Reviews - The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5.

I've written a lot about music games. How saying people should learn an instrument instead of playing them is dumb. How I think the genre is kind of doomed. But I'll love them while they last.

I've spent a lot of time lately with The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5. I am not proud of it, but it keeps me from playing with my children, so it's time well spent.

REVIEW OF THE BEATLES: ROCK BAND!

It's like a Rock Band game, but it's all Beatles songs. Therefore, it is awesome.

(That's pretty much it. But there is one interesting thing. Rock Band has totally changed the way I listened to music. Instead of hearing the song with all the instruments mushed together, I find I now often listen to individual tracks. I'll listen to the bass for a while, then the drums, and so on. It's a side-effect of listening to the songs and paying attention to individual notes, and it's pretty cool.

Thanks to the game, I find that my Beatles albums sound fresh and different. And, considering that I've heard these songs so many times they're part of my DNA, that alone makes the game worth my sixty bucks.)

REVIEW OF GUITAR HERO 5

I've always had the subtle feeling that Guitar Hero games hate me. Guitar Hero 5 is a huge step forward. It hates me, but only a little bit.

It has a million songs. Two of them I was desperate to have in a music game. (Smells Like Teen Spirit. Bullet With Butterfly Wings. Both awesome.) And 999,998 that make me go, "Whuh? Who?" 29 of the games 85 tracks are from the last three years, and none of them make me feel that there is any point in humanity producing more music from this point on.

The party modes are totally excellent. Anyone can play any instrument. The harsh tyranny of ever having the "Who's gonna' have to play bass?" conversation is gone forever. The campaign is really relaxed ... you can play each song on any instrument at any difficulty. The individual songs in the campaign mode each have a special challenge attached to them (hit all the notes in a certain section, play a bass song with only upstrums, etc), and these are surprisingly fun. Everything is much more polished.

Also, you can play as Kurt Cobain. My current basic line-up is my XBox Live avatar and three Kurt Cobains. This is just as awesome and appalling as it sounds. Especially when I play Jessie's Girl. Which is daily.

Also, the ability to play Cobain or Johnny Cash keeps you from having to look at the default musician models, which are just as unpleasant as ever.

But then, there is the hate. The guitar songs always seems to be a little bit unnecessarily complicated and overcharted, as if the designers wanted to make my hand hurt. The Guitar Hero people also haven't picked up Rock Band's knack of only picking songs that are fun on all instruments. Sure, having Sympathy For the Devil on your music game sounds awesome. Then you realize that the song is basically piano and conga drums. It's as awful to play as it sounds.

And sometimes, the hate is just mischievous. You know. Playful hate. For example, they boldly answered the call of the multitudes and put in a song by 70s rock sensation Peter Frampton. And, of course, the only reasonable option was to go to a live album and pick out a song FIFTEEN MINUTES LONG. Thinking about teenage boys going head to head online and randomly getting this song make's me giggle.

But, overall, it's fun. I've played it a lot, something I can't say for Guitar Hero: World Tour. Plus, buying Guitar Hero V early netted me a free copy of Guitar Hero: Van Halen, which I got in the mail last week. It's an awesome game ... If I place the disc on my new coffee table and then set my drink on it, it does an excellent job of keeping the moisture from damaging the wood.

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We're Having a Sale.

Every year, we at Spiderweb Software hold a sale. It's a happy tradition we've carried on for all 15 years we've been in business. It's also a way of preserving my sanity. When we release a game, it sells a lot at first, but sales tail off quickly. A temporary discount gooses sales a little bit so that I get a break from freaking out as our cash reserves start to slip.

Then we release a new game and everything is OK. For a while.

We always make an effort to make the sale press releases funny. It makes it a lot more likely that web sites will print them. I'm not sure how professional it is, but it does get results. It's a pleasant perk of being alone and crazy.

Spiderweb Software October Sadness Sale!

October 1, 2009 - We at Spiderweb Software feel that it is being a long year. Continuing economic tumult. Everyone shouting at each other. The heat of summer fading into the winter's chill and damp. All it would take is an invasion of ravenous killer ants to truly make the year complete.

And this is why we feel that now, more than ever, is a good time to retreat into a fantasy world. And, if you can do it on the cheap, so much the better.

