Rock Band guilt

There's a great post over at Geek Studies today about Rock Band. The gist is that games just can't win:

If a game features violent activity that we could never (and, hopefully, would never) enact in real life, it gets criticized for encouraging real-life violence. If a game features non-violent activity that might even be considered worthwhile in real life, it gets criticized for discouraging real-life action.

In short, Rock Band has been getting some criticism (granted, it's pretty benign) for effectively discouraging people from learning to play real music.

I agree that this is a pretty ridiculous assertion, but I think the more important observation in this post is that games still seem to occupy some sort of limbo wherein we (as productive members of society) are allowed to play, but only if we feel some requisite twinge of guilt during or after all the fun.

I admit to playing Rock Band at a friend's house until 3 AM on consecutive nights. I marvel at the fact that I, the guy who flatly refuses to sing or dance in public, will excitedly take the microphone and sing songs far outside my vocal range while strutting in place (picture Mick Jagger) and dancing with the microphone stand (picture Steven Tyler--yes, my friend bought a microphone stand).

This is fun in its purest form, yet every time my friends and I (including my wife, and her sister, and my brother's wife) gather to play this game, someone will utter, once every half hour or so, "This is some nerdy shit." It's as if we all hear the little voice of society whispering, "You're wasting your time. Video games are for losers."

So what, I say! No one anywhere does anything productive on Friday night. None of us will ever be a rock star. That's not the point. The point is entertainment; the point is fellowship. And that's a lesson I learned from South Park.