For Real?

Guitar Hero 3 changed me. It wasn’t so long ago that I was a sceptic, a plastic peripheral-fearing killjoy with nothing but disdain for the pretend rock star antics of my peers. Yet now I stand before you, courting the whoops and cheers of a thousand polygonal fans, shamelessly paddle-shredding my way through Cliffs of Dover on a Fisher Price Les Paul copy that even my six year old nephew would be embarrassed to have around his neck.

Being a fretboard-worrier in real life I had dismissed the very notion of Guitar Hero as self-defeating. Why invest time learning to play a toy imitation of an instrument when I could spend those same hours perfecting the instrument itself? It’s a curiosity I’ve felt for all simulation games, particularly ones that emulate popular sports. When I see large groups gather to play the most recent of EA’s arbitrary annual updates I can’t help but wonder if they would all be better off looking out the window, dropping their joypads, grabbing the appropriate bat and / or ball and just playing the wretched sport for real.

I’ve always looked to gaming to provide me with experiences that I would be unable to indulge in through any other medium. I can grab a few friends and go to the park for a kick about. I can pick up a golf club and play a few holes. I cannot, however, pilot a fully-armed anti-gravity race-craft around a geometrically impossible racetrack in the year 2097. The wonder of videogames, the aspect that drew me to them in the first place, is their ability to transport, to take you places you could never be and allow you to do things you could never do. This way of thinking had rendered me instinctively hostile towards games which replicated activities I could easily perform in real-life. The Sims franchise was probably the biggest agitator of my bemusement gland – the Big Brother of the videogame world. Running a pretend household to ensure pretend people perform menial chores and duties for entertainment? I’ll wait for my copy of Super Dish-Washer II Turbo-Cycle thanks.

Time makes fools of us all, however, and I was forced to swallow my bile and cough up some serious love when I finally locked limbs with Guitar Hero 3. In its own stubby, clicky way the whole concept made immediate physical sense. I wouldn’t suggest for a moment that it compares to playing a proper instrument, but the mechanics shared enough with the fundamentals of guitar-playing to strum the pleasure centre of my brain. Before I knew what was happening I had cranked my sound system to 11 and was standing on my bed throwing shapes like the ghost of Hendrix. Succumbing to the game’s charms also meant I could assume axe duties for Rage Against The Machine, Guns and Roses and Metallica, something which is unlikely to happen to me in reality any time soon.

The ensuing love affair helped to dispel some of the cynicism I felt towards simulations. It convinced me that doing a loose impression of something you enjoy, while not a substitute, can be legitimately enjoyable in its own right. I can better appreciate why Fifa addicts spend months building their dream teams in slippers instead of studs, why Tony Hawk lures skaters away from their decks and onto their armchairs, why the Madden series is one of the biggest selling franchises of all time. That said, if I saw someone pouring weeks into a guitar sim only to discover they had never fondled the real deal, I would still be inclined to nudge them in the direction of the controller that had actual strings.