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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

Why can't you let people have fun?

Guitar hero players (or at least, the subset of players in who are interested in very difficult tracks) are not trying to produce melodies or jamming harmoniously ; they're doing high speed, high precision pattern matching.

This is like berating gamers playing Elden Ring where they could do HEMA instead !

> This is like berating gamers playing Elden Ring where they could do HEMA instead!

I'm going to have to say that this analogy doesn't work. The downsides of doing real HEMA are things like "you can experience what it's really like to have your head bashed in with a historically-accurate mace". The downsides of playing guitar in real life are things like "you need a guitar".

Speed running Guitar Hero and conflicting over its validity does not sound very fun to me.

This is the embarrassing point where fun have been lost already but productivity is not there also.

Sometimes other people will find things fun that you do not find fun. This is ok.

Cynicism will run your life right into the ground if you aren’t careful.

I played Guitar Hero for years before I picked up the real instrument. I still enjoy the game.

Let people have fun.

Real musicians frequently record things they are unable to legitimately perform live

Can confirm this is extremely frequent, especially when it comes to harmony. Not everyone can be Herbie Hancock on a keyboard, but with just enough theory and a good ear, you can write complex progressions into a DAW, for example.

This subject always reminds me of Squarepusher's Music for Robots [1], which was made to be played by robots instead of humans.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_for_Robots_(EP)

And Raymond Scott's Soothing Sounds for Baby -- who ever knew a baby could play a synthesizer so well?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k66nGplNRmQ

At least the Android Sisters play their own music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeerjrFjgT8

For sure. If you’re into metal, you might have heard of Deathspell Omega - majority of their post 2004 material is pure studio magic. In fact it is not even clear whether the drumming is real or whether it is a cleverly disguised drum machine.

And that's a good thing, because you end up with a recording which have cultural value.

Guitar Hero playes, on the other hand...

There's always someone who judges the pastimes of others, and makes value statements regarding something they're perceiving from the outside.

The Guitar Hero community is honestly pretty close knit, given the size of it relative to other more popular games. Some of my absolute best friends in the world I met through Guitar Hero.

Your dismissive statement has about as much cultural value as what you attribute to Guitar Hero.

At this point, the Guitar Hero community is its own subculture.

There's nothing wrong with having fun playing a game. Do I think it's wise to make a game your one big thing? Probably not. But when it comes down to it, few of us will have any lasting effect on the world, and your personal happiness has value, too.

However small you feel the cultural value of Guitar Hero plays, it is still more than that of judgmental gatekeeping.

There is even an early xkcd about this topic: https://xkcd.com/359/

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