Emergent Technological Developments

I wanted to add to todays discussion of emergent game development by continuing with the music genre of games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. In the past couple of years, the well known company Ubisoft has taken the genre defining music games such as Guitar Hero and further impressed me with their own version called Rocksmith 2014. This game is extremely similar in relation to how Rock Band and Guitar Hero work, however the twist is that they managed to push technology so that they player’s controller is an actual guitar. In all honesty, the game is fairly good being that I don’t think there are many other developers out there who have attempted this. Players are able to use a special usb cable to plug into either a console or a PC which connects the guitar to the game. The game uses the signals sent from strumming strings and is able to play back the audio over your TV or PC speakers with a convincingly small amount of delay, making the experience overall enjoyable.

Custom Screenshot From My Game

Custom Screenshot From My Game

The game is very helpful in introducing how to play guitar for beginners and also includes many helpful practice games to improve on certain guitar techniques. There is even a lessons section which includes videos with playable demos to help players to learn the basics of guitar playing. The game has hundreds of songs along with a marketplace of downloadable songs, but it even has a special “Session” mode where you can craft your own unique guitar sound and just play what you want.

This does introduce some unique developmental struggles that I feel hurt the game quite a bit in terms of quality. One thing that is most in need of a fix is that it is very hard to adjust the sensitivity of strumming strings and there is often feedback from the universal plug to connect the guitars. By sensitivity, I mean that the game picks up the slightest touches of a string, even if you didn’t mean to make any sounds. There is also the issue with delay from playing the note on screen and hearing the sound, but I feel this is more of a performance issue that depends on the game console or PC hardware.

Credit to www.gamespot.com

Credit to www.gamespot.com

Overall, this is the first game that I’ve seen take this approach to the music genre of games and it is quite successful in my opinion. There are many videos that you can watch of people taking the 60-Day Challenge which basically says that if you play the game for at least one hour for 60 days, the game will teach you enough to play the instrument. Whether it truly works or not is up for debate as I’ve not spent enough time with my copy.

Sources for Additional Info:

http://rocksmith.ubi.com/rocksmith/en-au/home/index.aspx

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One Response to Emergent Technological Developments

  1. Ryan Yosua says:

    I was surprised no one mentioned Rocksmith in class. I have not played Rocksmith but plan on buying it when I get a new PC. Rock Band 3 actually did something very similar to this with their “Pro Guitar” mode where the expert pro difficulty level was playing the song note for note. They sold two guitars that worked with the mode, one that was made by Fender that was similar to the Squier Affinity/Bullet stratocasters but with special sensors built into the fretboard. I bought one of these, and it was pretty cool. Because of the guitar’s sensors the game could track which notes you were fretting before you played them. While the game controller was great, it was a terrible instrument, and I sold it eventually to get a better guitar. The other guitar that worked with this mode was more like a traditional Rock Band or guitar hero controller, but it had 102 buttons and 6 strings. I like how Rocksmith lets you use your own guitar, and it seems like it would be helpful for learning or improving guitar skills much like Rock Band 3.

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