The XKCD comic has it right. It's not about trying to be a real musician. It's about having fun. If you are a professional musician who makes your living playing music, I can almost agree with your argument of "untapped potential". However, if someone is simply a "music afficionado" as you say, what makes their choice of entertainment any better than the next person's? They play music because they enjoy it. Other people play Rock Band because they enjoy it. Neither is right or wrong. They each just have a different preference for how to spend their free time.
First of all, to all of the Alabama haters, at least I know how to RTFA (this includes the submitter of this article as well). The very first line in the article says that the kid is from Millbrook, Arkansas, not Millbrook, Alabama.
Secondly, I'm from Huntsville, AL and I always hate articles with Alabama in the title. Even though the article is about an intelligent kid who is doing something good for his school, it produces comments like "Alamaba sucks and consists of nothing but stupid people and rednecks". While it is true that AL definitely has its embarrassing parts (much like any other state), there have been plenty of intelligent people to come from this state as well. And don't forget, Alabama has probably done more for the field of space exploration than any other state. And yes, I do realize that Huntsville is definitely an outlier compared to the stats for the rest of the state.
I'll stick with the Bioshock and Portal comparison for sake of this discussion, but I think that Portal wins the award for Outstanding Innovation hands down.
When I hear the word innovating, I imagine something that has never (or rarely) been well executed before. Note that this is different from something ever being done before in any fashion whatsoever. As you correctly stated, the concept of portals has been done before. What makes Portal innovating is its execution.
For example, if you take anyone with experience in FPS games and drop them in the later levels of Bioshock, they will be able to function fine without having played the earlier portions of the game. However, take that same person and drop them in the later levels of Portal. I would imagine there would be a lot of confusion trying to figure out what to do and, more importantly, how to do it. To me, this is a signal that it is "innovating". It is new and different.
I definitely agree that Bioshock's art style, gameplay, and story were exceptional and original, but I'm not sure I would go so far as to call them innovating.
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The XKCD comic has it right. It's not about trying to be a real musician. It's about having fun. If you are a professional musician who makes your living playing music, I can almost agree with your argument of "untapped potential". However, if someone is simply a "music afficionado" as you say, what makes their choice of entertainment any better than the next person's? They play music because they enjoy it. Other people play Rock Band because they enjoy it. Neither is right or wrong. They each just have a different preference for how to spend their free time.
First of all, to all of the Alabama haters, at least I know how to RTFA (this includes the submitter of this article as well). The very first line in the article says that the kid is from Millbrook, Arkansas, not Millbrook, Alabama.
Secondly, I'm from Huntsville, AL and I always hate articles with Alabama in the title. Even though the article is about an intelligent kid who is doing something good for his school, it produces comments like "Alamaba sucks and consists of nothing but stupid people and rednecks". While it is true that AL definitely has its embarrassing parts (much like any other state), there have been plenty of intelligent people to come from this state as well. And don't forget, Alabama has probably done more for the field of space exploration than any other state. And yes, I do realize that Huntsville is definitely an outlier compared to the stats for the rest of the state.
I'll stick with the Bioshock and Portal comparison for sake of this discussion, but I think that Portal wins the award for Outstanding Innovation hands down.
When I hear the word innovating, I imagine something that has never (or rarely) been well executed before. Note that this is different from something ever being done before in any fashion whatsoever. As you correctly stated, the concept of portals has been done before. What makes Portal innovating is its execution.
For example, if you take anyone with experience in FPS games and drop them in the later levels of Bioshock, they will be able to function fine without having played the earlier portions of the game. However, take that same person and drop them in the later levels of Portal. I would imagine there would be a lot of confusion trying to figure out what to do and, more importantly, how to do it. To me, this is a signal that it is "innovating". It is new and different.
I definitely agree that Bioshock's art style, gameplay, and story were exceptional and original, but I'm not sure I would go so far as to call them innovating.