Guitar Villain

One of the benefits of being an adult whose kids are pretty much out of the house is that you become blissfully detached from computer gaming trends. Not ignorant of them, mind you. That's almost impossible. But you don't have to buy the games, watch people play them, or worry about them corrupting your child or your home computer. And you don't have to play them. My son was the only of my two kids who ever devoted a significant amount of time to computer games. It's been a few years now since he has gone on to better things. So I've missed the latest, and in my mind most ridiculous of the computer gaming trends: music video games, or what I call "cyber air-guitar". The games are available for several instruments (guitar, drums), voice ("air karaoke"), and even dance steps, but most people, it seems, want to be in a rock band; they want to be guitar heroes.

In case you live in a cave, here is what the latest computer game trend is all about. Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band give you a fake instrument that has several sensors on it. For example, for the "guitar", there is a sensor on the guitar's body near where a real guitarist would strike or pluck the strings. But there are no strings on a cyber-air guitar. There are also sensors on the neck, but these are generally limited to a few color-coded buttons or sectors. There are nowhere near as many spots for the cyber-air guitarist to "play" as there are string/fret combinations on the neck of a real guitar. The music for the most popular of the music games is primarily head-banging metal music. The player watches the screen whereon a long, moving version of the neck continually scrolls toward him as the song plays. The "notes" that the guitarist must play are shown as oncoming colored dots corresponding to the colored sensors on the neck of the guitar. The player must strike the "strings" sensor on the guitar's body and the correct colored "fret" sensors on the neck within a small window of time near when the real notes come along in the music. There are are provisions in the game for sustaining notes, playing "chords", and other pseudo-musical effects. Cyber-air guitarists are not really trying to play music, even primitively, along with a recorded song. They are simply trying to learn and repeat patterns. A player makes progress in the games (i.e. gets farther along in his "tour") by "surviving" songs (i.e. not getting booed off the stage by his cyber-fans), and he does this by accurately memorizing, anticipating, and "playing" the oncoming notes on the scroll screen. So there is really not much musical about the games, except in the department that is most woefully lacking in almost all aspiring musicians: rhythm. The games are really rhythmic pattern memorization games.

But people go to great lengths to memorize some very rapid and difficult patterns. They probably put enough time and effort into the games that if they'd spent it on a real instrument, they'd actually be getting somewhere, learning something lasting. After all, real musical training, especially on a guitar, does involve repetitive exercises: scales, chord progressions, arpeggios, picking techniques, etc. They all involve muscle memory. But musical training takes much more, and much of what it takes holds an unflattering mirror to the student. He hears how badly he's playing: the incorrectly played note, the sloppy technique, the lousy rhythm, and the unimaginative and "unmusical" phrasing. With games like Guitar Hero, all the player hears is the real music (maddeningly, over and over again), as he attempts to maximize a rather one-dimensional metric of performance.

As with other computer games, musical video games substitute a low-dimensional, low fidelity activity for the real thing. And they stifle imagination. Real guitar is a lot of work, but its rewards are satisfying and lasting. Heck, even "real" air-guitar takes some imagination.

You can teach a computer to play Guitar Hero quite well. Probably better than any human. It doesn't need to play over and over again and memorize. A computer can be rigged up with cameras and sensors to "see' the scrolling screen and execute, via cleverly controlled actuators, very complex patterns exactly right, the first time. The person who put together the robotic Guitar Hero shown below really accomplished something.

[HT - 21st Century Paladin]

Comments

[Chris]

A while back I was at a Best Buy with my older daughter Sarah. She convinced me to try Guitar Hero. Never having played it, I was terrible.

But I did get some smiles from those around me. I'm sure they were thinking "Rock on, gramps!"

[Ben]

Interesting article, Marty. Spoken like someone who has never actually played any of the games being described, though. As the only (to the best of my knowledge) gamer 'round these parts, though, let me chime in: virtually all computer games suffer from the problems you're indicating here: that the game boils down to pattern recognition and muscle memory. That's only a problem in the abstract, though. Having played Guitar Hero, and having an appreciation for gaming in general, I can say that the most important factor is this: it's fun. It's most fun in a group setting, of course, because your friends and family can all gather 'round and tell you how bad you suck at the game, and you get to return the favor when it's their turn. But even "flying solo", it's still fun.

