“We thought, there is no way this game is going to be successful.”
Prophetic words from Alex Rigopulos, CEO of Harmonix, recalling the early days of Guitar Hero. And when you look back far enough – past the millions of copies sold, past the weekend parties, before the game became a pop-culture milestone – his skepticism is actually very understandable.
At that point in history – 2005 — Harmonix had created several high-quality games, but none that were megahits. Frequency and Amplitude brought innovative music gameplay on PlayStation 2, following the trail blazed by Parappa the Rapper, Um Jammer Lammy, and Konami’s Japan-only Guitar Freaks. Harmonix had also worked with Konami on Karaoke Revolution with success, but even Rigopulos says “they weren’t blockbuster hits, they were base hits.”
When a small publisher named RedOctane approached Harmonix with a request, it was backwards. RedOctane wanted to make a guitar controller, but they didn’t have a game to go with it. Would Harmonix be interested in making that game? “In the beginning, we were kind of reluctant,” says Rigopulos. “They were this tiny company – they were like half the size we were. They had no money or marketing resources. They had no experience in publishing.” It was a destiny moment: Do you focus on staying afloat with base hits, or do you go for that blockbuster? “This was the game we had been dreaming of making for years,” admits Rigopulos. “We had complete creative freedom. We decided to do it – and of course, Guitar Hero happened.”
And oh, how it happened. Word of mouth propelled the original PS2 game to better and better sales throughout the 2005 holiday season, and well beyond. “Basically, as fast as RedOctane could make the guitars, the games were selling to retail and selling out,” recalls Rigopulos. Among the game’s biggest fans: Activision, which acquired RedOctane and the Guitar Hero name, then worked with Harmonix to bring Guitar Hero II to market the next year.
However, by the second sequel, Harmonix had been acquired by MTV Games, and the third GH installment would be handled by Neversoft — themselves enormous fans of the series. “We put it on a projector in the back room,” recalls Alan Flores, GHIII’s Lead Designer, “and then suddenly every week, we were having a big Guitar Hero party.” Rigopulos and company went on to create Rock Band, even if it was hard to let go of their creation. “Obviously, Guitar Hero is dear to our hearts,” he says. “It was our breakthrough game and we are very proud of having created it.”
Neversoft had its own mountain to climb, starting from scratch with none of Harmonix’s programming code to build upon. “Just being fans of the franchise, we didn’t want to f*** it up,” says Flores. “That was the first thing that came to our mind: we wanted to do a pure Guitar Hero experience. People loving the game as much as they do made us nervous – they’re going to be skeptical.” But with additions like Battle Mode, celebrity guitarists like Slash and Tom Morello, an epic good-vs-evil storyline, and a wireless controller for maximum living room rocking, fans embraced it, and several new ones got on board. Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock wound up being the first video game to top $1 billion in sales.
Every GH game kept the innovation coming – full band play and a music creation studio in Guitar Hero World Tour, a free-flowing Party Play mode in GH5, and a detailed challenge system in Warriors of Rock that let you call out any friend on any song, on any instrument. And of course, there are full explorations of the catalogs of legendary bands like Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Metallica.
With the release of April’s downloadable Track Packs, Guitar Hero as a franchise goes on vacation until further notice. Some are sad to see it go, others happy — but of course, the music lives on. Those games and guitars are in your collection, and it’s easy enough to fire them up whenever you want to feel like a guitar hero. Long live rock.
In honor of Guitar Hero’s remarkable run on PlayStation consoles, I’m giving away a Guitar Hero “time capsule” – multiple games from the series, lots of DLC, and other collectible swag for superfans. Check oneofswords.com for how to enter, and good luck!
Meh, never liked any guitar hero games nor rock band.
This is a dying market for a reason. Too many games of too similar (if not identical) execution. Literally sucked the market dry.
You are going to have to wait a looooooong time and do something really new (NOT a new kind of plastic peripheral) to revive this one.
Rock Band Dominates anyways but I might take a look into this I have both games and Guitar Hero had some nice Song selections…
@Dan Amrich
I have a better idea. Sign all of your ownership rights for the music on those discs to Harmonix so we can get those tracks on RB3. Maybe even allow us to use the DLC. I refuse to touch Guitar Hero ever again. Activision has run it into the ground like so many other things. At least EA got a clue this generation.
I really am serious about signing that music over and even potentially allowing them to use your DLC and even the discs music downloaded onto the PS3 hard drive for use in RB3. Not like you guys are ever going ot use those rights ever again once your last few discs leave shelves. At least with my suggestion those discs will clear quickly if we are able to import them onto RB3.
Unfortunately, music licensing does not work that way, and the rights for one game cannot be so easily transferred into another. Harmonix has done a fantastic job of licensing tracks for RB, and there are lots of songs that appear in both games — but that’s the only way something like that can happen. RB has to license its tracks independently, just as it’s been doing for years.