2007 Pop Conference Bios/AbstractsJesse FuchsJesse Fuchs is an LSAT tutor, a game designer, and, along with Stephin Merritt and Erik Karff, one-third of the DJ night The Phantastic Invisible Tentacle. Some of his games can be seen at
www.elucidation.com.
Panel(s):FuturismsFriday, April 20, 2007, 4:15 - 6:00
Abstract:"
Kick, Punch, It's All in the Mind: the First Decade of Musical Videogames"
When
Parappa The Rapper came out for the Sony Playstation in 1997, it was pegged as a cult game at best. It was short and easy to beat, its graphics were quirky and by no means cutting-edge, and its gameplay was so literally one-dimensional that it never involved more than a button at a time. Yet
Parappa became a hit for Sony, as well as a minor cultural phenomenon, for one reason: it invented an entirely new genre.
The genre was that of the music game, a game in which some ludic cartoon of a musical skill—in Parappa's case, if perhaps not actual rapping, then beat programming—is at the core of play. As elementary as Parappa's gameplay was, it achieved an unprecedented synergy. It made music into a game and a videogame into pop art, thanks to droll and bouncy original songs that have yet to be topped by any of their many less droll if bouncier successors.
While its successors have taken the idea and run in different directions—Dance Dance Revolution turning it into a full-body workout, Karaoke Revolution quantizing melody rather than rhythm, and Guitar Hero elevating it to a kinesthetic satire oddly popular among actual rock stars—all of them rely on the same alchemy of content and context. Songs become challenges to anticipate to as well as rewards in and of themselves, synaesthetic obstacle courses to navigate and gleefully master. Songs both previously enjoyed and disdained become reshaped by their new electronic exoskeleton—and often, for licensing reasons, by uncannily accurate "soundalike" recordings, recordings that after dozens of listens can transform the player''s sense of the original. In this paper/Powerpoint presentation, I'll survey the last decade of musical games and talk about what their pleasures and limitations can tell us about the relationships between music, technology, and play.
