My house rings with the rockin’ sound-track of Guitar Hero III … except when I’m playing. Then it sort of grinds along like a snail on a cheese grater.
For those of unfamiliar with the Guitar Hero video game franchise — both of you — let me fill you in. Guitar Hero is a game in which you can rock out just like Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix or Peter Tork … if any of them had played a plastic guitar with brightly-colored buttons and no strings. Clever players are rewarded with simulated applause from the simulated crowd in the simulated rock club. Bad players…well, until I played, my family didn’t know that the simulated crowd could boo you off-stage in a very real way.
My performance was so bad the game refused to let me finish. I had to hand the little plastic guitar to another (better) player.
I found this a little odd because in High School I was an absolutely awesome air guitar player. At the drop of a hat, I could crank out a rendition of the Immigrant Song that would bring tears to people’s eyes.
Really.
(It was particularly awesome when someone actually played the Immigrant Song on a convenient eight-track player and I pounded out its relentless rhythm on my very own, invisible Stratocaster.)
I will be the first to admit that my two years of guitar lessons in middle school had the same positive effect on my skills as two years of swimming had on my ability to breathe water.
Despite my near constant lack of effort, I never got any better at guitar playing. That part of my brain which is coordinates my fingers with a particular beat and chord arrangement never developed.
At least, with the air guitar, I had the comforting illusion that I could play.
Except now some uppity video game has to go and tell me that I’m doing it wrong. The king is dead and he’s not even allowed to finish his set.
Video games have ruined more than just simple pastimes like air guitar. Playing a board game with a computer as the arbiter has all of the fun of playing at a professional tournament.
At about the age of twelve I developed a simple, amazing, surefire strategy for winning at Monopoly.
I cheated.
When I played with my friends Eric and Jimmy, I carefully hid a few extra bills in any convenient place … under the board, behind my back, in a pocket … and just when they thought they had me beaten, the extra cash would appear (government bail-out style) and I’d be back in the game. In the interest of complete honesty, I have to note that I never actually won this way. When I whipped out the money, Eric and Jimmy would switch from Monopoly and start playing Mob Enforcer on my ribcage. The point is, a video-game version wouldn’t ever let you hide any money. Everything you had would be out where everybody could see it. What’s the fun in that?
More to the point, if the guys from Enron had been forced to play like that when they were kids would they have turned out the way they did?
Well. Okay. So maybe there’s some benefit to being forced to follow the rules. But what about the games where the rules are more loosely defined?
When I was about ten I played a lot of games in the genre of “and”; Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, Whigs and Tories, Democrats and Republicans, and Guys and Dolls. The theme of these games was conflict between two groups with longstanding, irreconcilable differences. These differences were generally resolved with the use of small-caliber firearms (or barring that) sticks shaped vaguely like small-caliber firearms. We ran around the neighborhood indiscriminately pointing our sticks at one another and making loud pew-pew noises. By mutual unspoken agreement, none of us ever took a serious hit until we were tired of running and ready to lay down in the grass for a few minutes. Nobody kept score, but everybody agreed that a fine, dramatic death was a wonderful thing to accomplish. The dying player would stiffen like he’d stepped on a high voltage line; screw his face into an expression combining the elements of tragedy, honor and dignity (making him look more than anything like he was suffering intestinal distress); and then drop delicately to the ground while rolling to avoid any surprises left by one of the neighborhood mutts.
When someone died like that, we all stood in awe and wished (just for a moment) that we’d been the one to take the fatal hit.
In the world of video games, there’s no beauty or angst and players are never rewarded for an elegant death. All that matter is winning and the game itself is the final arbiter of who gets hit and who gets to keep playing. Good guys, bad guys, bystanders and bullets are all rendered in glorious, thirty-two-bit graphics.
The joy of playing Army Men was that I got to crawl through the underbrush, pretending to be one of the heroes I saw in the movies. (Although I must admit that at four-foot-three with a voice that registered in the soprano range I was a poor substitute for the Duke.)
With video games, kids get to be exactly what they are told they will be. Character choices are limited to the games’ pre-built suggestions. It’s the same thing you’ll find in the corporate world when you get to hire on as the new accountant, new marketing guy, or new office assistant. Everything is laid out, organized, pre-planned, and foreordained. You’ll be what the machine wants you to be.
Which is why I’ve unplugged Guitar Hero and switched back to my comfortable, old air guitar. It’s not as fancy, but when I’m playing it … I ROCK!