There's certainly no random component to the games you mentioned in particular, as the notes never change for a given song on a given difficulty setting (the best I can muster is "normal", which is second lowest setting). But even in games with a random component (say, the Civilization series of games, where battle outcomes are determined from both a deterministic and a stochastic component), the underlying mechanism, when described dispassionately, seems very very boring. ("Wow, that game must suck. All you do is pair up random variables with different means and variances, produce a single realization of each of those variables, and see which one is larger.").

Then again, for nerds like me, the math almost becomes the fun part. Take my personal addiction, World of Warcrack. A player character's potential is determined by a wide array of personal statistics governed largely by the equipment that character is wearing. It then becomes a massive (sometimes multiobjective -- common objectives being maximizing both survivability (how much damage you can take) and damage dealt to a target per second) optimization problem. In fact, I know someone who was a one-time player who got so obsessed with the optimization problem that he stopped playing altogether to develop a computer model of his damage output in order to optimize it.

But I digress. Like any hobby, gaming exists because a critical mass of people find it an enjoyable way to pass their time. The "if they only spent that time doing something real, they'd be on to something!" argument falls flat, because it applies to virtually any activity: like watching sports? If only you spent that time playing sports instead of watching them, you'd be in great shape! Like playing sports? If only you'd spent that time studying the sport, you could be a highly-paid coach! Fine wine collector? If only you invested that money in your own winery, you could be a famous vintner! Philatelist or numismatist? Well, then you're just a pathetic nerd, and probably bring shame to your dear sweet mother.

Really, any hobby is just a "virtual" analog to some "real" activity -- otherwise, it'd be a job. Gaming just takes that virtuality a bit more literally.

[Marty]

Great comment, Ben. Of course, I was hoping for such from you in particular when I baited my hook with the big, stinking gob of limburger, corn, and chicken guts. (Have you ever gone carp fishing?) I particularly like the imagery you brought to mind for Warcrack of, instead of dueling avatars, dueling and evolving probability density functions, multidimensional objective functions, etc.

I think you're relying on the "cultural" relativism and moral equivalence arguments a bit here. Not all activities that we pursue, even in our leisure time, are equal. Some are edifying (reading and listening to music in an engaged way), some build us up in other ways (exercise, nature walks, socializing). The biggest thing I have against computer games (and believe me, though not a junkie like you, I've wasted more than my share of time on them) is that the skills they help you develop are ephemeral, and they aren't good for anything else. When you get good at Guitar Hero, you are good at that bunch of patterns, and maybe games that ask for similar things. But in a couple of years, Guitar Hero will be yesterday's mashed potatoes and you won't have retained anything at all from it. When you read a good book, you learn something. When you listen to good music, you learn something. And in both cases, it's usually something of lasting value. When you try to play a musical instrument, you learn not only a technique for manipulating, say, wood and wire. You learn about music. You gain a new appreciation for the music you hear, and for the people who play it.

About 15 years or so ago, my family was young and we didn't have too much money. At one point, we came into a little scratch and were trying to decide what "family item" to invest in. The two things that came to the table were a computer and a used piano. We didn't yet have a home PC, and that was at a time when a decent one would have been over $1500. It was also at a time when home computer technology was evolving so rapidly that any computer we would have bought would have been woefully obsolete within 6 months. The piano was something we knew we could use for decades afterward. The hardware required minimal care. The software never needed updating. And the piano would provide joy to more than just the person playing it. We chose the piano. My wife finally got her own piano, something she'd been without for years.Our kids learned music on it. I even used it to supplement my understanding of the guitar. And it still gives us joy. The computer we would have bought would have been in a landfill for over a decade now.

Not all activities have to be edifying, or have some higher purpose. But computer games are immense time killers, best not to get addicted to.

