A few things about what is likely to be the next big sleeper-hit game phenomenon when it comes out later this fall (and if you need pointers, check out the fan-made songlist preview and for excitement, the official non-gameplay high-gloss trailer.) High hopes all around, folks, but there’s still a few obvious bumps on the highway to glory.
One, every single instrument, guitar (which doubles as bass,) drums and mic for vocals is going to have to be fun on its own. Not everyone’s going to want to go out and buy the full kit of instruments, and EA/MTV/Harmonix are still cagey on just how much that’s going to cost. Most people are just going to want to buy just one item, and then go back for more if they want to. Which is going to create an enormous hassle for anyone who wants to stock this game — not that they didn’t have enough for Guitar Hero or its sequel, or its upcoming three-quel done by someone else, but that’s just one instrument.

Now there are three, and what’s more, none of them are platform-independent, so there’s going to have to be XBox 360 versions and PlayStation 3 versions, and even more if they get around to making Wii, PC or Mac versions (GH3 already has a Wii version in the pipe, and PC/Mac might follow.) So anyone playing this game is going to have to buy multiple big plastic toys that aren’t good for anything but playing one game on one gaming platform, unless some third-party whiz kids or fans find ways to hack the system so you can, say, play your Rock Band Strat on Guitar Hero 3, either plugged into your 360 or Bluetooth’d to your PS3.

Numero two-o, the mic is significantly different from guitar and drums for one very obvious yet easily dismissed reason: while the latter two instruments work by pressing buttons (or striking large versions of them with sticks) in time to the music to mimic the process of actually making music, players will have to actually make sounds with their mouth and throat to use the mic.

In other words, they’ll have to sing.

I predict this will be a major stumbling block for Rock Band, more than most people may yet realize. Even if my first concern is true, the ideal situation to play Rock Band is with a full ensemble and four players (I guess one player could double up on the mic and another instrument, who knows,) and since it’s a party game, you’d want an audience watching the “band” rock out.

The intersection of gamers and able singers is not a wide one. Karaoke’s popular, but it’s usually not a sober decision amongst friends of mine who aren’t total attention whores (you know who you are,) and there’s usually not a machine deciding how close to the intended pitch and rhythm you are. Harmonix has produced a whole series of games that turn a console into just that, and after all their whole m.o. is to produce games that provide non-musical people the quasi-experience of making music, so I don’t mean to pick on them.

But here’s the thing. Rock Band is going to make a bunch of gamers sing. It’s first going to make them want to sing, at least one-fourth of them if you split it evenly amongst the full band, and as a hook it’s likely a very infectious one — until you actually have to be in the same room with some gamer nerd trying to sound like David Bowie. And the more forgiving the game is for the sake of getting through the song, the more painful it’s going to be for anyone within earshot.

I really, really am not trying to spitball here, but I’m a guy who actually likes watching YouTube videos of Guitar Hero runs, and I’ve been trying really, really hard to find evidence against this concern about Rock Band vocals. But thus far I have yet to find a live video of people playing Rock Band where the vocalist wasn’t a really terrible singer. Closest I could find was the video at PAX 07 of “Here It Goes Again” (featuring Jerry “Tycho” Holkins on ax) but it doesn’t really count because I can barely hear the guy. The rest are just more and more embarrassing.

Maybe it’ll come to pass that the people who get into Rock Band will be the most patient and the most caught up in the mimicry of making music that they’ll forgive the unlucky buddy of theirs whom everyone humors when he wants to take the mic, or maybe they’ll take turns, or maybe the audience just won’t care.

Or maybe I don’t need to worry about it. I’ll probably get it, because fuck all that game-y nonsense in GH3. Making the other guy’s amp overload and buttons flash and stuff. Lot of bullshit. Just make music, damn it. Or pretend to.