GregHowley.com

MTV's James Montgomery recently authored an article entitled Are Video Games More Important Than Music? In it, he lists a number of reasons why they are, and then comes to the conclusion that they indeed are not. And while I certainly would not say that video games are more important to my own life than is music, there are a number of points which I feel obliged to rebut.

Firstly, he discusses how file sharing has hurt the music industry more than it's hurting the games industry.

Of course, it would be shortsighted of me to not mention just how much file-sharing has walloped the music industry. There is, to the best of my knowledge, no way to download a promo of "Halo 3," no way of getting a copy before it hits the streets (at least not yet, anyway), so game publishers have fans lining up around the block to buy copies of games at the stroke of midnight. This doesn't happen in the music industry anymore, thanks in no small part to downloading, which is, in no small part, the fault of the industry itself. Why pay $14 for a CD when you can get it for free?

Listening to as many video game related podcasts as I do, I've been hearing more and more about how piracy is impacting the games industry, particularly PC games. I probably heard this on the PC Gamer Podcast. And while you certainly can't count each download of either an album or a game as a lost sale, (at least not on a one to one basis) the games industry doesn't have an organization like the RIAA to inflate those numbers and sue people.

Sharing music online is likely a faster-moving phenomenon than sharing games, since it takes crackers time to break copy protection. I'll give him that. And while I've only ever gotten one illegally copied version of a videogame, it was because I'd already purchased the American version of Indigo Prophecy and I wanted to try the European version, which isn't available in The States. On the other hand, back in the late 1990s, I used to run Napster overnight on my dial-up connection to get music.

He also says there's no way to download game "promos". Apparently he's never heard of game demos. I'm not sure what music promos are, but I can only assume that it's the full version of the song, so perhaps this isn't a fair comparison. I suppose this first point of mine is less of a rebuttal and more open rhetoric. But read this second paragraph.

So, are video games more important than albums? Well, both the factual and the emotional seem to be saying yes, but when have I ever listened to either of them? I'm going to say no, if only for one simple reason: I have never heard anyone say that a video game saved their life.

I have. And probably in a more literal sense than whomever it was who said that a song saved their life. Perhaps the song inspired someone - made them less depressed and enabled them to stave off suicide. But I once heard a story from a guy who'd been playing a lot of a certain racing game. Grand Turismo I think, but I'm not sure since I never play racing games. He was driving home from work one day and hit some kind of road hazard - I forget, it may have been sand or ice. Due to his prolonged exposure to the game, he didn't panic. He automatically went into driving mode and counter-steered perfectly to correct the fishtail. Given that he was travelling at highway speeds, the accident would likely have not been pretty. Now that is a true story of a video game saving someone's life.

There is an emotional attachment with music. It becomes your friend. It helps you through tough times. It is, for all intents and purposes, the soundtrack to your life, the thing that's with you at every moment of every day. A good album stays with you for a week, a month, maybe even a year. A great album stays with you forever. I cannot think that any of these things are true of a video game, which, by its very nature, is basically created to be disposable. You play for a while, you vanquish some foes, you emerge victorious, and then you move on to the next one. There is no emotional attachment to speak of. Even the best games aren't going to stay with you for life — for example, I swear by "Tecmo Super Bowl." I also swear by Radiohead's OK Computer. But guess which one I reach for at least once a month?

A great album stays with you forever. I agree. Jellyfish's Bellybutton, Rush's Roll the Bones, Depeche Mode's Violator, and at least three Boston albums that I can think of fall into that category for me, although lately due to mp3 players I've begun to see albums less as bodies of work. But similarly, great games stay with me. Old games like Wasteland and Ultima V. Newer games like Half-Life 2 and Psychonauts. I've replayed all of these from start to finish except Ultima V, which would unfortunately just be too time-consuming. But I've got lengthy stories I could tell about each. I remember them all quite well. All had very memorable scenes, the kind of thing you remember fondly and tell stories of. Take Beyond Good and Evil for example. I just finished my third replay, and loved it. I've picked that game up about once every two years since I first discovered it. That's not as often as the once a month James Montgomery mentions, but playing through the game in its entirety is a far more significant investment of time than is listening to an album. Especially considering that people generally do other things while listening to music.

And basically, just because of that, I don't think video games will ever carry the cultural and emotional impact of music. I might be completely wrong about that — and the numbers certainly seem to be pointing to this — but that's what being a music fan (or a music journalist) is really all about: saying to hell with the rational and dealing almost exclusively with the intangible. There is magic in that, and there is magic in music, and no matter how terribly the industry continues to falter, that will never really change.

In conclusion, I've got to say that I too am a music lover, and I'm not trying to tout video games as superior to music. But at the same time, many games speak to me in a way that music cannot. Well-written, well-designed games have characters at least as well developed as characters in movies, and storylines as engaging as many novels. And if you think that a video game cannot make you cry, play through Half-Life 2, then Episode 1, and then play through Half-Life 2 Episode 2 to the very ending and see how it hits you after having built relationships with all the game's characters.