Stewart: Video game no match for the real thing
Rather than playing ‘Guitar Hero’, it’s better to purchase the real thing
By Ross Stewart (Contact)
Thursday, November 1st, 2007
I’m not the typical college guy. The bane of my existence is not the idea of a full night’s sleep with an alarm clock set for eight. What I truly abhor in my college life is one thing alone: “Guitar Hero.”
If you’re not fluent with “Guitar Hero,” let me explain it to you. It’s a video game played via a guitar-shaped controller with which one matches five colored buttons in rhythm with coinciding colors on screen to play a guitar part of a once popular song. Sounds fun right? No, no it is not.
As both a guitar player and college student, I hate this game. This is college. This is where every guy in an English class raises his hand when the class is asked who plays guitar.
This is why the concept baffles me so. One should go out and learn to play a real guitar instead of playing a sad imitation. What happened to pride?
As a guitar player I hate it even more. The game isn’t about playing guitar, it’s about matching colors in tempo—I’m convinced it’s actually harder to do than playing a real guitar.
The weirdest thing to me is that guys enjoy playing a guitar in part because of the attention it earns them from women; guitar playing can be a self-indulgent activity, one sometimes preferable to sex, even though it can eventually lead to it.
Yet, this game does not impel women to talk to you. In fact it can turn many of them away. A man looks rather ridiculous holding a plastic imitation guitar playing along to “Welcome to the Jungle.” How’s anyone going to make that look sexy?
A few of my friends disagree with me on this and have told me to compare it to other video games, like “Grand Theft Auto” for instance, where one can do something that they couldn’t normally do in real life by just matching symbols with positioning.
But the major flaw in that is I can go buy a gun and jack a person relatively easily, if not as easily as in “Grand Theft Auto,” while “Guitar Hero” is far more difficult than playing an actual guitar (plus an individual is way cooler for playing a real guitar).
Recently “Guitar Hero III” came out on various video game systems. My roommate purchased it. I watched as several of his friends and he thoroughly destroyed the game—they owned it (to put it in non-shredder terms, they did quite well).
While I watched them I sort of zoned out and became mesmerized by the flashing colors and wicked guitar lines until my eyes landed upon their fingers. They were all playing that game faster than I can play guitar now with eight years under my belt. I started to think about how accomplished they would all be as players if they actually picked up a guitar and learned some basic theory.
I think “Guitar Hero” ruins the drive for people to learn to play the guitar. Who wants to practice something that doesn’t have flashy colors or high scores to beat nowadays?
So have fun with your imitation rocking, I’ll be over here doing the real deal. That is unless you’d like to pick up the real deal, if so I completely support your decision.
Stewart is a Wichita junior in journalism.
Discussion
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My boyfriend plays Guitar Hero AND real guitar. It's just a game. Lighten up!
Mr. Stewart, I completely and totally agree with your statements. Why spend countless hours learning to play a video game when you can learn to play the real thing or possibly devoting more time to craft more worthwhile? As a guitar player myself I believe that guitar hero is only contributing to the decay of our civilization. Goodnight!
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