How to Ruin a Good Game

Guitar Hero was a great game because it crossed all sort of boundaries and erased some barriers to entry for people who thought that they would never play a video game. It has a controller that looks and plays similar to a guitar and can allow anyone to feel like a rock star. I even wrote an article about the wonders of Guitar Hero and why it was so seminal.

Guitar Hero was bought by Activision and that was the end. Activision is a company known from the Tony Hawk video game franchise and known by me as the people who quickly eliminated professional female skaters as avatars from that game. They seem to take joy in removing game play aspects that appeal to women who game.

When Activision redesigned the characters for the new game they took hold of the one avatar the vast majority of the female gamers I know play, Judy Nails. Before this new build you just had to mention Judy Nails to a fellow woman gamer and her eyes would light up with joy. Judy was everything I wanted to be. She was super cool with a punk riff and she could totally rock a guitar. While I was standing in my living room barely making it through a song, Judy was on the screen rocking her way into guitar heaven.

Unfortunately, the new version of Judy looks like a meth user whose boob job went horribly wrong. All of the characters have been made to look more cartoonish, but none was slashed as badly as poor Judy. The women gamers on a list-serv I belong to were talking about the death of Judy from the minute the game hit the shelves and I was skeptical. I mean how could they make her look THAT bad? So down I went to Best Buy to try the demo and see for myself and it is! I was having trouble playing because I was absolutely mesmerized by her crazy bouncing breasts. It just looks uncomfortable.

One small change, the essential elimination of one character and that is it. I won’t buy it and neither will lots of other women who were loyal to the game. The video game makers say that it doesn’t matter, that they are selling more of this version of the game than ever before. But that is just short term thinking. I know play Rock Band and I tell everyone I know about how much better it is. In the long term the loss of a small piece of market share will be big.