The day the music (game genre) died

On April 2, 2013, Harmonix officially stopped releasing new songs for their successful Rock Band series of games. It feels that the music game genre died with it and people hanging up their plastic guitars, wrapping up their USB mics and covering up their fake drum kits. Or putting them in large boxes.

Or one huge box if you got the special edition!

But what makes the games a success in the first place? If you think about it, you not only have to pay for the game, you gotta buy the fake plastic instruments as well (which don’t come cheap). The most common issue that the casual person has when they see you strumming on your guitar with colorful buttons or slamming your sticks on fake drums is that you would be better off learning a real instrument, right?

For me, the main point of the music game genre was just the feeling of rocking out to your favorite song. I know it’s difficult to learn to play any instrument and actually get good at it. Imagine going through all the lessons on how to play a real guitar, then learning all of the chords on a song like playing Guns ‘N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” That would take days or even months.

Took me 10 minutes to play the entire song with Guitar Hero 2.

I’m not trying to downplay the efforts of those who took the time to learn how to play an instrument. I would like to learn to play the guitar and learn to wail on the drums but I haven’t because of a simple reason.

I’m lazy.

I don’t have an excuse for not learning. I just haven’t put in the time to really learn how… or actually buy an instrument. But I do want the feeling of being able to pretend that I can play an instrument and the music genre games allowed me to do that… even if I did have to spend a lot of money on the games and the fake plastic instruments.

Still missing the keyboard, though.

I have a strange inkling that a lot of people felt the same way as well. That’s why they were so popular for a time. But, as all crazes go, they start to fade off. I’m not sure what happened. I guess it was the same reason why I don’t take out my plastic drums that often now; it just felt like the same thing over and over again. Sure, a new song may come out and I would download and play it. But eventually I would feel that I would be playing the same thing again.

I even tried to learn the guitar for real using Rock Band 3’s guitar tutorial with the Fender Mustang. It’s the one with, oh, I don’t know, a hundred buttons to simulate the real guitar? I was thinking, “Hey, it’s a video game and I like video games! Maybe I can learn how to play with it!”

Sorry… it has 102 buttons. And that’s just on the fretboard.

I was right. It turns out that learning to play a guitar, even in Rock Band 3, will take some time. I do know now how to contort my hand to play the more basic chords but I have a long way to go.

Still, even with my continuous learning, I still real sad that the music game genre is essentially dead, at least in the United States. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to download American Pie since it sounds awesome.