At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is starting to change. Our colleague Steven Levy, author of the recent book "The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness," wrote a column in this week's magazine about the cultural significance of Guitar Hero, and its potential impact on actual instruments. We asked Levy to blog about his personal experiences with Guitar Hero II; here's what he had to say:

While all of us were feverishly covering the new generation of game consoles--and awaiting the expansion of World of Warcraft, which hit this week--the vast majority of the two hundred million or so PS2 owners were happily grinding away on that still-vital platform. So the Guitar Hero phenomenon came to flower pretty much under the radar. I first noticed it while seeing the plastic guitar controllers at places like the rec lounge at Google, and then began reading of real rock stars captivated by the game. When I heard that Detroit Tigers pitcher Joel Zumaya temporarily lost his fireball because excessive GH shredding had damaged his wrist, I knew I had to check this out.

I am a lapsed guitar player who mostly concentrated on acoustic, so vicarious participation in heavy metal solos was an enticing possibility. My 16 year old son and I took turns on the "easy" level of Guitar Hero II, acing the tutorials and going on to the play some of the initial sets. Though I'm a more experienced guitar player, he of course bested me easily: the skills necessary to succeed in Guitar Hero are more related to arcade gaming than stringed-instrument mastery. I had the best time with Cheap Trick's "Surrender"--an hour of the slowed-down song in Practice mode improved my reaction time to the point that I was able to play it at full speed well enough to actually feel I was channeling Rick Neilson. At that point, I wondered whether I should actually spend a lot more recreational time with the game, adopting it as on obsession so that I could rock out at the highest levels. But ultimately I decided that any such time would be better spent dusting off my Epiphone and re-acquiring the skills that once allowed me to play a semi-credible version of "Police Dog Blues."