So, for the entire month of October, Spiderweb Software is having its Sadness Sale! Everything we sell is 10% off. A host of fine Indie fantasy role-playing games, for both Windows and Macintosh! The award-winning Avernum series. The just-released Geneforge saga, all on one disc. And remember, all of our games can be ordered on CD. It's a great chance to get a jump on the tiresome holiday shopping.

Still not sure? As always, all of our games have large, free demos. Stop on by!

Remember, nobody will hold it against you if you escape from reality for a little while. What's the point of being in the world if you can't drop out of it occasionally?

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Our Children Must Be Bred To Master Pokemon

Since I got a pretty positive reaction from my post last week about raising a child, I thought I'd say a bit more about that most blessed of childrens' fantasy entertainments: Pokemon.

When I was growing up a misunderstood little nerd in a small town, I had lavish daydreams in which I obtained joyous revenge on those kids (and teachers) who tormented me. I fantasized that, when they picked on me, I could summon a swarm of killer bees to terrify them.

Yes, that's right. Killer bees. Can you imagine anything so lame? So faceless and uninteresting? It makes me wish I could travel back in time to beat up my younger self and take my lunch money.

Happily, 21st century children are spared such indignity. When they feel put upon and need an imaginary friend to fight for them, they are provided with an assortment of AWESOME creatures. Whether you want your spirit animal to be a dragon, a yellow rat that can shoot lightning out of its ass, or a pink, orb-shaped pop singer, it's there for you. And you can get a card with a picture of it. And a stuffed version. And watch TV shows about it.

Do you think anyone would watch a half hour series about a swarm of killer bees that wandered around and learned valuable life lessons and made honey and occasionally totally stung some farmer? No. I don't either.

Remember, we live in the 21st century now. We don't grind our own wheat or make our own clothes or lance our own boils. Why should we make our own imaginary monsters? Especially when the Japanese will do it for us for entirely reasonable prices.

Pokemon provides both the awesomeness of loyal monster slaves and plenty of food for the child mind's odd desire to memorize long, meaningless strings of information. (Pokemon are the baseball statistics of the new millennium.) This odd world is the best thing we have provided for children since vaccination. If you don't understand the appeal of Pokemon, you don't understand childhood.

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More News About Avernum 6

I just posted on the Spiderweb forums more news about our newest game, Avernum 6. It's taken longer than it should have to give hard infoz, but the process of actually writing games tends to drain most of my energy.

More humor posts coming shortly.

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Properly Molding the Gamer Child

I grew up a serious gamer in a family of people who really, really weren't. I was, while loved, regarded as an oddity. A peculiar mutation. Harmless, as long as I was kept from sharp implements and encouraged to not discuss such concepts as "armor class" or "hit points" at great length.

But now I am, if the calendar is to be believed, an adult. And I am raising two small daughters (one 3, one 7) who are showing their own gamer instincts. Though, these days, their Pokemon and Nintendo obsessions only make them "normal."

However, as a gamer parent of gamers, I am finding that the rules of our household are different from what I grew up with.

For example, there is a sacred, almost sacrosanct right to be able to save one's game. When I need a daughter to put down her DS and do something, she always gets one or two minutes to save her progress first. It is only in the cases of extreme lateness or severe punishment that she is forced to shut off the game with her progress lost. It is the Ultimate Sanction.

(Also, when you quit Animal Crossing without saving and start up the game again later, a cute animal comes out and severely lectures you for your carelessness. It is in this way that I outsource my disciplinary duties to Nintendo.)

Also, my children are allowed to play educational games almost without limit. However, my ideas of what makes a game "educational" might differ from those of the stick-in-ass types that normally determine these things. My seven-year old girl is allowed to sing on Rock Band as much as she wants because it forces her to read the lyrics. Also, her cultural education will be incomplete without at least some exposure to Elvis Costello.

And I have long felt that high-end raiding in World of Warcraft has a strong educational component. It requires strong organizational and teamwork skills, not to mention people management. At least, that is the justification I am going to give when I pull her out of bed on a school night to tank an instance for daddy.

I strongly encourage both girls' fascination with Pokemon. Pokemon provide fulfillment to every human being's basic desire to have an army of monsters. Also, Pokemon spend all their time fighting each other, which is good. For what other reason would one want to have an army of monsters?

Yes, we have truly created a new world. An exciting, technological, shut-in, pasty world. Now, if you will excuse me, my daughter is old enough to realize that there is something called Dungeons & Dragons, and she wants in. And you think I'm going to trust some wormy, unseasoned, prepubescent Dungeon Master to run her first campaign? Not likely.

