TVSquad

Kill me now.

I guess it was inevitable that we end up with 3-4 primetime hours a week of idiots playing guitar queero (to steal one from South Park), all vying for a fake recording contract and 15 minutes of fame.

Whoever ends up greenlighting this (no doubt it will be for Fox or NBC) should be tied up, dragged out into the street, waterboarded, and then beaten to death with a fake guitar. Then their body should be chopped up into thousands of bite-size chunks and fed to contestants on some other miserable reality show (on CBS or ABC). "Guitar Hero Idol" will be the final straw in reality shows - it will require some form of retribution against the networks. Someone has to draw a line somewhere.

What's sad is that I can already picture Simon "judging" the fake guitar playing - "That was hawwwwrible, your finguhs showed no emotion and you only pushed one button the whole toym - get off the stage!"

Now that Terminator SCC and "Life" are cancelled, NBC and Fox will have space for at least an hour of Guitar Hero Idol each week. To anyone who watches this show and adds to its ratings: may you and your family die a horrible death.

Reply

If you've never played Guitar Hero, I'm confused. I mean...how in the hell did I manage to come across an article, written by you, about a game you've never played? Is this a reputable site, or a blog where people write jibberish about things they've yet to experience. If its the latter...count me out. If you purport to be the former, do a bit of research before idea vomiting all over my computer screen.

Reply

"I know a few people that actually play guitar that don't like the game, mostly because it doesn't really teach you how to play the guitar."

Uh.....okay? It's a game. You play it to have fun.

I'm a reality tv fan. A HUGE competitive reality tv fan.

With that said, the reality show WCG Ultimate Gamer on Sci-Fi, which aired it's finale last week, did Rock Band (a game very similar to Guitar Hero) in the first week of their competition, and it was the most boring game the contestants ended up playing the whole season besides Dance Dance Revolution.

You just can't make rhythm games exciting to watch. There's nothing visually stimulating about them or seeing someone playing them trying to look cool, nothing climactic about two people going head to head, nothing.

If true, the whole thing reeks of Activision looking to cash in while the fad's hot. And make no mistake, Guitar Hero and it's ilk are a current fad in gaming. Dance Dance Revolution was everywhere four years ago and nowadays it's the plastic guitars and drum kits that are all the rage. Thing is, the market is already getting saturated with dozens of games in the GH/RB franchises that are exactly like, and before long it's going to get oversaturated, leaving gamers uninterested and looking for something else.

So all in all, the idea that a reality show solely based on Guitar Hero could draw a solid viewership is obliviously wishful thinking, I think.

Reply

Chelsy:

It's a commonly employed fallacy to say people cannot talk about something unless they've personally done it.

It's like saying you can't talk about how bad Nazi concentration camps were unless you were actually a prisoner inside one. That's just not true. It sounds good, but at the end of the day it's nothing more than the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority."

It would be nice if people didn't rely so much on this logical fallacy. The "appeal to authority" and the "false dichotomy" are the two most commonly (mis)used logical fallacies in modern American discourse. The Democratic Party loves the former and the Republican-Christian Party loves the latter.

Leukemia is horribly painful, but I've never had leukemia.

The U2 was a difficult airplane to fly, but I've never flown one.

George W. Bush was the worst president this country has ever had, but I did not live in America under all 44 presidents.

The latest Vin Diesel "Fast and Furious" re-remake is a really bad movie, even though I have not seen it.

Guitar Hero doesn't teach you how to play the guitar, but I've never played GH (it has 4 or so buttons on it and no strings, how could it possibly teach you how to play a real guitar?)

Not everything requires personal, hands-on experience in order to allow someone to have a legitimate opinion. All else equal, the opinions of those who do have personal experience with someone may carry a higher degree of weight than the opinions of those who lack such experience. But that doesn't mean their opinions are invalid.

Reply

MTV actually already did with with Rock Band, kind of.

Reply

"The controls involve pressing buttons rather than strumming the strings."

Well, you do actually sort of strum with one plastic flappy string-like thing while holding down the fret buttons.

It's more fun than I expected.

Reply

This sounds like the most boring show ever. Like a oversized version of the time I had a roommate that did nothing but play Guitar Hero full volume.

Reply

"On the other hand, disliking Guitar Hero because it doesn't teach you to play the guitar is clearly missing the point. That's like disliking Sim City 3000 because it doesn't really teach you how to run a municipal planning office."

dreamer: I agree. I never said I disliked Guitar Hero because it doesn't teach you to play real guitar. In fact I never even said I disliked Guitar Hero (although I do find it lame and rather pathetic and it will cost us a whole generation of would-be musicians who played GH instead of learning to play the real guitar... we may be robbed of the next Jimi Hendrix).

It's the GH-based reality show I dislike... Guitar Hero Idol or whatever they'll end up calling it. The public airwaves belong to the community as a whole, and the social contract that lets the networks use them is premised upon, among other things, the precondition that they not air a show where losers compete in a fake guitar videogame contest. If Guitar Hero Idol, a glorified air guitar contest (yes I realize there actually are air guitar contests), is ever broadcast and if it ever becomes a successful, highly-watched show, it will be a clear harbinger of doom - the Dark Horse of the apocalypse, and unequivocal proof that our society deserves to be wiped out in the most painful manner possible.

Reply