter were playing a snowboard simulation game while the former were really only stepping on arrows to a rhythm. I don't know of any 1080 or SSX players who's views on snowboarding changed (if regular snowboarders were drawn to the games, or if people who weren't into snowboarding played the games and decided it looked like it would be a fun thing to try). Suddenly all these DDR players acted like they were the proverbial shit. (yaknow, I just realized... I wonder if reality shows like Dancing With The Stars and So You Think You Can dance are a product of the DDR craze, or just a strange coincidence that fits in with the "hey, lets make reality shows about anything and everything craze." 1080 did not replace snowboarding, DDR didn't replace dancing but it did create a new sub-culture of people who thought they could join a craze that has been around as long as music.
From DDR came Karaoke Revolution. The strange thing about this one is you didn't need to sing the right words to rack up points, you only needed to hit the right pitch (if I had better vocal chords, I would love to read an Andrew "Dice" Clay routine while hitting the right pitches to one of the teeny pop songs on there). We have dancing, we have singing... so let's bring in the instruments.
I've played Guitar Hero a handful of times. It's fun, I'll give it that. Like DDR and KR, it's makes for a good little party game. Aesthetics is really sticky subject, and I prefer to avoid it whenever possible... here we go. Guitar Hero is taking music and doing to it what shouldn't be done with art. It's making it rigid and punishes variation.
Kurt Cobain was a terrible guitarist. It's not so much that he was clueless, he was just really, really lazy. That laziness (breaks in chords for open strums) at least fit into the grunge movement. Guitar Hero is taking a total classical attitude toward music and saying "if you're not hitting the right notes, you're not playing the song." In Guitar Hero, if the player doesn't hit a correct note, the "wrong' note isn't played in it's stead, it sounds like someone hitting a really out of tune key that for some reason is louder than all the others.
Music is about variation, and growth. It's why cover songs are so popular. If I still played guitar and someone asked me to play Hurt, I've got a decent chance of playing the version they were looking for (I'd probably play the Cash the version despite liking the Nine Inch Nails version better). Regardless, it's still playing Hurt. Using my favorite song as an example, Colin Hay has two different versions of his song "Overkill." The Oasis song Wonderwall was covered by Ryan Adams. One of the Gallaghers loved it so much that at concerts, they play the Adams version instead of their own... and they wrote the damn song!
Taste in music for most GH players is strange too. Much like how DDR brought techno and j-pop to a wider audience, suddenly it's cool to like bad 80's power ballads. I remember a day where saying you liked Winger was grounds for an ass-kicking. I believe the term for people who don't play for the music is "score hero." If you're playing for accuracy alone I don't understand playing it at all. That and with Guitar Hero, all you can play is what's available on the disc (well, now what's available for download as well, a great way to milk this cash cow). The first "art" game I can remember is Mario Paint. There was no scoring or anything. I'm a terrible artist and I had fun just slopping colors around and seeing what came up, and that was closer to art than GH is. There was even a neat little music generator where you can fiddle with classic NES themes with, again, no scoring to it. It was just fun, it was creative, and that's what art should be. I wouldn't have such a gripe with guitar hero if say... there was a composition element to it, or variations to the standard.
What made video games magic was the ability to go outside of reality, to bring the fantastic home. These day's it's not about briefly escaping reality or killing a few hours, it seems to be outright replacing reality. Art looks to be it's first victim and that doesn't sit well with me. The ad campaign for the newest music simulator "Rock Band" is the best example of the fan base. For those who haven't seen it, it's a "band" (with the Rock Band faux instruments) arguing over, well, things bands argue over. They argue over things like who should "scissor" kick, and the lone female member of the band says to one of the guys "this is why I broke up with you." A lot of it looks like it was ripped from any episode of Behind The Music (I tend to think the Fleetwood Mac episode is the standard bearer, but I digress).
A few weeks ago, South Park did a brilliant episode about Guitar Hero. There was a great gag involving a game called "Heroin Hero," where the player chases a dragon through a forest. It's cool though, because the player can never actually catch the dragon. There's no stress. (The real kicker of this scene is where Randy Marsh gets kicked off playing Heroin Hero and acts like he's having a withdrawal fit." I can laugh at Heroin Hero, I have to wonder what's next. "HIKING HERO," which simulates WALKING through the woods. "COOKING HERO," where at least you won't have to wonder about burning the house down. When the day arrives for "VIDEO GAME HERO," someone do me a favor and shoot me.
The Discovery Channel is running a pretty cool documentary over the upcoming weeks called "Rise Of The Video Game." In my recent free time, I've filled a lot of it by sitting around replaying my old games, particularly the Legend of Zelda series. The main appeal of video games is the same reasons we go to the movies, or watch television. Games like the Zelda take us outside and beyond life. We may never (literally) slay a dragon and slay a princess, but now we can become close. As the technology evolved, the games did something strange. Instead of becoming more fantastic and outlandish, they moved more toward reality. Dungeons and Science Fiction were still alive and well, but sports games became more and more realistic. Real life athlete specific mannerisms and such became incorporated into the games. Fighting games became incredibly fun. Games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat added fun superhuman abilites to make the games a bit more "alive." I was studying Isshinryu Karate at the time fighting games made their mark. Sometimes during sparring we would goof around and throw a "hadoken." Where fantasy games took us outside of what was possible, the fighting games did something neat and expanded on what was possible. My "trademark" strike in sparring was a high roundhouse kick (waaay before Chuck Norris made it cool), and when I saw that Street Fighter had a "roundhouse" button, The "pig in shit" looked like a manic depressive compared to how happy I was that day. More games that take place in modern day began to spring up. The Grand Theft Auto series lets someone live out their dream of becoming a crime boss and wreaking mayhem that would normally land them quite the tenure of community service.
