A meeting of hobbies

Playing Guitar Hero III was a particularly enjoyable experience, partly because I did it with a guitar hobbyist friend of mine who hadn't enjoyed a video game in years.

A self-made guitarist, my buddy was curious to see how his hobby mixes and matches with one we used to share, video gaming. He found himself absolutely addicted to the guitar-shaped controller after a single song.

Video games have the rather unique advantage of being a hobby about hobbies. Developers have realized this for years, although "hobby games" are a relatively small segment of the market, not considering the updated editions of sports games that come out every year (of which, as you've previously seen, I'm not a big fan). There are the flight simulators that Microsoft releases for the PC annually. Recently, we've also seen some defence law and medical surgery games too, although they were cartoonishly exaggerated.

However, nothing has had the success of Guitar Hero or its younger rival, Rock Band. I think part of the reason is a lot of people would like to play guitar deep down, but can't be bothered to learn the real thing. Pressing colour-coded buttons to a pre-set rhythm is obviously much easier than actually plucking strings to create the rhythm yourself.

One wonders if Guitar Hero, along with some of the other recent hobby-based efforts, may lead to more and more people who shun video games to take a second look at the medium. One could point to the Nintendo Wii's success in invading new user homes and say that it's already happening, but that's not what I necessarily had in mind.

One designer recently surmised that it probably won't be too long before gamers get just too bored from the endless waves of first-person shooters with their recreations of World War II or generic space marines vs. aliens plots and the demand for original product pushes toward the creation of something like a rock-climbing game set in first person.

Isn't that something you'd go for? If the game was well-made, I would love to pit a virtual avatar of mine against the world's most forbidding peaks.

Being a reporter, I've often wondered how my job would be like in video game form.

One option would be a highly realistic simulation based on old text-based adventures. Your character would have to go to town hall meetings or other events, consume pre-existing media within the game or cross-examine with his sources before setting out to do interviews and write stories. Stories would always come out somewhat differently depending on what types of questions you choose to ask during an interview.

Depending on what type of outlet you work at, your daily work is constantly inundated with surprise events, like a fire or major robbery to cover, or an anonymous tip about political or private corporate wrongdoings. It's up to you to decide whether you pursue those stories or not.

What kind of hobby or profession would you like to see turned into a video game? E-mail me at raffy.boudjikanian@transcontinental.ca with your suggestions. I'll post up the best ones at the end of my next column right here on our website.