Video games have been progressing extremely fast over the past couple of decades, so it was pretty much a certainty that they were going to begin impeaching on other forms of entertainment’s territory.
In this case I am talking Karaoke, I’m sure many of you have seen the Nintendo Wii commercials where Ant and Dec visit pubs and talk to customers who are playing on the Wiis set up there. Everyone says they are having a great time and that they can even see it taking over from karaoke nights; this is really nice, the main problem however is that they are lying and it looks shit.
What I’m really focusing on here are music rhythm games such as rock band and guitar hero, games which have so much in common with karaoke already and for the past three years have included microphones and so basically have had karaoke integrated within them. These are the games that really seem to be the more organic progression of karaoke and although being around for the past few years, I really felt that 2009 was the year they made a noticeable transition from living room entertainment to public entertainment.
Whereas it is traditional to have a karaoke tent at music festivals, including metal festivals such as download which has metal karaoke, last year it seemed that every festival had a guitar hero or rock band tent going. From what I saw they were always successful but at the same time they did reek of blatant advertising, expect to see many green day rock band tents at your festivals this year.
I find music festivals generally to be weird little hermitite worlds, that only last a few days, but where the freaking weirdest stuff happens. So it is hard to say whether the success of these games will translate from festivals to more public places such as bars and pubs, perhaps the dexterity and practice needed will put a lot of people off for the next few years. I do think that it is a natural step from karaoke and that it will eventually happen, although I may just be speaking from a shroud of gaming ignorance; ignorance like this isn’t always a bad thing though, for example many of us are happy to be ignorant to what all those fluids in our quarter pounders with cheese really are. This is exactly like that.
Anyhow, it dawned on me quite soon after thinking about this that karaoke is technically a video game, this fact however was not enough to stop me writing this blog. Probably should have been, but it wasn’t.
Daniel Rowbotham
Related posts: