Time spent on the online universe in virtual engagement is supplanting human experience, author says
Misty Harris
Sun
Guitar solos have vanished from the concert scene at the same time millions of gamers are pretending to be a Guitar Hero.
Gym memberships are down while stores can’t keep the home exercise game Wii Fit in stock.
Precious hours of real life are being sacrificed to the online universe Second Life, and high-powered marketing campaigns this fall are planned to sell still more virtual fantasy trussed up as reality.
Forget concern over counterfeit goods such as watches and handbags. Increasingly, it’s organic human experience that’s being knocked off.
“People are just too overwhelmed by all the technologies that exist to be active participants in real life,” says Robert Lanham, who has written three books on the idiosyncrasies of contemporary human behaviour.
“When you’re microblogging on Tumblr and juggling Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace accounts, who’s got time for yoga classes or guitar lessons? Perfecting your Stratocaster licks playing Rock Band is simply less time-consuming than trying to become the next Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen.”
NPD Group reports Rock Band Special Edition Bundle for the Xbox 360 was Canada‘s No. 2-selling video game in February, followed by Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock. The titles’ successes are in stark contrast with a new report by Maclean’s magazine that, in using Top-40 music as a metric, declares “the guitar solo is dead.”
Hoping to capitalize on the yen for virtual engagement is Nintendo, which this holiday season will launch an air-guitar game for the symphony set. With Wii Music, users will have a choice of playing more than 60 instruments — among them, hand bells, the saxophone, violin, trumpet and piano — in a video game environment that reinvents band camp as a place where kids needn’t learn to read music, can’t make a mistake, and can practise as often or as little as they please.
“Wii Music isn’t intended to replace the experiences you’d get by actually playing the real instruments,” says Matt Ryan, a spokesman for Nintendo Canada. “What [it] allows is for people to be able to feel what it would be like to strum a guitar or play a flute or saxophone or the drums.”
Although there’s evidence to suggest performance games are leading some people to take up an instrument, experts say they’re coming to the craft with severely distorted expectations.
“In a way, it’s comparing two very different things: one is a diversion, a game; the other is a curriculum of study, a demanding pursuit,” says Jeffrey McFadden, a classical guitarist and music professor at the University of Toronto.
“But while the satisfaction you get from playing an instrument is certainly in line with the effort it takes to learn, the satisfaction of being a good Guitar Hero player would be fleeting and shallow … It’s like the price of admission is higher for a more profound experience.”
Given the choice of feeling like a rock god or a moderately accomplished individual, it’s easy to see how tempting the former can be.
Sony hopes to leverage that sentiment with PlayStation Home, which starting this fall will allow people to reinvent their lives in a simulated universe. Whether it’s designing a dream apartment, going to a virtual movie theatre with someone who’s thousands of kilometres away, or creating a virtual self with the body of Zeus, Home life will be whatever players make it.
“People see your character as you, so it allows you to be someone that you’re not,” says Matt Levitan, marketing manager for PlayStation Canada. “That kind of freedom is a lot of fun for people.”
Eventually, Home — a free download for PS3 owners — will allow people to attend real concerts without ever entering a stadium, play golf without setting foot on the green, and shoot hoops without breaking out the muscle cream.
“It’s more than just communication,” says Levitan. “It’s your life experiences online.”
But however convenient or ego-stoking these hi-tech encounters, cultural commentator Lanham says they’ll never be as fulfilling or as sexy as the real thing. “Saying, ‘Dude, my virtual band totally rocks … we’re playing a gig in my living room tonight’ is never going to have the same allure as securing a real gig in an actual rock band,” says Lanham. “And it’s unlikely the words ‘he’s such a romantic text-messager, his SMS skills made my knees buckle’ have ever been uttered, or sent via SMS for that matter.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
