Fungi Forums
Video Games => Video Game Chat => Topic started by: ShadowBrain on July 28, 2009, 11:15:00 PM
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Maybe it's a little late to ask the question, but what do you think? Personally, I believe GH, RB, and the like are a great way for anyone (but primarily kids) to segue into playing an actual instrument and maybe strike up their own band. That's probably not always the case, but not to such a degree that I'd go with the second option.
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All of the members of my band played guitar hero/rock band during or before the development of their instrumental learning and as far as things go, it definitely helped my drummer a lot rhythmically and I've gotta say it at least expanded my musical tastes at the very beginning. Of course I the drummer and I had both played instruments before these games. I mean, they're alright as a musical stepping stone, but they're not an instrument and are getting way too serious.
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I started playing actual music when I was 5.
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Well, it seems that the majority of people will say (almost guaranteed if they play the respective instrument):
"DUR YOU POSERS... ACTING AS IF YOU CAN PLAY THE ACTUAL INSTRUMENT LOLOLOLLOLL I AM SUPERIOR. I HAVE BEEN PLAYING {{YNGWIE MALMSTEEN'S}} SOLOS SINCE BEFORE I WAS BORN. TRY PLAYING THE ACTUAL INSTRUMENT NEXT TIME LoL!! I BET YOU COULDN'T"
Nah... we just like matching colored buttons... or like 99% of the people, we just like the music/we like to play games... perfect combination. We're not trying to act as if we could play a guitar or bass. We're just playing the friggin' game!
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And then there are the idiots (I've met them) who think they're actually playing stuff.
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Yeah, I agree it's stupid. People getting super into the game are annoying, especially if they start jumping around or when they finish the song they have this serious, cocky look on their face kind of implying, "Yeah.. I'm bad. I just beat this song."
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Yeah, like Chupperson said, I've run into people who are convinced that because they can play drums in Rock Band they're drummers in real life.
Basically I think it doesn't have any effect though. I think the people who do that are stupid regardless and wouldn't pick up a real instrument anyway. I get pumped while playing Hysteria like everyone else playing Rock Band, but it's the same sort of pumped as when I beat someone who challenged me to a duel in Smash Bros. To me, it's just like playing The Sims or an RTS or other simulation stuff. It's simulating some real life activity (in this case a band) in game-fashion which can be quite fun for people who don't have the opportunity to do so.
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Drumming in Rock Band is a lot closer to real drumming than playing guitar in any of these games is to real guitar playing.
RTS as analogue to real life? Exactly what "real life activity" is being simulated when one plays StarCraft? Building refineries on vespene geysers? Zerg rushing? Being owned by Korea?
(Yes, I'm well aware of the fact that I use StarCraft as an example too often.)
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Music games are just like any other video game. They let you pretend to be doing something cool without having to spend ten years learning how to do it for real and with all the boring parts removed. I don't know why so many musicians feel the need to point out that people playing Guitar Hero aren't really playing guitar; I don't see any soldiers constantly complaining that playing a FPS isn't like really shooting or Emeril and Rachael Ray telling us that Cooking Mama isn't real cooking or the bald Six Flags guy saying that RollerCoaster Tycoon isn't real theme park management. Maybe it's just that it's new.
Yes, people who think they can actually play guitar because they can play Guitar Hero are annoying, but rarely are they as annoying as this guy:
(https://themushroomkingdom.net/board/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimgs.xkcd.com%2Fcomics%2Frock_band.png&hash=a329abfd0a48a8afb04d34e07f8b4379e0d965f7)
Most people are just playing it to have fun by pretending to be real rock stars. Video games are escapism. The people who act like they seriously are rock stars are annoying, but there are people like that in every video game fandom. The incidence of them among Guitar Hero players may be a bit higher than the norm because it, like the PlayStation did in the 90s, has expanded the audience of video games to include a lot more idiot frat boys, the same way that Nintendo is expanding the audience to include moms.
