The Decline of Music Video Games

While they reigned as champion of the reflex based game, record labels like Road Runner really cashed in on their popularity. One of the bigger bands shopped was their relatively unknown Dragonforce, who’s track “Through the Fire and Flames”, was an unlockable song that only players who mastered the video game could hear. This lead to their current fame, and massive popularity. Other musicians also enjoyed a resurgence such as Buckethead; who also watched his song “Jordon” go from obscurity to popular knowledge; Slash also became a household name again, and appeared to be everywhere doing large events.

The guitar based games eventually started to add music that was hardly guitar centric. While fans vigorously defended it against insults slung by actual musicians, this is hardly the case anymore. With too many games on the market, and too many special band editions, the community of wanna be rock stars ended up getting divided into niche editions. With it taking weeks of practice to master a song on the hardest difficulty, the “coveted” skill of plastic guitar playing became specific song specializations. This diminished the pseudo skill, and squashed a lot of desire, and interests players had in mastering them.

The end came this year when Activision announced it would no longer be producing Guitar Hero games. The impact that these games had on popular music though isn’t unnoticeable though. Many guitar centric bands have stepped into the lime light, out from the days when the guitar solo was dead, and guitar centric music only had limited audiences comprised of guitar players.

As of now, the fans are just going to have to learn how to actually play instruments, and other games that combine those two aspects do exist. Ubisoft’s Rocksmith claims to be the authentic guitar game. This one only works with real instruments, and actually allow users to learn the music in front of them. This is encouraging, because it removes the main criticisms of the guitar hero games, and anyone who can play the songs in the game, can also preform them out in the real world. The company is currently offering 25 dollars towards a real guitar with the purchase of the game.

In the end a lot of people learned to appreciate music an another level, and while this may not be the end of the simple plastic versions, it may well be the beginning of a new era. One where the average person knows how to play their favorite songs, and the bar is raised for our rock stars. Regardless, it’s a good departure from the fake video game bands, and those events where people would gather and give a person with a plastic instrument the fanaticism of a real artist.