People // Vijith A. // Blog

The stodgy old musicians of the world, a group with which I am increasingly comfortable sympathizing as this all unfolds, have all been busy perfecting the art of the long-form conniption fit ever since Guitar Hero was released in 2005. Rightfully so: as if we weren't already losing enough would-be competent citizens to the allure of virtual pastimes -- gamers being a group with which, thankfully, I can no longer identify -- the various Harmonix hellspawn are undoubtedly responsible for sucking the enthusiasm of many aspiring musicians (possibly even double-digit percentages?) down a path that leaves even its most dedicated disciples with nothing but sore thumbs and HI SCORES. Food for thought: the price of the Rock Band bundle with all the various instrument controllers is roughly commensurate with a Squier starter kit, which is where I cut my own pubescent teeth years ago.

As much as I love grumbling across generational gaps, though, I also quite enjoy watching said conniption fits, so let's take a moment to look at the latest developments in the pretend-music world:

• The Beatles: Rock Band is on the way. Like the other band-specific special edition games we've already seen (Metallica, Aerosmith, etc), this will slosh the music of the Fab Four atop the usual button-mashing and living room windmills. The stunning thing about this to me, though, is that the video game might come before the music is available for online purchase; at best, they'll be concurrent. Then again, maybe the first is an adequate substitute for the second, depending how this remastering project works out. At the very least, I'm glad Sir Paul was able to smack the franchise back into secondary billing -- we're looking at The Beatles: Rock Band as opposed to, say, Guitar Hero: Metallica.
• DJ Hero, due this fall, is gearing up to bring the, um, magic, to the hip hop market, er, fanbase. Now, I'm not personally among the rockist cadre that discounts outright the musical merits of DJ's, but remember, I'm trying to instigate a few seizures and hyperventilation episodes here, and as far as the aforementioned stodgy traditionalists are concerned, a pretend-music video game about pretending to be allegedly-pretend-musicians should be just the ticket. Personally, I'm more interested in the thought that since there's a reasonable amount of compatibility between the titles and accompanying equipment, we may be barreling toward a point in 2011 where all available game controllers will converge on Rock Band: Late 90's Nu-Metal.
• As of version 3.00, upstart DAW Reaper now accepts a variety of game controllers as MIDI controls, including -- you guessed it -- Guitar Hero axes. This is actually considerably less ridiculous than it sounds, at least on a technical level, since they're fairly simple USB devices. It's also a good idea since tactile input devices are so much more expressive and entertaining than pencil-draw mode. Still, there's a certain undeniable perversion here.

There's hope, though; maybe the latter will turn into a transitional device which can move gamer geeks from Activision to the DAW. Until that happens, though, please get off my lawn.