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Activision Trying To 'Reinvent' Guitar Hero
In an interview with Forbes, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick spoke about the rise and fall of the Guitar Hero franchise, saying "it became unsuccessful because it didn't have any nourishment and care." He then revealed that after effectively canceling the franchise last year, the company is looking for ways to resurrect it. "We said you know what, we need to regain our audience interest, and we really need to deliver inspired innovation. So we're going to take the products out of the market, and we're not going to tell anybody what we're doing for awhile, but we're going to stop selling Guitar Hero altogether. And then we're going to go back to the studios and we're going to use new studios and reinvent Guitar Hero. And so that's what we're doing with it now." Kotick also addressed Activision's lack of foresight regarding DJ Hero: "...in hindsight, if you step back – and it really would have been a simple thing to do – we should have said, 'Well, how many people really want to unleash their inner DJ?'"
time to move on
Based on past experience, I'm pretty sure that Activision really doesn't get it. I'm sure that the "reinvention" will include a whole line of expensive new instruments that you will have to buy, with a game that lasts for exactly one Christmas season before fading into obscurity. The kind of attention to detail that kept gamers interested in Street Fighter for almost two decades is something that I doubt Activision values as a publisher.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I'm picturing "Devil Went Down To Georgia". Good vs evil violins. Epic.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Guitar Hero - 2005
Guitar Hero 2 - 2006
Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock - 2007
Guitar Hero World Tour - 2008
Guitar Hero 5 - 2009
Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock - 2010
Not to mention the expansions:
Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s - 2007
Guitar Hero: Aerosmith - 2008
Guitar Hero: Metallica - 2009
Guitar Hero Smash Hits - 2009
Guitar Hero: Van Halen - 2009
Band Hero - 2009
Apparently unlike with CoD you can't sustainably sell people a new guitar game annually. Van Halen and Warriors of Rock both sold less than 100k units in their opening weeks.
Just get Rock Band instead. The game itself might not be getting any updates in the foreseeable future, but there are still new songs released weekly. Plus, Rock Band has the keyboard controller.
The music game genre is not dead, it's just dead for Activision.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
The problem was market saturation. There was a point where multiple Guitar Hero (not to mention Rock Band) games were coming out a year. With the level of marketing and production that was going on it didn't take long until everyone who wanted Guitar Hero owned it. And as it was mostly a party game you only really sell a few copies to every group of friends instead of most of the group buying it like online multiplayer games.
Most people weren't interested in the new game mechanics, they would buy new copies to get new songs. What they should have done was release a base game every 1 - 2 years and sold extra tracks (fully transferable between versions) from an online store.
That way they would have nursed the brand instead of dressing it in a short skirt and pimping it out on a shady corner. Of course Kotick doesn't know how to do anything but rape franchises.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
I really don't know what could be done about Guitar Hero to make the experience fresh and engaging. It looks to me like they're risking turning it into a convoluted and disappointing experience.
As for DJ Hero, I don't think the problem was that the audience wasn't there, the problem was that the music selection was bad. I mean, who hasn't gone to a dance club? The problem is that the music was heavily pop-oriented with a lean towards hip hop. They completely missed a huge core demographic for the game. It's like the whole game was based around a single DJ who evidently had a thing for a mish-mash of contrasting styles. The persistent theme seemed to be something new and old. They should have offered selections based around a range of popular genres; trance, house, drum n bass, dubstep, hip hop etc. Hell, they could have even included pop mixes. And keep the mixes within those particular genres.
Ideally the game would have let you choose any two tracks, but that would have been a daunting challenge to pull off automatic mixing. The thing is that the game was fun, albeit too easy. The music selection was the big letdown.
What happened was the day Harmonix left, so did all the innovation. Apart from the setlist of Guitar Hero 3, nothing good came from the Guitar Hero camp after that.
Rock Band, on the other hand, has gone from strength to strength - RB3 is a truly excellent game, full of features and with a really good business model. If you want an example of DLC being done right, look here.
Personally, I'd rather not see Guitar Hero come back. As much as competition is good, Harmonix have done more without competition than GH ever did. I've spent a lot of money on Rock Band, and I feel every penny was worth it. The pro modes are amazing (I'm one of around 1500 Squier owners outside the USA), the game is, in general, very good - and they are doing the exact opposite of what Guitar Hero did. They made a polished, well made game with lots of features, and are not releasing a sequel any time soon - RB3 is here to stay for some time, and they are continuing to support it with DLC. They are one of the few studios, alongside Valve and a few others, who I truly feel are doing what they believe is good for the games, not just their wallets (fortunately the two seem to go hand in hand).
Harmonix have done really well with Dance Central too - which I hear is also a great game, although not really my kind of thing.
