Next MVGRP-hosted Open Gaming Session this Friday, April 3

This coming Friday the NYU Music Video Games Research Project will host its second Open Gaming Session on the 9th floor of Tisch, from 4-8pm. Hopefully this will be a more convenient time than the last one. New additions to the library include Guitar Hero: Metallica (including double-pedal drumming) and GTA: Chinatown Wars on the Nintendo DS.

Life is a gateway drug

Fair's fair, it's encouraging to see the various members of Metallica promoting Guitar Hero as good for music generally in their SXSW interviews, along with the usual hype around their game coming out on March 29. Examples:

Edge - "Guitar Hero a 'Gateway Drug Into Music', says Hetfield" -- stupid expression, worthy point.
Rolling Stone - "Metallica’s James Hetfield Calls 'Guitar Hero' a 'Gateway Drug': Inside the Band’s New Game" -- ditto RS, which should know better.
Billboard - "Metallica Talks 'Guitar Hero,' Hall Of Fame at SXSW" -- I'm intrigued by Billboard's ordering of GH in front of the HOF.
CNET - "Metallica's Kirk Hammett speaks about Guitar Hero"

Photo from Brooklyn Vegan set.

Pre-SXSW news nibbles

This week saw our first open gaming session at the Tisch Games Center. Thanks to everyone who came out to play. After Spring Break we'll form a student-led steering committee, and all looks rosy. I'm packing to go and mess with Texas at SXSW for a week.

Quick links:
Ars Technica says that Rockstar Games and hip-hop producer Timbaland will be releasing PSP mixer game based on a loop sequencer the company developed for the Web three years ago.

Great piece at The Gamer Limit with some thoughts from futurist/genius/nutter Ray Kurzweil on the "Future of Gaming". I love Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines is a turn-of-the-century corker.

The BBC makes an old limey smile with two great stories this week. One on the particular "magical challenge" of composing for video games. Here's the best on though: the feature "Disability no barrier to gaming" opens with a biomechanics researcher at Duke University, who is also an Iraq war vet and amputee below the elbow, playing Guitar Hero.

To play the game, users wear electrodes on their residual muscles, such as those found on their chest and shoulder. The system translates the signals from the electrodes as if they were coming from the game controller, allowing players to strum along, despite not having any hands.

Dr Armiger came up with the idea after becoming a Guitar Hero fan himself. He realised that the movements used by the game were similar to those required during the hours of tedious rehabilitation needed to learn to control a prosthetic limb.

Oh, and Destructoid says that some Osaka elementary schools are requiring Nintendo DSs for every student, thanks to all the educational software released for it in Japan.

Guitar Heroics in the news this week

Gametrailers has a good Guitar Hero: Metallica interview/trailer with more gameplay than the usual quick-cut promos on YouTube. Full disclosure: I never had any real love for Metallica. I never detected a hint of a sense of humour in anything they wrote or how they played, which is a wee bit much for corporate metal. Then Lars' bullshit in the early Napster days sealed the deal. So the fact that there are some 45 Metallica tracks on this doesn't really stir my tea. Queen, Thin Lizzy, Slayer, Mastodon, and double-pedal drumming are quite another matter, plus the open drumming with no track to follow is pure win. (Completely hilarious upgrade of lyrics to "One" by MetalSucks.)

Kotaku tells me that EA wants some of this hot music game action. Might Activision, EA and Viacom/Harmonix turn up on music retailer market-share charts sometime soon? There's at least as much skepticism regarding the rock/rhythm genre's future as there is money being thrown at it. Is there actually a shark to be jumped here, or, as I'm inclined to think, will there be steady growth in the music game business overall even if certain high-profile efforts turn out to be epic fails?

And finally, a Wired headline writer rather labors the point with Why The Music Industry Hates Guitar Hero, but the article itself is a very sensible call for Warner Music, Bronfman and his lawyers to chill on the bitching about licensing fees and start cooperating with gamemakers. If it's really true that MTV/Harmonix is boycotting WMG and Warner/Chappell content from the Rock Band online store, the acts that "get it" ought to be kicking up dust. (GH: Bronfman edition pic from Digital Daily link.)

We live in the future. More please.

Cute article at Games Radar on "Things gamers would never have believed 20 years ago." In at second place:

The Boss would be releasing new music through videogames.
-- The only example of games and rock colliding 20 years ago was the Atari 2600 effort, Journey Escape, which featured mullet-haired denim rockers, Journey... So who would have dared believe that, one day, video games would be used by such immense legends of rockery as Def Leppard (Guitar Hero III), Motley Crue (Rock Band), Guns N' Roses (Rock Band 2) and Bruce Springsteen (Guitar Hero World Tour) to debut songs? That's Bruce Springsteen. Born in the USA. The Boss. So massive the whole of the 80s could barely contain him and now, in the 21st Century, he's harnessing the power of games to release new music.

Adding: "A Nintendo console would be used for playing Sega and NEC games" and "That boring load times are still blighting us" are also good'uns. I have a mate in London called Alex Kydd. Photo from Game Radar piece.

Symphony of destruction

The New York Times reports on 14-year-old Danny Johnson, who recently broke the record score on Guitar Hero III. He says he's busted 80 guitar controllers in nine months of intensive practice -- he broke the one he used to beat the record -- but his new sponsorship deal should pay for the next hundred at least.

Two best bits:
"When you’re hitting that many notes and playing that fast, it just terrorizes the controller," said Scott Johnson, 45, Danny’s father.
Danny, who plays piano, guitar, drums, saxophone and oboe in real life, said his Guitar Hero prowess made it easier to complete complicated sequences on an actual guitar.

Danny has his own YouTube channel run by his brother. Here he is pulling off 100% on 'The Devil Went Down To Georgia'. Watch and marvel.

Guitar Hero is patriotic

A true American man-hug: Activision shells out for a NASCAR Guitar Hero sponsorship, including at the Daytona 500. All well and good, but will it piss excellence?

Via Kotaku.