reHASHplus

The arrogance of children--and the 40-year-olds deserve it

Oct 12, 2009 10:44

 

I got Guitar Hero 5 as a gift for my 40th birthday on Saturday. I had a great time with it as I got it, tearing apart the gift wrapping and all and installing it immediately on the PS3 and maxing out the TV's volume. And I rocked! (Get ready for another chest-beating post.)

I didn't have enough of it though, and when I was out on Sunday with my son, he took a special interest watching an eight-year-old playing Guitar Hero 5 at Best Denki Ngee Ann City, in front of a gorgeous 55-incher with full amplifier systems for the audio. I waited for the eight-year-old to finish his stint and was stamping my feet to the music to warm up.

Rules of engagement, as I perceived them, are simple--in a DEMO PLAY environment, you wait for the guy to finish his song, you have ONE turn, and if there's somebody waiting, pass the guitar on.

I waited three songs, and the kid was still playing. I wouldn't have minded if he played the songs at full bore and played it well. But that kid unforgiveably missed notes and set the speed of the song so SLOW in training mode that the songs were unrecognizable. Plus, he played the worst songs in the game, too, at least to me.

After his fourth song, I asked: "Hey, could I have a go at it?"

The kid passed me the guitar, and I pressed a wrong button (the PS3 and Xbox have a different color SELECT button and I was PS3-centric).

Hah, the kid then grabbed back the guitar and continued to play, just like that. I felt robbed!!! He thought me a bumbling fool and took the guitar like I was wasting time with it.

I asked the kid again: "Hey, could I have a go at it?" (In confrontational situations it may be best to copy-paste statements so there would be less chance of giving offence).

He passed me the guitar again, and this time I pressed the right buttons and used his training mode, but at full speed. The kid protested, "hey, you know aaa, the speed will be too fast for you to handle, it will be very fast one!!!"

The notes came flying fast and furious, so I had to ignore the kid, though I would have preferred to make a quick rebuttal like "unker (uncle) has been playing GH before your quarter brothers were flushed down the toilet". So thank goodness for the notes flying, refraining me from dumb speech.

I did a passable job with Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf and the kid was staring in awe at my (to me, mediocre) performance, and after everything I passed him back the guitar and he subvocalized "wow".

So to an eight-year-old kid, even an eight-year-old who performs below par of his peers, the default position is that unkers with kids suck at gaming. I think the unkers deserve it. It's their fault for not keeping up their eye-hand coordination skills on computer games. But it is unfortunate that an entire generation of kids totally disrespect their elders in the field, which means the MOST to them--computer games!

Who are these kids to look up to? Twelve-year-olds? And so few 18-year-olds can be expected to game well as many of them prefer the new-found pleasures of co-ed dorms without parents. Plus, retirees prefer video editing to preserve memories instead of Guitar Hero.

It's all up to the 40-year-olds to set the ideal age to gain the respect of this entire generation of kids developing in an uncertain economic environment. You gotta give them a welcome idea of who's boss, or at least, a generation which the kids can share their gaming problems with, because at that age, for me, it was gaming which counted and the rest of life just something I had to get through someway somehow.

So, for the rest of my fellow 40ers, pick up your guitars, joysticks, flight sticks and G15 keyboards, and let's rock!

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