Watching the trailer for the Scott Pilgrim video game, I noticed one boss fight is a guitar hero parody. I also remember this as an April Fools gag for a bard class in World of Warcraft.
This got me thinking... I think the Cryptic Engine needs to build on its music player for just such a mini-game. If tying into MP3s is too difficult, perhaps midis could be used.
I can see immediate uses for Vic's Lounge on DS9 (which would be a great addition as a poker and music hub) as well as our own ships' theater facillities (the Enterprise-D's theater figured very prominently). Over half of the Trek main characters play a music instrument or sing. I can see this being a feature in more engaging diplomatic content, a "morale boosting" buff system or injury removal system in the field and a fun mini-game where we could take the stage at Vic's or aboard our own ship and play an instrument for latinum. (It could also be used for melodic passwords to unlock doors.)
The advantage to midi is that the instructions are simple and so we could play music that other players could hear, perhaps even have the ability to compose very basic music in game as well as import familiar melodies into a folder for use in-game.
I think this actually has a surprising amount of cross-game potential, given that Cryptic's next MMO is likely fantasy (where playing musical instruments would likely be even more integral than it is in Trek) and it would have some backwards functionality for Champions, since there ARE super-heroes who utilize music (like Dazzler) and even Superman once defeated Darkseid by singing.
The big advantage I can see in using Midi, like I say, is that there is a wealth of it out there and the instructions are simple enough that a file could be read and played server side for everyone to hear.
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