“So what we have is a place where a very few people are the creators,and they get scored on their work, and if the rest of the world produces anything it’s scored for fidelity to the creators’ work rather than how well it builds on things.”

But I don’t see anything else in this post that backs this up. People enjoy playing Rock Band, which is a game that involves you mimicking someone’s performance of a song… I don’t know what that has to do with creativity, it’s a game. Sometimes people enjoy passive pursuits. Some woman sued an ad because it was influenced by her… People are greedy.

I think people are perfectly aware that they don’t just have to consume, but it involves effort to be creative. Perhaps people need to be made aware of how little effort can sometimes be required to be creative?

And as an aside, regarding Rock Band (and other similar games), what other possible way could this game work, given that musical taste is an entirely subjective thing and computers lack consciousness and emotion?

But, so what? The people who play RB are not, generally speaking, people who would otherwise be using that time to create real songs with real instruments, or write the next great American novel, or find a cure for cancer, or whatever. If people weren’t playing RB they’d most likely be a) playing another video game or b) watching television.

In the end it’s far more likely that games like RB will have either absolutely no net influence on the overall involvement of people with actual creativity, or will actually have a *positive* one, in terms of encouraging people to try the real thing. There are already several recorded instances of this.

http://xkcd.com/359/

encapsulates what you get wrong perfectly. No-one plays Rock Band under the illusion that they are doing anything creative or particularly ‘useful’. They play it because *playing it is a lot of fun*.