Anyway, to answer the question, they may be motivators for getting into it, and the dexterity one develops from doing high-level songs could be adapted to an actual guitar with enough training, but there are few real transferable skills -- probably even less than FPSs, Cooking Mama, and RollerCoaster Tycoon. I also think that they may inhibit musical skill by not allowing any creativity in the main game. Wii Music would actually be a significantly better game for training musicians -- it takes real creativity and musical knowledge to make something like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7oMGz_9iIA) or this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqG1Y5mAP-k).
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Indeed, that is one of my main beefs with the game engine -- in real life, playing a note slightly off tempo does not result in horrible squawkage. That type of penalty works fine in other rhythm games, where the point of the game is not to act like you're playing the music, but to simply keep up with the beat/precise timing and do things to interact with it. But real music doesn't require you to be precisely on tempo. And rock musicians very rarely are.
Also, quite agree with Wii Music/creativity.
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Leave it to me to take the middle ground.
Honestly it differs from person to person. On one hand you've got ******bags who think that getting a high score on a hard song is on par with being a genuinely good musician (i.e. anybody who actually cares about ScoreHero or leaderboards or what have you) and go OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I JUST BEAT THROUGH THE FIRE AND FLAMES NOW I WILL DEFINITELY BE ABLE TO GET A GIRLFRIEND. On the other, you've got ******bags who think that the only people who play music games lack any skill or appreciation of music just because they're playign a simuluation of the real thing. I think that, yes, music games have caused these viewpoints to become more widespread. Personally, although I don't own any GH or RB games anymore and have generally lost interest in both series, the only reason I do play either is for fun.
I wonder if DJ Hero is going to get real-life DJs all riled up.
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RTS as analogue to real life? Exactly what "real life activity" is being simulated when one plays StarCraft? Building refineries on vespene geysers? Zerg rushing? Being owned by Korea?
It's a simulation of fighting a war. I (hopefully) will never have to be in a position where I'm directing troops around on a battlefield, but it's fun to do it as a simulation in a game. It's just like Chupperson and CrossEyed said. We play games to do something we typically are unable to do in reality, or at least without a lot of work.
Though to be honest, I don't run into a lot of people who think they're musicians because they play Rock Band, or who think they'll get a girlfriend because of it. I guess that's because I don't spend a lot of time hanging out with middle school students. Either way, the majority of people I know who are really into Rock Band (myself included) are already great musicians who enjoy the game because they already like music.
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CE7 states the truth of the matter perfectly. (Only thing I disagree is that RB skills are definitely more applicable to real instruments than FPS skills are to real shooting.)
I don't think Glorb is right that people who care about leaderboards think they're "a genuinely good musician". I think they're trying to set high scores in a videogame and know this.
On a somewhat related point, beating "Through the Fire and Flames" on Expert is more difficult than playing many, many real songs on many, many real instruments.
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I didn't say people who care about leaderboards think they're genuinely good musicians. Many score-obsessed people think that tapping buttons in time with an onscreen prompt made by somebody else is in the same skill ballpark as composing actual music, or even just playing actual music. It's not. It's often harder, but any monkey can get good at pressing buttons rapidly if you give him enough time.
TL;DR - Skill does not equal talent.
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Ah, you're saying the games have the skill of playing an instrument but none of the art. And you're completely correct.
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Yeah but you don't have to compose music to be a great musician. A lot of instruments basically come down to pressing your fingers down very quickly in the order shown to you. Just in Rock Band's case, it's a tv screen with 5 notes, while real life is like 40 notes on a piece of paper. That's the difference. I think playing a lot of Rock Band could help train a lot of coordination with your fingers, but that's only if you already have a knowledge of how to play music.
So I'm kind of just restating what's been said about 100 times already in this thread.
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A lot of instruments basically come down to pressing your fingers down very quickly in the order shown to you.
No.
No way.
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I think Forest Guy has never played an instrument.
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Oddly, he apparently has. But he's totally wrong about pressing buttons on a GH controller having anything in common with playing instruments.
Furthering that though, it takes one skill set to be able to squeak out a few notes on a given instrument, and a much more advanced one to create worthwhile art with the same instrument. I guess Meowrik has never improvised or learned to interpret music on his own, though.
