When the video game Rock Band was released last year, it reset the baseline for music games. Guitar Hero, which established the market for such games in North America, is still popular, but players can only take on the guise of a guitarist. With Rock Band, gamers can play bass, drums, or even vocals.
The competition - this is not your grandmother's Sunday afternoon piano recital - has sparked a spate of innovation within the music game genre.
Both games have upgraded to fully wireless instrument controllers, and this fall's release of Guitar Hero World Tour - scheduled for Oct. 26 - includes drums and vocals as part of the game play. That game's big step, though, is in giving eager gamers the opportunity to become music makers. Using the guitar and drum controllers, players can compose and record original songs in Music Studio, and share them with the world using GHTunes.
Greg LoPiccolo, vice president of product development for Rock Band developer Harmonix, says that the idea of incorporating user-generated content is a big developmental focus for his team. "But we're going to have our own ways of going about it," he says. "Our primary interest is not so much in composing music ... but in performing music." He talks about players being able to make musical decisions in real time that have game play and musical consequences. Essentially, improvising.
Rock Band 2, which is available now for Xbox 360 and ships for PS3 on Oct. 19, could also be used to make full-on music videos. LoPiccolo says that the guts of the game include many tools to control lights, fog effects, cameras, and even animated stage props. "If you could put it under the user's control you could do some amazing stuff," he admits.
Call it virtual training for roadies and and lighting designers.
Guitar Hero, meanwhile, is looking at adding even more instruments and expanding the musical genres it covers. Guitar Hero Nashville? "A lot of people are asking for it," says Kai Huang, president and co-founder of Guitar Hero publisher RedOctance, a division of Activision.
Even the rock stars, it seems, want to unleash their inner rock star. Huang says that professional musicians have told him that they appreciate being able to rock out to a completely different type of music than they normally play.
LoPiccolo says his group have very spirited arguments about what songs are going to be added to the Rock Band set list. "We're like the curators of rock," he says.
The success of music games - Huang says the genre has grown from US$250 million in 2006 to $US1.2 billion in 2007 and expects to breach US$2 billion this year - is also creating new musicians. Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk One Music [www.nettwerk.com/], expects that ten years from now there will be fifty times more guitar players - who know how to play a melody - than there are now.
Pushing five buttons on a guitar-shaped controller is not the same as learning chord progressions on a real guitar, he admits, but McBride says that playing the video game creates a desire to pursue music on another level. "Kids are connecting with music on a much deeper level than they have in the last 15 years," he says.
The Rock Band forums, says LoPiccolo, are filled with people who gained an appreciation for playing music and have purchased real instruments as a result.
"Songs are simply emotions," says McBride. "When a fan attaches their emotion, part of their life to that song, they make it their own." Being able to perform that song, to interact directly with it, makes that connection even greater. McBride calls it "emotional glue".
McBride believes that music is a social interaction, which is why his company encourages fans to engage with songs and artists, whether that is accomplished by releasing DRM-free digital music or putting raw Sarah McLachlan tracks on her MySpace page [www.myspace.com/sarahmclachlan] and asking fans to remix her songs.
Nettwerk artists Barenaked Ladies [www.bnlmusic.com/] were the first band to release to the public the stems of their songs before the album of those songs was being sold. Stems are the individual layers or components of a song that are mixed into a final arrangement. The Ladies also include a Guitar Hero competition in their annual boat cruise, Ships & Dip, a concert holiday in which fans travel with the musicians. "Ed Robertson always ends up in the final four," says McBride, "but never wins. And he's a great guitar player and knows all the songs. And he practices for it."
The stereotype of video games being an individual pursuit has been put to rest by social games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. "People love listening to music," says Huang, "but more and more they love the interaction."
McBride thinks something fascinating happens when different players in different parts of the world can come together to play music as simply as they can with Guitar Hero and Rock Band. "Then we've gone from social within your own tribe to social within the worldwide tribe," says McBride. "And that could be an amazing thing for breaking down barriers."