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Some Kind Words About DRM. For Once.

Over the years, a lot of criticism has been thrown at DRM. (Which means Digital Rights Management. Which means tinkering with music and video games to try to make people actually pay for them.) A lot of that abuse has come from me. But I think this all this shouting at Electronic Arts and the RIAA might be starting to be a bit much, since DRM, at the heart of it, has a noble goal: To keep thieves from stealing things.

But I recently noticed one little place when where I think making games pirate-proof is resulting in a better world for everyone. In the interest of fairness, I feel obligated to point it out.

(Edit: When I say "pirate-proof," I mean "So difficult to pirate that nobody bothers," not "Impossible to pirate.")

Let Me Sell My Stupid Used Games! (Or not.)

When Half-Life 2 came out, around eight hundred years ago, I vented to everyone who would listen about how angry its new rights management scheme made me. You had to sign in through a Steam account (which, at the time, did scary things to my computer). And, to me far worse, your game was attached to your account, keeping you from loaning or selling it. This new game future seemed to strip too many rights away from users, and I wanted no part of it.

Lately, though, I've been finding that this is exactly the future I am living in, and I've been extremely happy. I'm having a great time, buying fun games for fair prices. I'm just doing it on the XBox.

The rights management in PC games is still generally hostile, punitive, and self-defeating. Requiring an internet connection to play a single player game or limiting the number of installations does nothing to prevent piracy (as hacked copies are always easily available from BitTorrent) but plenty to hurt legitimate customers. And piracy is rampant, no matter what. So the PC world is still screwed. (And there is increasing evidence that these problems are spreading to the iPhone.)

All I Want Is Fun, On the Cheap

But on XBox live, over the last month, I'm played Shadow Complex ($15), Defense Grid: The Awakening ($10), and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 (a ludicrously low $1). These games are all seriously fun. They also have impenetrable DRM. I don't have to be online to play, but I can't sell or give away my copy. There's no piracy on XBox Live.

When the inability to share (or pirate) a product comes with a low price, I don't mind anymore. Defense Grid is ten bucks, and it's giving me more than ten bucks worth of fun. Sure, I'm at Microsoft's mercy, and I don't "own" the product, but hey. Ten bucks. And the manufactures can still make a nice profit at that low price (though probably not much lower) because ninety percent of its users aren't stealing it.

No DRM. But Plenty Of Injustice.

Compare that to the games I sell. I charge $28 for a new game. I would LOVE to charge ten bucks. But, to stay in business, I'd have to triple my sales, and that won't happen. Would sales go up? Sure. Would they TRIPLE? Almost impossible.

I have minimal DRM. People can transfer their registration to someone else if they want. I even have a one year money back guarantee if someone is unhappy. I've tried to be ethical in all the ways I want as a consumer. The result? My games get pirated like crazy, and I have to charge a lot to stay in business. I have a situation where honest people have to pay lots of money to subsidize the people who rip me off. The good people pay to buy games for the bad.

This, of course, infuriates me.

What I Wish I Could Do

I'm not going to be writing games for the XBox, sadly enough. My sort of games just work better on PC and Macs. But if I could snap my fingers and give myself the same absolute control over my games XBox Live has over theirs (in return for lower prices), I would. The freedom of the current system is nice, but it comes at too high a cost. The unfairness is just this side of intolerable, and it's only getting worse.

DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return. One of the problems with eBooks is they take away the ability to loan or sell the books you buy online, not to mention the lack of a satisfying physical object, and they still charge the same price for the book. What nonsense! Make the price of the books low enough to make people not mind what they are costing and I promise you the eBook business will improve.

DRM Has Its Points

DRM has developed a terrible reputation. Heck, it's earned it. But remember, the purpose of DRM is to prevent free riders (aka self-justifying weasels and morally damaged scumbags). None of us like being told that we don't deserve free things, but it's still true. If DRM enables products to be sold for a price that is cheap to users and fair to developers, it is something we should all grab with both hands.

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Rock Band. Guitar Hero. Why They Are Doomed.

So I will begin this by saying I am an unashamed Rock Band fanboy. Playing expert guitar and drums (and, when I'm feeling brave, vocals) is now one of my favored ways to listen to music and relax at the end of the day. I'll be in line for Beatles Rock Band on day one. I've written about how wrong-headed criticisms of these games are and how they are a cool, new way to appreciate music. Playing fake plastic drums is probably the most fun I've had with a video game, ever. I am one of the music game dead-enders.

