What Rock Band has done for me (Long Read, but worth it)

[C-Weiner]

Rock Band first came out on November 20th, 2007. Six days from that date it was my birthday, and I was very lucky to receive the bundled game as a present. I had some previous experience with the Guitar Hero franchise, but was never really that good.

I started playing the game on the medium difficulty with my brother who decided to give the drums a shot. To be honest I sucked, but the music I was playing was addictive, and it lead me to keep playing the game and slowly getting better. I eventually became a master of the guitar, and I remember the first time I ever conquered Green Grass & High Tides.

It took me about a month to do. It stood in my way of completing the guitar career. One day I set out to do it, and everything was going great until the very last part of the very last solo. I failed quickly, and became discouraged, i let the game sit for a day, and returned the next day with intent on finally beating it. I'm again at the very last part of the song, extremely close to failing but I managed to pull it off. I was extremely happy.

I like to point to that moment as the moment I became addicted to the franchise. I started buying up the DLC, I started to master the other instruments, including drums which up to that point I was only able to play on easy. I did eventually become a drum master, breaking many of the drum sets I had in the process, but it was worth every dollar to a kid like me at the time. I had something to show off to my friends, we had something to do every time we hung out in my basement. Rock Band even helped me learn how to play real drums. To this day I still pop in the disc to drum along on my real drum set. It's just pure fun.

Harmonix as a company knew how to treat their community of fans, and still does. When Rock Band 2 came out, I was in the 9th grade. We were put in to groups and asked to come up with fundraising ideas. I had seen on these very forums groups of friends partake in fundraising efforts by playing through every Rock Band song in a marathon. I suggested it, and everyone loved the idea. That's what we were going to do, a Rock Band marathon. I thought to myself how can we possibly make this even better, so I contacted Harmonix, well HarmonixHenry, who managed to hook us up with a signed Rock Band 2 bundle, that we raffled off. the fundraiser was a complete success.

Rock Band as a whole introduced me to music and bands that I wouldn't have thought twice about listening to. My music tastes were terrible before this game came out. I now compulsively listed to bands like Rush, and the Who because of this game.

I have played Rock Band ever since it came out, I joined these very forums in 2008 to connect with fellow music enthusiasts. I've seen people come and go on here. I always felt that I could genuinely connect with the people on here better than my real friends. I myself have not been on here a whole lot as of late, but I keep up with the news. I follow Rock Band on twitter, and as I was viewing my feed the other day, I saw the announcement that Rock Band DLC was being discontinued. I have realized for sometime now that the franchise as a whole seemed to be slowing up, but the news still surprised me. It has lead me to think about the memories I have associated with this game. Some I haven't even listed here because they're just that personal.

I want to end this thanking Harmonix for the years of service they have pumped into the game and the amount of changes that have occurred since 2007. I will always be thankful for Rock Band, it has given me a lot. I hope that some folks from Harmonix read this and know what they have done to help the community.

[jibjqrkl]

good read =) glad this game meant so much for you. but we do already have a thread for these kind of stories

http://www.rockband.com/forums/showthread.php?t=232564

[Munnchy]

I have a really bad feeling this thread's gonna get locked. But it was a pretty good read. If it does, don't take it to heart :P

Copy out the story and post it in the thread Jibs just gave you. That way, your story is in a sticky-ed thread at the top of the forum page

[Hogan2000]

Awesome Bruther. I still haven't beat Green Grass and High Tides bruther but I love playing. Harmonix's is a great great company bruther and when the new Gen console comes out bruther, I hope and pray that Rock Band will be revived and continue to live on bruther.

[Dangimarocker]

Made me cry, that is all.

[illmissrockband]

umm...it's just a game dude.

[jibjqrkl]

umm...it's just a game dude.

to you maybe, to a lot of other people it's a lot more.

[Alternity]

Rock Band changed the way I listen to music, literally.

[Munnchy]

It completely changed mine. I most of the bands I listen to now are thanks to Rock Band.

[HardRockerBrazil]

Maybe the thread is redundant, but it WAS a beautiful read.
I bet there's plenty of other players out there who have had the same experience, changing their musical tastes, being led to learn how to play instruments... I, myself, haven't had the chance to learn drums (I only play them very sporadically, on a kinda-sorta arcade set mounted at a shopping mall here in my city), but when I pick up the mic, it's such an exhilarating feeling, I feel like I could do this for real. And it also helped me a lot with overcoming some insecurity issues I used to have, plus it brought out some showmanship in me, as some friends told me before. Plus, thanks to the game, I'm improving to become a better singer, and I hope I can form a band sometime soon. So, even though I've comparatively been playing for less time (the first game I owned was RB3, which I got right at the Christmas of 2010), I'm very grateful to Rock Band for all this and more.