Malstrom: Why Wii Music is Genius

[dharh]

bdbdbd said:
@dharh: I was merely pointing out that the audience already exists and isn't separate by any means. It's just mixed with audience that doesn't play that way.

The reason why i keep bringing GTA up, is because of the values what people find from GTA. If you take out the "sandbox qualities" from GTA, what do you have left? You and many others would still be interested in the game, but a large part of its audience would be gone.
If we would take out the "story mode" from GTA, that would leave us left with just fooling around. Maybe you wouldn't care for the game anymore, but a lot people still would.
The freedom in GTA is very limited, i agree, but it still is a lot. The same way people explore the game and do stuff without any purpose, they explore Wii Music.

It may be surprising, but the big scale adventure and RPG games have actually trained gamers to non-objective gaming. When you are performing a task which takes hours, including all the exloration, you feel like you need a rest from the task, so that you don't get frustrated and you start to do stuff that has no purpose. All the minigames, sidequests and interesting details in Zelda games are no coincidence, they are for you to take a rest from the mission and "recharge" yourself to be able to continue.

And no, this type of gaming isn't new, it's been there always. The text based RPG:s offered you to try out senseless stuff, you wanted to know what you could do in Leisure Suit Larry, or pick nearly any game from the past and you'll notice that the real value has been how you achieve, not what you achieve.

It seems like your saying a majority of people who play GTA are those people who just want the sandbox to play in and aren't interested in the actual gameplay.  I need a source for this, otherwise im gonna say that its the majority of people who play GTA who are interested in the story, tasks, etc.

Also, you say do stuff without a purpose but I think people who do _that_ are also alot smaller than what you suggest.  I think there may be quite a few people who play games who aren't into it nearly as much as others, but they certainly are playing the game not just messing around doing nothing.  Personal goals like im gonna make this car jump over this ramp and land on the roof may not mean anything to the game but its still a challenge and its within the gameplay.  Many people who GTA do this (especially after they've beaten every other challenge set for them in the game).  This is not exactly what we typically think of as gameplay, but its not exactly Wii Music nofail/nochallenge either.

You could make the argument that people could do this in Wii Music.  I'd agree, but just as I think people playing GTA for the gameplay and/or who set personal challenges to beat are the majority and the people who just run around doing random stuff are the minority.  For Wii Music I think a majority will probably be people who are just interested in messing around in tune with the music and the minoirity will be those who challenge themselves within the framework.  I think minority because Wii Music does not seem to have any mechanism for setting challenges.

You play RPGs a little right? Those minigames/sidequests are not non-objective gaming.  They are challenges and give rewards, and sometimes those rewards are top items in the game.  Yeah in RPGs there can be alot of grinding and mindless tasks, but they are always done to reach a goal.

Finally, I see the text based gaming world different than you also.  When I played those games I was playing to explore, beat the bad guy, find the hidden treasure, whatever.  All things related to gameplay and not mere 'digital play'.