Which is why it pains me so much to be the turd in the punchbowl. The fad is dying. Fast.

We all know it. We've all seen the glut. (What? Eight rhythm games out this year? Yikes!) It's the sure sign of trying to cash in on the installed base as much as possible before the fall. Sales for new Guitar Hero titles are, well, not encouraging.

If there could have been any question, the offer of a free Guitar Hero: Van Halen with purchase of Guitar Hero 5, before either of those games is even out, is the clearest sign you could possibly want. (This deal actually tempted me a little, until I realized that taking it would put me at risk of listening to Van Halen.)

The Beatles game will goose the genre a little, but even new releases with serious, broad appeal (Led Zeppelin? Pink Floyd?) will only slow the decay.

But, here's the thing. It's easy to blame the glut for the death of the fad, but, even if music games had been released at a reasonable pace, the thing was doomed to collapse. It wasn't sustainable, ever. I think it's interesting to look at why.

i. The Magic Wore Off

Now, most of this is based on my own personal observations and thus should be taken with a grain of salt. But isn't the magic gone? When Rock Band was new, I and two other friends frequently threw Rock Band parties, and they were well attended. Getting four people to pick up the plastic instruments was easy. Two years later? Not so much. I stopped throwing Rock Band parties after my last one, when I looked around during one song and realized I was the only one left playing. Everyone else had migrated to the next room. It was pathetic.

There is a certain sort of brain that has a compelling, all-consuming urge to hit those little colored spots as they come down the track. I have such a brain. But for everyone else, well, let's face it. Pressing the red button to hit the red light and the green button to hit the green light does not compelling gameplay make. It was a kick to do it a few evenings. Now it's done. Even a game for the Casual Market (tm) has to have SOMETHING to it.

ii. It Is An Expensive Activity ...

$249 for the full Beatles: Rock Band set. Again, yikes.

Happily, in an effort to avoid flaming suicide, it was just announced that there will be cheaper bundles available. And yet, MSRP of $160 is still pretty darn spendy.

iii. ... and Not Just In Cash

I'm talking about cost in resources. And my liberal leanings are going to show a little in the next paragraph, so be warned.

It takes a lot of resources to make these bulky instruments (especially drums), pack them up, ship them over the sea, get them to you, and, from there, dump them in landfills. A lot of plastic and oil in our new oil-short, global-warming reality. And, if this recession should have taught us anything, it's that we're going too much in debt buying too much useless crap from the Chinese. Something has got to go. And I think shoddy plastic Fisher Price drum kits will be first in line.

And, perhaps most significantly, these games consume a lot of space in stores. You want to know when there will be serious blood on the walls in the music game business? It'll be when some executive at Best Buy looks at the enormous amount of precious floor space taken up by big, bulky Rock Band and Guitar Hero boxes, remembers the sloping sales, and says, "Enough."

What Is the Future?

Of course, music games will remain a profitable little niche in this huge industry. Nothing that generates as many sales as Guitar Hero 3 had can ever disappear. But how will it evolve in a sustainable form?

First, games with vocals will always do all right. Microphones are small and easy to make. People love singing drunken karaoke. SingStar fans have nothing to worry about.

Guitar games will always survive. Fake plastic guitars are relatively small, flat, and easy to pack. Stores will always have a small section with two or three brands of plastic geetar. Borderline Asperger's cases like me will always have little, bright lights to hit.

Which brings us to my beloved drums. Harmonix did an amazing job of creating a mode of gameplay which sits interestingly in the shadow zone between video games and real instruments. Fake plastic drums are awesome. But let's face it. They're big. They're bulky. They don't last long under heavy use. (No cheap plastic toy will withstand being hit with a stick thousands of times.) And they aren't popular. The current mode of fake drum playing is just too tricky for the casual types these games need to live.

The drums will have to go. And when they do, band games will have to go too. Music games will fragment into singing games (for the many who love that) and guitar games (which two people can play, instead of four). Rock Band, if it survives, will still provide drum charts for the installed base. But in a few years, when we go to the next generation of consoles? Forget it.

And, someday, we will look back on the Great Music Game Fad and remember the glut of titles and the mountains of instruments at Best Buy and the $299 video game controller and go, "Wow, what was that all about?" and laugh and laugh and laugh.

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