I recently had the chance to try out Guitar Hero: World Tour on the PS3. Yawn. The only thing I liked were the game controllers. It’s no surprise that Sony would manufacture superior hardware to that developed for the XBox or (horror of horrors) the controllers made for the Wii. But Guitar Hero’s game play was uncompelling and the number of clicks required to find the content I wanted was annoying. Ultimately, good hardware won’t win out over superior design and gameplay, and I won’t bother playing the game again.

I couldn’t help but make comparisons because the game is just a wannabe Rock Band. Right away I noticed the physical differences between the player characters. Guitar Hero characters look less human. They are more difficult to connect to or identify with, particularly the women. Rock Band women have reasonably realistic looking bodies who can be dressed sexy, sassy, or classy, but they always look strong and in control. Guitar Hero girls are emaciated hentai waifs with unaggressive stances and outfits that belong on hookers. Cheap ones, at that.

The presentation of female rockers as tasty, cute sexual morsels makes them “safe” because they aren’t cool or aggressive like the male player characters. Guitar Hero has stayed mired in the outdated thinking that games should be tailored to gently massaging the egos of insecure and undersexed male gamers. Most offensive is the sight of male musicians shredding while slutty groupies bounce up and down in the background.

Critics have targeted this gender bias for a while which reinforces the anecdotal evidence I can see for why women don’t play Guitar Hero, but they love Rock Band. Shoot, even the name “Guitar Hero” implies a male protagonist. Gender plays literally no role in Rock Band. It’s an option, not a limitation, and it’s easy to customize characters to look as masculine or feminine as possible. Players don’t think twice when choosing songs, and the same soundtrack — male or female lead singer — plays regardless of the physical appearance of the singer. It isn’t about the gender of the player or the original artist. It’s about rocking.

All characters — male or female — can be stocky or slim, short or tall. They can have pretty or plain faces, and you can dress them up or down. But both genders rock, and that’s what really matters. This isn’t to say that there aren’t ways Rock Band could experiment with further making the gender divide irrelevant. Rock Band 2 had the improvement of adding eye makeup to the men’s shop, which makes the characters more realistic as rock stars anyway. But the fact that there are separate rock shops with segregated costume items for male and female characters could easily be done away with.

To accomodate the physical differences between men and women there will be different code for male and female attire, but why can’t they all shop in the same store? Ordinary folks walk to different sections of a department store, but rock stars don’t do that. Why can’t women wear leather glam rock pants and motorcycle boots? Why can’t male rockers sport fishnets? It’s hardly very rock and roll. Cross-dressing as a taboo isn’t really a concept that applies to stage performance. Seeing a male rock star wearing fishnets and eyeliner or a female rocker with a shaved head and tattoos isn’t shocking. It’s expected. So why not erase the male-female line down the middle of the rock shop?

Rock Band 3 is in the works, but is still in very early development. I’d hope that as Harmonix starts working on what will no doubt be a brilliant installation of a compelling gaming experience, they will finish mopping up the last bits of gender redundancy in the game.