September 2, 2009

| Everyday Super Powers >>

The thing I like best about Seth Schiesel’s NYT piece on The Beatles: Rock Band is that it’s entirely about the game’s cultural impact, the way it fits into our world. There’s a bit about the play mechanic, too, for those unfamiliar with Rock Band. But nothing about the technical dimensions of the game—not the barest mention of framerate or polygon count or HDR lighting effects or clever combo systems or… ahhh.

I know this isn’t unique, and game criticism has been getting a lot better in the past few years. But that the piece could hinge on this claim—

By reinterpreting an essential symbol of one generation in the medium and technology of another, The Beatles: Rock Band provides a transformative entertainment experience.

In that sense it may be the most important video game yet made.

—seems like a watershed to me. Even if he’s wrong, I love the fact that Seth Schiesel can make that claim and then spend the rest of the piece trying to back it up.