Your view on Guitar Hero & Rock Band's objective

I was looking through Guitar Hero's cultural impact on Wikipedia & I saw a part of the article saying that he doesn't believe that people can learn how to play a guitar by playing Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc. When I continued, it also said that Prince has the same view. They don't get it. Guitar Hero & Rock Band are meant to influence people to play guitar or drums or start a band not how to play one & it's also meant to introduce younger audiences to the music from the time before they were born or music from bands they never heard of & obviously, it's for entertainment. If you got a different view on their objective then post them here.

I doubt many people have been influenced to play guitar from Guitar Hero. They were probably influenced to buy more editions of Guitar Hero and buy more songs, but I don't see any connection to an actual guitar other than the shape of the controller and how it's held. The difference between five buttons and 47 notes is huge. One is a game, the other is an instrument. I really don't see any comparison. I find playing a real guitar more fun because making music myself is more fulfilling than pressing buttons to correspond with signals on a screen.

Rockband is pretty much group karaoke, with air guitar for score. It's an awesome party game.

If it gets a few kids (and adults) interested in learning a few power chords on an actual guitar, well, that's just a side benefit. :)

If I recall correctly, Alex Rigopolus of Harmonix said in an interview with us at E3... 2007? that he wanted Rock Band to allow people who didn't play instruments to be able to experience the sense of togetherness and symbiosis of playing music with other people. He also joked make a joke later on, once the drum controller had been revealed, that his other secret agenda was for Rock Band to help create "an army of rock drummers" in the world, but I don't think he was ever too serious about this.

I don't think that Harmonix or Neversoft had any aspirations of Rock Band or Guitar Hero to ever be proper learning tools to help someone play guitar or drums. Even the drums, which are a fairly close analog to the real thing, won't teach you anything about the root fundamentals of drumming. As a drummer, one thing I have appreciated through Rock band is playing through the music of other drummers. its greatly diversified the rhythms I come up with in the band that I play in.

Its easy to see how these games might provide the seed of an idea in someone's head that they'd like to pursue learning a musical instrument, but it isn't a teaching tool. Its a rock show simulator to bring together musicians and amateurs alike, and its a pretty fun one at that.