When karaoke began in the United States, it was commonly seen as a stepping-stone toward rockstardom (Drew 2001). Though a Japanese import, karaoke was quickly adapted to an American audience (Drew 2001). Thus, as karaoke became a more known phenomenon, notions of stardom have faded and instead
karaoke has become a form of leisure entertainment meant to draw crowds to venues. But more than just leisure entertainment, karaoke is a unique sort of casual simulation game (Bryan & Tanenbaum, 2019) that relies on performance for its primary method of engagement, turning that performance into social play. As detailed in “Adapting the Empty Orchestra” (Bryan & Tanenbaum, 2019), karaoke is constrained within a
sparse set of explicit rules, an amorphous list of implicit rules, and open-ended goals that are set by and for the individual, toward a community of shared performance. Karaoke’s design, eschewing competition in favor of collaboration and community, allows players to explore themselves and grow from that exploration. In this paper, we explore the experience of a father and his two daughters playing out our projected selves, confronting our vulnerabilities through the “as if” of karaoke. Performance play through karaoke allows players, and play communities, a unique opportunity to explore identities, and confront vulnerabilities, in a safe public space, using the expressive potential of music and a built in audience community support system.
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