I find it hilarious, there being so many rhythm games these days.

One of the assigned readings stuck out - dated as it was, bringing up Guitar Hero 2, the newsweek article brought up an excellent question.

DOES playing rhythm games such as Guitar/DJ Hero dumb down the idea of musicianship?

In my opinion, absolutely not, and with good reason.

There's a specific reason i call Guitar Hero a rhythm game. There is essentially no musicianship or musical skill involved. All the original game is (before drums were involved) revolves around 5 colored buttons acting as frets, a strum bar, and a whammy bar (the last of which only helps so much for getting combos). The game is in the timing, not the virtuosity. Only recently has actual musicianship come into play, thanks to rival series Rock Band (which added a drum and, eventually, a keyboard and more realistic frets), but the game does not go very far, itself. Real instruments bring real experience.

Video games are, at their roots, fantasy. Nothing really gets rid of that fantasy aspect, even in educational games, because nothing truly replaces a real teacher or mentor. To continue the idea of why video games aren't good teachers of anything except maybe hand-eye coordination, let's look at the video game Dance Dance Revolution, or DDR (ironically, the game for which the makers of Guitar Hero, RedOctane, made dance pads).

DDR is a dance/rhythm game. It consists of an elaborate arcade set-up of a raised metal platform with 2 pads, 4 directional arrows per pad, either for 2 players or one person with a really big sugar rush to work off. The game really cannot be considered a dance game due to the fact that, though the music is more fit for the dance floor, the actions of the game are mere stomps to a rhythmic cue. DDR doesn't at all give the impression that people will know how to dance after playing the game. The original Guitar hero was holding down one or more buttons while hitting a strumming mechanism. It's still nowhere near how to play a guitar. I will link a VGCats comic regarding this game and, while in a crude manner, the artist states that rhythm games are not a replacement for actual guitar skill and that it is only a video game.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=230