Read original Peripheral vision opinion piece
When moral panic rabble-rouser Jack Thompson denounced violent video games as “murder simulators”, the gaming community rolled its collective eyeballs with exasperated derision. The suggestion is patently absurd – playing an FPS is absolutely nothing whatsoever like firing a real gun at real people and really killing them.
There’s no keyboard, mouse, or controller in the universe that’s going to give anything even remotely resembling a recoil kick either. It’s an experience, sensible people will all agree, that’s entirely divorced from reality. It’s just a game, right?
Why then, I wonder, do so many of these same sensible people denounce rhythm games as “guitar simulators” with all the presumptuous impunity of that Floridian cretin? “It’s not like a real guitar,” writes Dan Parmenter elsewhere on this site. “Buy a real one and stop pretending.” Thanks for that electrifying bolt of reality, Dan the Man. I really had no idea. On that note, I’d better chuck Call of Duty 4 and go buy myself a real M16 so I can get down to shooting some real people in the real face too. I am so over this pretending stuff.
It’s a dreary irony that the people calling rhythm games out as “simulators” are always those same people who don’t (won’t!) play them. I can say with some confidence that there’s not a single Guitar Hero or Rock Band player on the planet who thinks the game is anything at all like playing a real guitar.
Guitars have frets and strings, for starters, and anyone with eyes knows this. Since Guitar Hero players must necessarily have eyes, I think we can reasonably presuppose a meaningful demographic consolidation over there. Presuming to remind anyone that Guitar Hero is “just a game” is every bit as disingenuous, redundant, and thoroughly obnoxious as pointing out that playing Call of Duty is “not like shooting a real gun, you know”.
It’s already, like, really obvious.
The reason rhythm gaming is an unstoppable industry juggernaut in gaming right now is not because it’s deluding generations of stupid people into believing they’re bonafide shredders. It’s because Guitar Hero and Rock Band are buckets of the fun stuff. It’s a real game, Dissenting Dan. Stop pretending it isn’t.
Footnote: I’ve been playing guitar for 17 years. My mad strumming skills and fast fingers had me playing on Expert difficulty while everyone else was still mucking about in Medium. Go me!
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