[Chris]

Ben,

That was a very persuasive justification for wasting time. Well done!

I've been on both sides of the gaming aisle. In the late 80s I wasted countless hours mastering the Mac game "Dark Castle". You're right, I did it because it was fun (as well as challenging). Now, I could care less about most computer games.

I think there may be an age factor here. People tend to outgrow games. I'm not saying that's good or bad, hell, people outgrow sex.

[Marty]

Wasting time is almost necessary to stay sane. I'm kind of glad I've broken the habit of wasting the vast, heaping, trackless swaths of time that computer games can suck up.

Some people outgrow sex. Until they discover nursing home sex.

[hank]

PEOPLE OUTGROW SEX?
If I'm found in the outgrow sex zone,
Box me up and ship me home.
Pin my medals on my chest,
Tell my Ma I did my best.

[Ben]

This thread has taken a tack with which I am entirely uncomfortable.

To rebut Marty: What I think you're describing is the act of gaming taken to excess. A healthy gaming habit fosters good interpersonal relationships, hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills, quick thinking, and, yes, muscle-memory stimulation. What you've done is a bit unfair, and very much a straw-man line of reasoning: "I declare that there's only ONE benefit of gaming, which is ephemeral, while all these other activities have all these great intangible or long-lasting benefits. Gaming is an inferior hobby, QED." I could easily perform the same exercise on the hobbies you mention.

Any activity, when taken to excess, yields bad fruit. Μηδεν αγαν, as the greeks were wont to say. Don't get me wrong; I'm not disputing that certain activities have greater or lesser worth than others. I'm just claiming that you're giving gaming-as-a-hobby short shrift.

[Ben]

I also meant to add in my first comment: that GH-playing-robot makes my brain hurt. They made a robot... controlled by a computer... to interact with a physical controller... to play a game... run on a computer. Rube Goldberg, please call your office.

[Marty]

A couple of points, Ben: In my experience, computer gaming is a lot like smoking cigarettes. I've met lots of people who have tried it and haven't liked it. I've met a few who only smoke when they go out to bars. But, I've met many who are hooked and wish they could quit. Computer games plug into an obsessive/addictive part of the brain. They're hard not to play to excess.

I grant you that computer games can be a fun, mindless release. Some can be fun when played in groups (and so can darts, and foosball, and bowling). They will increase certain motor skills. So, to an extent, my argument is an exaggeration. But their benefits are mostly ephemeral and mostly limited to that particular game, or games like them.

But your argument in the second-last paragraph of your first comment is likewise an exaggeration: taking a string of activities to the nth degree sort of flattens distinctions, relativizes everything. Of course, even when you're doing something good you can always be doing something better. Does that mean then that, everything is equally trite or meaningless, or that nothing is worth doing? Does it mean that the better things are meaningless because they're not the best things? I don't think we all need to enter a monastery and only pursue the highest things. I'm just countering by saying I like a different kind of balance. I've tried computer games, spent too much time on them, and they have virtually no payoff outside the games themselves. If I want that kind of diversion, I'll watch football, a game played by humans. If I want pure entertainment, I'll watch a movie, which are still largely the creations of humans. But If I'm going to try to engage my brain or master something, I like doing things that relax or divert me and that have some payoff outside the thing itself. So, I'll read, write, or listen to or try to play music.

[Ben]

That's because you're a drunken, chain-smoking Nazi, Marty.

There. Started a flame war AND Godwinned the thread all in one fell swoop!

[Marty]

Oh, yeah? Well you're a mouth-breathing, snake-handling, gap-toothed meth-addict shit farmer! And I mean that only in the nicest way.

[Ben]

Hey, that was out of line! You know I'm sensitive about my mouth breathing ever since my brother broke my nose when I was 6 years old...

[Marty]

Oh, did I forget to mention? Your mother sniffs bicycle seats and your father is a devotee of Turkish prison literature!

[HankinNC]

NNA===IT'S EVERYWHERE!