In 2003, researchers Hatanaka Yuko and Miyakoshi Yukiko from Hiroshima University published a report that would come as little surprise to anyone who’s ever sang into a hairbrush in front of the mirror: karaoke is good for you. In their research paper “Karaoke and stress response” the duo reported that indulging in communal singing sessions reduces stress and increases sociability. As exercise, it is as effective as a short run – obviously discounting all the Jägermeister shots you may need before agreeing to belt out Take My Breath Away alongside your line manager.

This is partly why it’s great news that the music gaming genre is set for a triumphant return. Last week, Kotaku speculated that Activision will soon be reforming its Guitar Hero series after a five year absence, while developer Harmonix revealed on Wednesday that it is working on a new Rock Band title. Both games provide players with a microphone, an array of plastic controllers designed to resemble musical instruments, and hundreds of songs to play along with. For a while, music games were a huge deal selling millions of copies. But then the market got overcrowded, the instruments were expensive and the economy collapsed a teeny bit. It was the day that music died.

That was sad. And it was sad for some very important reasons. First, those games were fun. Some of the best gaming nights of my life have been spent yelling Smoke on the Water into a microphone while my adult friends stand around me playing undersized guitars. Music is a universal form of entertainment and self-expression in human cultures – it delves into the pleasure centres of our brains, bypassing all the logic circuits, dissolving our inhibitions. Music is life and fun and sex. Music is the opposite to first-person shooters.

There is something else though. While the Nintendo Wii was commendable in the way that its easy-to-use wand controllers broke down the interface barriers and let everyone have a go, most of its games still replied on traditional gaming skills: timing, coordination, planning and speed. Titles like Mario Kart and Wii Sports also played into conventions and structures that are super familiar to veteran players, so they always had the advantage.

But with music games, especially those that introduced singing – such as Rock Band and Sony’s wonderful Singstar – the skills were totally different. The roles reversed. Suddenly seasoned gamers found that their toolset of conditioned responses – their muscle memory for controller inputs – was useless. Suddenly, new talents were required. In my own house, my wife never plays games but she’s a much, much better singer than me – I couldn’t compete with her, though god help me, I have tried. This can be amazing and empowering and the dynamic of games as a social experience changes. It’s not just about giving the once-a-year gamers a Wii Remote and laughing as they gamely try to hit an onscreen tennis ball; it’s about those people stepping up and blowing everyone else off the stage.

Music games also allow forms of expression that are impossible in other genres. There are plenty of games with cool soundtracks – one of the reasons Wipeout did so well as a PlayStation poster boy was that it brought the soundtrack of mid-nineties clubbing straight into your living room with its tracklist of Chemical Brothers and Leftfield tunes. But with music games, you get to choose the tracks and show off your preferences: playing Rock Band is like making someone a live mix tape – you’re saying “this is who I am, these are my tastes”. You can’t do that with Resident Evil.

Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, Rockband, Singstar – they also allow a kind of emotional expression that contrasts entirely with the traditional gaming experience. Singing and playing along to a favourite song, eyes closed, head thrust back, unaware of anything else, just that moment, just that pleasure... this is the opposite to, say, Call of Duty, which requires you to be constantly hyper-aware of every pixel. Shooting games provide emotional release too, but the underlying tones are frustration and anger. Music games can touch on that – trying to get the chord sequence right on a tricky guitar track for example – but the overall emotional theme is one of joy and creation.

When you’re young, music is everything – every experience channels through it, relationships are defined by it, sorrow is fought with it. When we get older, sometimes we lose that intense connection, or we narrow it down to the classic titles we loved all those years ago. Music becomes a nostalgic escape rather than an emotional release. Music games – like karaoke – can re-light the original intensity and broaden tastes and horizons.

My friends on the radio show One Life Left run regular “Marioke” nights where gamers go on stage and sing popular songs that have been adapted with new video-game-based lyrics. They are the best nights. Gamer crowds can be shy and inhibited, but there is such a euphoria and a shared sense of identity on these nights – the thrill of becoming a star. Games can be about this – and we are seeing through the rise of gaming YouTubers and the sharing functions built in to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One – that players want to be performers.

Everyone does in some small way. Music is community, identity and passion. These are elements that game designers have to really strive for, have to spend years designing intricate user-interfaces to produce. But music games can do it with a mic and a tracklist. The greatest analogue controller we have is our voice – and some people use theirs better than others allowing them to come to the fore. That is empowering. Mostly, titles like Rock Band and Guitar Hero show us that games don’t just want your puzzle-solving abilities or your shooting skills, they want your high love and emotion, endlessly.