I can agree that it's in theory possible that a videogame becomes as expressive as a musical instrument, but in reality I don't see that happening in at least the next 30 to 50 years.
I'm by no means professional guitar player, but I do play for fun quite a lot. I also love multiplayer starcraft 2 because of the same things I love guitar playing. It already feels like instrument to me. It's a way to express yourself in a social environment.
You can play macro, choosing one of the safe buildorders and building on that adding small changes in response to your opponent and sometimes on a whim or to throw him out of a loop. You can play risky focusing on early attack and better control of individual units. There's hundreds of proven tactics you can build upon, and with experience of few hundred games you can invent your own (most probably not viable on proffesional level but who cares).
You can switch from one to another tactics mid-game trying to surprise your opponent. Even things as simple as controlling your army have very deep possibilities of customization, because there's tousands of factors and not enough time to focus on everything, so it's a balancing act. Professional players often have their recognizable style (I love how Nerchio outflanks terran oponents, it's magic - everybody knows he does this and yet they fall for it time and again). Korean bio-terrans splitting their marines make one of the cheapest unit kill the units that are expected to be a counter to them (high templars, banelings), all while growing economy, harrasing, etc. Other players prefer chess-like mech playstyle, where you set up lines of defensive tanks and slowly move them along maps - it's like very slow tango - one player moves his tank forward while the other has no scan, the other player must move his units back a little or counterattack, but can't go too far or his units will be killed by the other tanks of the first player. Eventually one player makes a mistake and the army turns to shreds in a few seconds. Or you can just abuse the immobility and attack in a different place while the enemy army moves (but it tends to lead to both players killing each other base in parralel, and whoever is faster wins).
Starcraft is 100 decisions every second, the most important decision is "what decisions are the most important now". And there are lots of viable ways to do these decisions.
Comments
I'm by no means professional guitar player, but I do play for fun quite a lot. I also love multiplayer starcraft 2 because of the same things I love guitar playing. It already feels like instrument to me. It's a way to express yourself in a social environment.
You can play macro, choosing one of the safe buildorders and building on that adding small changes in response to your opponent and sometimes on a whim or to throw him out of a loop. You can play risky focusing on early attack and better control of individual units. There's hundreds of proven tactics you can build upon, and with experience of few hundred games you can invent your own (most probably not viable on proffesional level but who cares).
You can switch from one to another tactics mid-game trying to surprise your opponent. Even things as simple as controlling your army have very deep possibilities of customization, because there's tousands of factors and not enough time to focus on everything, so it's a balancing act. Professional players often have their recognizable style (I love how Nerchio outflanks terran oponents, it's magic - everybody knows he does this and yet they fall for it time and again). Korean bio-terrans splitting their marines make one of the cheapest unit kill the units that are expected to be a counter to them (high templars, banelings), all while growing economy, harrasing, etc. Other players prefer chess-like mech playstyle, where you set up lines of defensive tanks and slowly move them along maps - it's like very slow tango - one player moves his tank forward while the other has no scan, the other player must move his units back a little or counterattack, but can't go too far or his units will be killed by the other tanks of the first player. Eventually one player makes a mistake and the army turns to shreds in a few seconds. Or you can just abuse the immobility and attack in a different place while the enemy army moves (but it tends to lead to both players killing each other base in parralel, and whoever is faster wins).
Starcraft is 100 decisions every second, the most important decision is "what decisions are the most important now". And there are lots of viable ways to do these decisions.