The subway doors open and people shuffle in and out of the train; I tap my feet as I listen to my iPod. New scenery passes with every mile marker on the highway; I drum on the steering wheel as my car stereo provides the journey’s soundtrack. Every day, I’m keeping the beat with my personal music collection, but I’m keeping it to myself. TubeHero casually gamifies my incessant finger-tapping and gives me the option to share it with my Facebook friends. It’s the justification of a habit. It’s a spotlight on music addiction. It’s Spotify, combined with Guitar Hero, combined with Peggle or Angry Birds. It’s a stretch.
TubeHero drives my music down the famous note highway and turns my phalangeal percussion section into a score, and then an advertisement. Its attention to detail makes me feel like I’m boasting about my performance, marketing my gamer-self. It also seems to say my natural beat-keeping has no value. I should score it. I should scream it.
I enjoy my music while playing TubeHero, but I enjoy it less than when I’m bongo-ing my thighs and knocking on my desk, tapping my feet and bobbing my head. The game shifts my focus to multipliers and demands that I tap to its auto-generated visual map of the music powering the game – a map that I can’t feel like I feel the music itself. Even while shouting my musical tastes and achievements, my expression feels throttled. I’m no longer doing music my way; I’m doing music TubeHero‘s way.
My finger-tapping sounds much better without an iOS game underneath it.
