I Got Spammed by Guitar Hero (sort of)

Wow, talk about out of the blue. I got email from a member of the Guitar Hero Community inviting me to join their tour group. Huh?

Sometime last month I stumbled across the Guitar Hero Community web site, and signed up to see what it was about. I assume they're the "official" community web site for the game, as they use the game's artwork, have links to pre-order the next version, and all the legalese links at the bottom take me directly to the Activision web site.

I never got around to linking my Wii version of Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock or Aerosmith to the community site, so none of my scores or level progress are reported on the site. That's supposed to be a feature of the site - you can link your accounts, and presumable friends and family can see how well "You Rock!" (or not).

I didn't bother setting any of the privacy check boxes, because I assumed my scores would be comparatively low, and therefore not of great interest to most of the people on the site. If you check YouTube, it's filled with kids rocking out on GH on much higher levels than I've been able to master (geez, kid - don't you have homework or something?) So imagine my surprise when someone invited me to join their Tour Group. Ha! Kid, have you SEEN my scores?? Obviously not, because there ARE NONE!!

The email mentioned that not only were they interested in me joining them, but that they had a web site, members only chat rooms, and a store to buy gear with the group's logo on it! Further poking about the main page of their site indicate that they claim over 805 members (although their email claims 1,300.) I wonder how they all manage to start the same song at the same time?

In the GHC context, a Tour Group is like a Guild or Clan to MMORPG's, which seems a bit odd to me. GH isn't really a game you would think of as collaborative, beyond playing with one other person. It's not like there are 5 or 10-man 'raids' to Madison Square Garden to play "Welcome to The Jungle" as part of the game experience. It seems a bit forced to me, but then again beyond my initial visit to sign up, I haven't spent any time on the site to build up any sort of excitement about participating in anything on it. Is Guitar Hero the kind of game you really can get participitory about? Sure, I've chatted with friends about the game, even mentioned how far along in the game I've gotten. Maybe I'm just not "into" it enough. Apparently, at least 805 other people are!