Activision is a beast that needs to be stopped. They will continue to ruin franchises like my beloved Guitar Hero the day they become a hinderance and lose an iota of profitability.
First, some preface about my history with music and games. They were always the two things that could soothe me as an angry young youth. The lyrics to the music I loved said all the things I never could articulate as a teenager coming into his own. The music was always an escape and helped me work out emotion and frustration and most importantly feelings that I was just beginning to understand. Music was a medium I understood having been a percussionist myself for some time. Gaming was something I was exposed to from a very early age and seemed magical at first, then turned into an escape when I entered my teenage years. I was able to explore worlds no one had ever dreamed of. Able to help the hero be the person he had to be, and, in the case of my favorite series The Legend of Zelda, actually be able to groom Link, and watch him grow up and become the hero his world needed. This was an idea I was obsessive about as I was entering the stage where I would not only grow up physically the most but be old enough to notice the changes. The two mediums then began to intertwine. Because of the limited space games had at the time I used to substitute my own music by playing my boom box and muting the television, altering the experience the game designer had in mind to fit my own emotional needs. Then games moved to composition and voice acting making it impossible to hear the story and listen to the music of my choosing. For the majority of the 5th generation of consoles (Gamecube, Playstation 2, and Xbox) I was music-less. My special experience had been robbed and I prayed for the day that music and games would come together again in a worth while event.