My favorites were the extreme sports genre games. One of my favorites was on the N64 system, "1080 Snowboarding." Eventually came the SSX series that took the scenery and physics even further. That combined with fun soundtracks and the Video Game staple fun unlockables was bringing reality closer to home than ever.
I think with the release of Dance Dance Revolution, a problem started. Suddenly, everyone became an expert on techno music and j-pop. At the arcades, people would flock to watch the DDR players as if they were actually tearing it up at a real club. DDR was so successful it spawned loads and loads of sequels and spin offs. The strange thing is that the DDR players associated themselves as real dancers more than the 1080 and SSX crowd associated themselves as snowboarders; despite the fact that the latter were playing a snowboard simulation game while the former were really only stepping on arrows to a rhythm. I don't know of any 1080 or SSX players who's views on snowboarding changed (if regular snowboarders were drawn to the games, or if people who weren't into snowboarding played the games and decided it looked like it would be a fun thing to try). Suddenly all these DDR players acted like they were the proverbial shit. (yaknow, I just realized... I wonder if reality shows like Dancing With The Stars and So You Think You Can dance are a product of the DDR craze, or just a strange coincidence that fits in with the "hey, lets make reality shows about anything and everything craze." 1080 did not replace snowboarding, DDR didn't replace dancing but it did create a new sub-culture of people who thought they could join a craze that has been around as long as music.
From DDR came Karaoke Revolution. The strange thing about this one is you didn't need to sing the right words to rack up points, you only needed to hit the right pitch (if I had better vocal chords, I would love to read an Andrew "Dice" Clay routine while hitting the right pitches to one of the teeny pop songs on there). We have dancing, we have singing... so let's bring in the instruments.
I've played Guitar Hero a handful of times. It's fun, I'll give it that. Like DDR and KR, it's makes for a good little party game. Aesthetics is really sticky subject, and I prefer to avoid it whenever possible... here we go. Guitar Hero is taking music and doing to it what shouldn't be done with art. It's making it rigid and punishes variation.
Kurt Cobain was a terrible guitarist. It's not so much that he was clueless, he was just really, really lazy. That laziness (breaks in chords for open strums) at least fit into the grunge movement. Guitar Hero is taking a total classical attitude toward music and saying "if you're not hitting the right notes, you're not playing the song." In Guitar Hero, if the player doesn't hit a correct note, the "wrong' note isn't played in it's stead, it sounds like someone hitting a really out of tune key that for some reason is louder than all the others.
Music is about variation, and growth. It's why cover songs are so popular. If I still played guitar and someone asked me to play Hurt, I've got a decent chance of playing the version they were looking for (I'd probably play the Cash the version despite liking the Nine Inch Nails version better). Regardless, it's still playing Hurt. Using my favorite song as an example, Colin Hay has two different versions of his song "Overkill." The Oasis song Wonderwall was covered by Ryan Adams. One of the Gallaghers loved it so much that at concerts, they play the Adams version instead of their own... and they wrote the damn song!
Taste in music for most GH players is strange too. Much like how DDR brought techno and j-pop to a wider audience, suddenly it's cool to like bad 80's power ballads. I remember a day where saying you liked Winger was grounds for an ass-kicking. I believe the term for people who don't play for the music is "score hero." If you're playing for accuracy alone I don't understand playing it at all. That and with Guitar Hero, all you can play is what's available on the disc (well, now what's available for download as well, a great way to milk this cash cow). The first "art" game I can remember is Mario Paint. There was no scoring or anything. I'm a terrible artist and I had fun just slopping colors around and seeing what came up, and that was closer to art than GH is. There was even a neat little music generator where you can fiddle with classic NES themes with, again, no scoring to it. It was just fun, it was creative, and that's what art should be. I wouldn't have such a gripe with guitar hero if say... there was a composition element to it, or variations to the standard.
What made video games magic was the ability to go outside of reality, to bring the fantastic home. These day's it's not about briefly escaping reality or killing a few hours, it seems to be outright replacing reality. Art looks to be it's first victim and that doesn't sit well with me. The ad campaign for the newest music simulator "Rock Band" is the best example of the fan base. For those who haven't seen it, it's a "band" (with the Rock Band faux instruments) arguing over, well, things bands argue over. They argue over things like who should "scissor" kick, and the lone female member of the band says to one of the guys "this is why I broke up with you." A lot of it looks like it was ripped from any episode of Behind The Music (I tend to think the Fleetwood Mac episode is the standard bearer, but I digress).
A few weeks ago, South Park did a brilliant episode about Guitar Hero. There was a great gag involving a game called "Heroin Hero," where the player chases a dragon through a forest. It's cool though, because the player can never actually catch the dragon. There's no stress. (The real kicker of this scene is where Randy Marsh gets kicked off playing Heroin Hero and acts like he's having a withdrawal fit." I can laugh at Heroin Hero, I have to wonder what's next. "HIKING HERO," which simulates WALKING through the woods. "COOKING HERO," where at least you won't have to wonder about burning the house down. When the day arrives for "VIDEO GAME HERO," someone do me a favor and shoot me.