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I used to play piano, but the experience wasn't exactly the best. I can't even remember the basics. Thus I am not musically inclined at all.
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Actually I play a number of instruments. I was accepted into both the all-state band and all-national band, back in high school on Horn. I also played in jazz band for a few years on trumpet, which as you would imagine is heavy on improvising. Now I'm a music minor, and teach private lessons.
My comment was really meant to be a facetious statement towards woodwind instruments, the mortal enemy of brass players. So either 1. everyone here plays woodwind instruments, 2. they have no sense of humor, or 3. they've not played in a symphonic band for a prolonged period of time, since from what I've seen it's a fairly common joke in the business.
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Interesting, the alleged author of facetiousness has trouble recognizing it in the posts of others.
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4. you wrote that post entirely seriously but without thinking much and are now backpedalling, 5. you are the worst conveyer of facetiousness ever
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Yes, clearly I think playing an instrument is as easy as playing Guitar Hero. Right. You got me. Obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about, so I better go drop out of orchestra, change my class schedule, and tell all my students that I don't know how to play instruments because people on a video game message board said so. Thank God, and here I was under the impression I actually had some form of knowledge on a subject I've spent my entire life doing. But yeah thank God I posted in this topic so that Chupperson Weird and Lizard Dude, two of the most well respected music professors and professional performance artists in the entire world were here to remind me otherwise. Props. Mad props.
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You're getting better!
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Haha, okay, even I can admit that was funny. I chuckled at it.
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Well, basically everyone is screwed with trying to get high scores with the likes of Danny Johnson popping up everywhere now that IGN noticed his no-miss run on 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia."
Simply, like mentioned before, there will always be a huge group of people complaining either trying to defend or bring down a simulation game.
Because of Rock Band and Guitar Hero, somewhere, a guitarist, band, and/or musician (and soon to be DJs) is probably crying.
Because of Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport, somewhere, a race car driver or owner of the cars portrayed in the games is probably crying.
Because of Nintendogs, somewhere, Cesar Millan is probably crying.
Because of RTS games, somewhere, the General of the Army is probably crying.
Because of Grand Theft Auto, somewhere, Jack Thompson is definitely crying.
Because of war games, somewhere, people in the service are probably crying.
Because of Sim City, somewhere, an urban planner is probably crying.
Because of Wii Sports, somewhere, athletes are probably crying.
Because of Wii Music, somewhere, a conductor of the finest of symphonies is probably crying.
Because of any game, really, people are complaining about why it shouldn't exist.
It doesn't matter what you do, someone will complain about it. Since games are trying to be cutting-edge and get more "simmy" every day, arguments will just increase exponentially.
There could be a simulator on how to go take a crap and someone would say "Ugh. This is atrocious. This absolutely does NOT portray how real people go to the bathroom and is an insult to all the people that do in every day life."
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Oh yeah, Wii Crap. I heard about that one at E3. It's coming out in November, and it's bundled with Motion Plus. Even with that though, some of the bonus games have too much waggling in it.
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Not to mention it's, like, the first AO-rated game to get a widespread release.
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Hehe... "wide spread"
...And "release"
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP
I apologize for the preceding spam there. But to bring light to this situation, take a look at one of my favorite game series. Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2 is trained solely with simulation, and while he's nowhere near as revered as Solid Snake, he still manages to do a decent job. So simulation can't all be bad, right? But then again that's just a video game.
Hey, just like Guitar Hero and Rock Band!
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Raiden was also a pasty whiny punkass ***** who had ten-minute long conversations with his girl whenever you saved.
And either way, you say he did a "decent job" because he learned stuff in VR training like how to bandage yourself, how to reload, how to disguise yourself as a cardboard box, how not to get shot, etc. But if you log three hundred hours into Rock Band and Guitar Hero and Band Hero and Rock Revolution and DJ Band Rock Hero and then pick up a guitar without any prior experience, you still won't have any idea how to play except how to hold the thing. Playing Guitar Hero solely will not ever teach you how to play an instrument ever ever.
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Just wait till Wii Crap comes out. It's the sim to end all sims.