ahh, Guitar Hero. where anyone can "rock the casbah." or is it lick the cat box? i'm not quite sure. for Christmas Lauren's brother, Stephen, received Guitar Hero II. when the gift giving was finished Guitar Hero was broken out of it's box and plugged in. there were a few of us there who had played a few times, but most hadn't. it was fun to watch people grab the guitar and rock out. one of my favorite moments was watching Lauren's dad, Terry, play an Anthrax song. if you knew Lauren's dad, this would make you giggle a little, too.
as we were playing, i was reminded of something i had read a month ago. i don't remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of "[my] generation being an experiential generation." the author gave some reasons for their statement, most having to do with technology. for example, we now have the ability to travel to the top of Everest via an IMAX theater. while the majority of the population couldn't make the trek, we have the desire to see what it is like. so, we have sent camera crews up the summit to document everything. HD T.V.'s (is that really how you write that?) are designed and marketed to give us a "life-like" viewing experience. have you seen the commercial that shows a family sitting in their living room watching a golf match on their TV? the golfer hits a ball into the deep rough and then starts to look for it. the golfer and the caddy can't find the ball, but the people in the living room can and they are yelling and pointing to the ball, that they can see because their TV is so life like-perhaps, better than life.
video games are becoming more and more life-like. the graphics are getting better and better. game play is becoming more and more realistic. Tony Hawk's Project 8 just came out. I played the demo at Best Buy last week. it was really sweet. the movement of the characters is incredible. i noticed the placement of the feet on the board was different for different skaters. no longer is there one skater with different skins to make the different skaters. the skaters carry their own personalities. i'm sure this is true with many of the games coming out now, but i noticed this in this game because i skate. during the bails, in particular, i can relate to the feeling of falling as they do in the game. the bails are getting more realistic- some of the ways that the characters bail are ways that i have bailed myself. last week i played the Nintendo Wii for the first time. if you haven't played it yet, you should. they put a gyro in the remote and a sensor bar that works with the remote via Bluetooth (i think). the gyro makes the remote motion sensitive, so if you move right the character will respond in a similar way.
here's the rub:
when i play Tony Hawk games it make me want to go out and skate. but when i do, i suck. the tricks that i can do in real life are utterly boring compared to what i can do in the game. when i played the bowling game for the Wii, i bowled a strike my first time playing the game. i bowled better, in the three frames i played, than i usually do in a whole game. i could probably bowl a 300 game on the Wii, but go to a bowling alley and bowl a 40. i can rock out on Guitar Hero and play Free Bird, but when it comes to actually playing that song i'm awful.
going back to the quote i mentioned earlier: [my] generation being an experiential generation. as i've thought about this quote i think i might disagree, to a point. dictionary.com defines 'experiential' as "pertaining to or derived from experience." and it defines 'experience' as a "particular instance of personally encountering or undergoing something." with the direction technology has been taking things i think we are not becoming a "experiential generation," but rather some sort of "pseudo-experiential generation." our pseudo-experiences are only as good as long as the power button is on. when the power goes off i have nothing to show for my experiences-except maybe a few calloused thumbs.
i wonder if this is cultivating a shallow generation? if my experiences are limited to video games and movies are they really my experiences? what do you think?
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3 comments:
i agree. i'm not sure how to vocalize it, but our generation seems to be the one of vicarious living. we don't really actually do anything, but we can see what it's like to do everything.
i remember the point in time all of this came together for me. i was working at gamestop, and someone came in, and was going on and on and on about some game, something he were very passionate about, or something, and i realized that when the purification that paul discusses in corinthians comes, this guy's (and by extension, all of mine) achievements would be eaten up. so what if he beat some game in an absurd amount of time, or whatever. there's nothing to show for it.
i dunno. this response is stupid and going nowhere, but i agree with you, and ironically, here i am watching a movie while playing with some toys. i have an excuse though: it's snowing and i can't go outside.
No one could have made a Guitar game to play on the NES, nor would they have thought of it. Stuff is being made available for us because we have the technology to do it.
Also, it's a good thing we're not completely experiential because a lot of us have played Grand Theft Auto.
hey, i owe a lot to grand theft auto.
where do you think i learned all my sweet grand auto theft moves?
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