The Upcoming Breakup of the Rock Band

On September 9, 2009, retailers around the world will open boxes of The Beatles: Rock Band and dispense its hotly anticipated goodness into the hands of thousands of fans of the band and the music rhythm game genre. The game will likely be feted as the pinnacle of nearly a half-decade’s worth of game devoted to playing plastic instruments to emulate various songs.

And then, where will we go from there?

Believe it or not, it has only been four years since Harmonix unleashed the now wildly-popular (and now Neversoft developed) Guitar Hero series, and just two years since Electronic Arts took the next step and brought (most of) the rest of the band into the fold. Yet, as things tend to be with games that see sequels made annually, the genre is quickly growing stale, aided by a relatively-shallow “good music” pool, an ever-increasing downloadable content service, and the finite potential of the genre, which is contingent on “good music” being available and more elaborate ways to allow players to feel like they’re playing a real instrument without them actually playing a real instrument.

Guitar Hero World Tour set a dangerous precedent in the latter case. By expanding the drum set to five pads (from Rock Band’s four), the developers intentionally aimed for the “most realistic drum experience ever in a video game”. For gamers, the obvious, corporate nature of this change was to impress upon players that, “Hey, why play with a drum kit that has only four pads? It doesn’t even look like a real drum kit; it has no cymbals!” But the subtle, underlying tone of this move was to set the precedent that if things are getting too stale, just add another button for them to press. Skeptical? Guitar Hero: Metallica allows you to plug in a second drum pedal. Time will only tell how long before someone makes a guitar controller with a sixth fret.

The obvious end-game here is that the genre is doomed, ultimately, regardless of how many buttons we’re expected to press, songs we’re given to play, or even instruments we get to choose from. Therein lies the rub: instead of playing this game of releasing sequels while slowly-but-surely making little changes – and, mind you, I’ve gotten tired enough of playing sequels with only minor changes in them; see: EA’s NHL Hockey series – shouldn’t we be expecting a little more by now? Surely, I jest. The expendable-income, stay-at-home all day, download-every-new-song twenty-somethings are happy to munch up everything in front of them, in a twist of cruel fate that those who played Pac-Man all those years ago recognize simply as a new brand of Pac-Man Fever. Instead of virtually munching those power pellets, we’re doing it in real life, $1.99 at a time.

(I digress. Maybe I’m a little bitter as I see those aforementioned, care-free, blow-my-spare-change days that are now so distant in my life’s rear-view mirror. Just kidding; I’m only 25.)

One of the other horsemen of the apocalypse of this particular subset in the music/rhythm genre is the rapidly-diminishing music selection. I was not at all surprised that there was a (mostly) band-specific game (the aforementioned Guitar Hero: Metallica), but I was surprised when it would be the Beatles who EA would ensnare for its counterattack to Neversoft. It has been well written that even a band like Led Zeppelin – a band whose songs fans have been clamoring for since these games started taking off – would not be so easily coerced into handing over its masters. Surely, not the Beatles?

Nevertheless, the most recent releases of Guitar Hero and Rock Band (and the other titles forthcoming) highlight the impending butchering of this cash cow. Between the five Guitar Hero titles and the three Rock Band titles, I’d estimate there have been about 800 total songs both on the games themselves and available for download. Please forgive my crotchety, “you-whipper-snappers-and-your-punk-rock-emo-nerdcore music”, but I have a hard time imagining myself enjoying playing more than 250 of those songs since a large percentage of them are from the last twenty years of rock and roll. And I use the term “rock and roll” loosely, because it barely resembles what was considered rock and roll forty years ago. (I did mention I’m 25, right?)

What I’m getting at is this: Brian Bright, project manager for Guitar Hero 5, has stated that the track-list for the game will consist mostly of music from the last ten years. That gives me the impression that they’re running out of “good music” for their games.

Of course, I’ve been slowly feeling wedged out of the genre as I’ve seen the track-lists for the games I have played. For every Jethro Tull, there’s been a Rise Against. For every Bad Company, a Paramore (WHO???). Wings, Modest Mouse. Maybe it’s a case of being too old for my age, but none of the music from the last twenty years excites me as much as hearing The Doors, Aerosmith, The Who, even Metallica. That’s why these band-specific games have been a godsend thus far. I need games for specific bands (:eagletear: @ no Who-specific game, despite their prevalence in already-released games), that way I can stay out of the way of those young whipper-snappers I groan at so much.

It is fitting, then, that the upcoming Beatles game is not going to be available for the PlayStation 2. I did so well up to now, still being able to play without having to drop an additional $300+ on a new console. It is also fitting that I just so happen to be on a Beatles kick, one that will likely last me through the release of the game and somewhat beyond. I’m sure there’s no conspiracy involved; Pink Floyd doesn’t have a game specifically for them, after all.

Not yet, anyway…