On April 2, Harmonix released their final downloadable song, after five-plus-years of consistent, weekly releases, for that game that not too long ago was a pretty big cultural phenomenon, Rock Band. This isn’t an obituary – I still play and love the game – but this is a recognition that maybe the larger world has moved on from plastic guitars.
That doesn’t mean I’m not sad about the fate of music games. The market was flooded hard and fast by Guitar Heroes and Rock Bands (and some others) until, after a few short years, the last thing people wanted was another microphone or drum controller cluttering their living space.
When Rock Band was still climbing in popularity, my serious musician friends wrote the game off as silly. They didn’t see the merit. It was a useless waste of time and an oversimplification of their hobby. I never stopped disagreeing with them.
As a bass player myself, I gained a lot from the different iterations of Rock Band. I learned how to better listen to music, to parse out each instrument. I built up the rhythm and endurance to play drums.The Beatles: Rock Band forced my snobby teenage mind to give the pop legends a chance. And hey guys, it turns out The Beatles are pretty good.
And you know what? Rock Band is just fun. You’ll rarely see me more energetic at a party then when the host has got the game hooked up and I’m seated behind the drum set (alcohol helps).
Maybe it’s fitting in a poetic sense that the last track released on the Rock Band Music Store is Don McLean’s “American Pie.” But this isn’t a goodbye, at least not until I finally break my roommate’s drum controller.