Posted in: Musicouching by Miguel San Juan on May 13th, 2010 | 0 Comments
Music Games have been a staple of popular culture for the past few years, but copyright scams and other legal issues have brought their slowly-dwindling reputation down even further.
In the early days of music games, they were thought of as “those games that let you be a rockstar.” The fantasy was finally brought into your living room, and sales were off the charts. Lately, however, the over-saturation of games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero have made hardcore gamers look down and scowl. How many more fancy pieces of guitar-shaped plastic do we need to buy?
Specialty games like Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and The Beatles: Rock Band have brought a diverse set of songs into the mix, but the addition of Jimmy Eat Poop (sorry, World) and Linkin Park into every single game has made these once-stellar games into somewhat of a joke. Alternative rock is, contrary to popular belief, not the only genre of music.
As a music fanatic/nerd, if you will, I appreciate the long hours of work the developers of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises have done, but we do not need a spin-off of every single game! Rock Band released 8 new titles in 2009. Eight. Ocho. The market is being drowned by its own friend. Sure, Rock Band made gamers out of the young, the elderly, and everyone with a console, but that doesn’t mean they can go on to release 8 games in one year. I, for instance, only heard of two, maybe three of the games in the first place. Terrible advertising and the inability to use that other plastic drum set in your house equals bad sales.
Some may argue that oversaturation is a myth, they might say that if music games are oversaturating the market, then that just means that any popular genre does the same. Sure, Xbox Live and PSN house hundreds of First Person Shooters, but at least we know that developers are slowly running out of innovative ways to make a shooter. Music Games, however, are much different. Developers don’t know when and where to stop. They could make a Rock Band game based on any band in the universe, and they still wouldn’t quit. The fact is, music games are finished. Sure, they’ll keep pumping out specialized games based on bands that attract only a select crowd of people, but their window of opportunity is closing. Sales are disappearing, fans have been gone for a while, and NO, I will not buy another plastic instrument.
R.I.P., Guitar Hero (playing Sweet Child of Mine never gets old, unlike the rest of the songs).
R.I.P., Rock Band (I always liked you more).
