Orchestrations of Play

[Adam LaMosca]

Orchestrations of Play

Audiosurf recently brought to my attention the similarities between playing music and playing games. It's a simple, casual game where you control a little ship as it rides down a linear track, colliding with colored blocks. ... But what makes Audiosurf special is the way it incorporates music.

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[Arbre]

Audiosurf: Oh, look, I pasted controls onto Windows Media Player, and now you can collect cubes!
A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.

 

[indemnitypop]

I've had this conversation with people that I play music with on many occasions, but we usually look at it from the side of how playing music is like a video game. The creative aspect aside, playing an instrument requires a great degree of muscle memory and non-thinking which is similar to that required of video games. If you've ever tried to teach anyone who has never played a game before to use a Playstation controller, you've witnessed how much we as gamers take for granted our fingers' ability to push the right button at the right time, just as a musician on stage, at least momentarily, must take for granted his ability to finger the right fret, hit the right drum, or sing the right pitch. The caveat, in this case, is that it only took me about six months when I was about 5 years old to learn how to play video games pretty well. I've been playing bass for about 10 years, and I still wouldn't consider myself particularly good.