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
Remember guys, this is Bobby Kotick, the guy who when he took over Activision famously said, "I want to take all the fun out of making video games." That line was meant to convey that he wanted to trim the fat at Activision, but in reality he just doesn't understand what it means to make good games. If no fun goes into a game, no fun is had playing one.
His quote that Guitar Hero failed because it didn't "receive nourishment and care" is probably the most honest thing he's said. But from everything I know about how that company operates (and I know a bit more than the average public), Kotick is a total micromanager, down to the tinest details. That's an alright quality if you're Steve Jobs, but Kotick comes from running packaged goods companies. He has no fracking clue about what makes a good game, or what makes something fun.
Look at the Rock Band guys by contrast. These were the developers who invented the original Guitar Hero gameplay. They have a passion for the game and wanted to see how far they could push it (and were given the freedom to do so). Would Kotick have imagined or approved turning the fake instruments into MIDI controllers, offering a Pro mode to teach people the fundamentals of playing a real instrument? No, because Activision doesn't innovate. They buy an established IP and run it into the ground. The original studio's best developers usually leave because they know what awaits them at the Activision grindhouse.
Kotick is risk-adverse. His philosophy is the same as a typical packaged goods CEO -- test market the shit out of a tiny variation on an existing product to make it palatable to the widest possible audience. But that doesn't work with artistic mediums like films and games. It just turns creativity, fun and vision into gruel. Unfortunately, I think this is becoming the standard in the industry now, as other game corps have seen Activision's financial success. Look at the number of innovative games from the PS2 era versus the PS3/360 era. Part of this is Japan wanting to emulate western studios (to their folly), as well as hiring incompetent western CEOs, but I think it's more due to game companies just not wanting to take big risks anymore.
DJ Hero was crap.
The first problem was that the controller was RSI-inducing after only a couple minutes.
The second problem was that the music was shit.
The third problem is that Guitar Hero/Rock Band are COMMUNITY games; you need to be able to have friends pick up and play with you. DJ'ing is not a community activity.
Kotick, meanwhile, should be fired for his policy of running franchises into the ground constantly. Activision's primary mistake is keeping him and his suck-ups on the payroll.
A turntable is a home appliance, not a musical instrument.
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50 people lost their jobs from Vicarious Visions in Mendands, NY with the death of the Guitar Hero franchise on February 9th. The cited reason in the termination paperwork was the elimination of the Guitar Hero "Business Unit". The sad fact is that Vicarious Visions was in the process of reviving the franchise - injecting it with the "creativity" and "inspired innovation" that Kotick bemoans the series lacking due to Neversoft's mis-handling, the same innovation and creativity that it will never have again now that all of the creative people who were to see the series through to its subsequent release in 2012 have been laid off, in perhaps the most hush-hush manner ever surrounding a game's utter implosion. It's easy to connect the dots as to what Activision were doing - observe Neversoft's staffing cupboard being laid bare by their corporate overlords, and the flocking of specific audio people and Neversoft staff to the Capital region. Observe the sudden uptick in hiring over the past 24 months.
Do note, please, that all of the rank-and-file employees who had been in the industry for more than a few years and hadn't yet drank the corporate Kool-Aid could see the writing on the wall years before the franchise started to flag. It was plainly obvious that Guitar Hero was never anything more than a quizzical curio of the executives, one that had materialized a billion dollars into their net worth for no good reason that any of their MBAs, marketing research, or "producers" could cite, but one that people appeared to want in record numbers. As they saw it, perhaps without realizing it, the series was one to be expanded, not honed - mass-produced, not polished. Guitar Hero, in the land of business-people, was to become as ubiquitous as the Wii, the Xbox, or Playstation - they wanted Guitar Hero to be come not a game, but a platform, and any gamer worth his or her salt can tell you that that is impossible. You reach market saturation, you polish for one iteration or perhaps two if demand does not flag, you move on. The fact, however, that (again) any gamer can tell you is that unless you have a brand that is couched in gamer culture that existed well prior to the introduction of Internet connectivity at large - compare to Mario or Madden, as even the Sonic franchise has become lackluster in light of its lack of pre-90's roots - people will not remain interested for more than a few years at best. A new fad comes along, staff turnover comes along, new hardware comes along, and with new things people want new franchises.
The sad fact is that the employees who balked at the notion of monetizing the Guitar Hero series were met with harsh reprimands - money is a cruel mistress, and it can make people do cruel things without even realizing it. Certainly, when one drives a new car into work and shuts that door for the first time in front of his coworkers, one would never admit that it could all come crashing down within six months, 12, 24 or ever. Employees that balked the loudest were laid off the soonest as the music/rhythm franchise began its inexorable decline, while those who praised every iteration, every minute variant were richly rewarded for their sycophantic loyalty.
The sad fact here is that there are no winners or losers, now, at the sad end of The Music/Rhythm Wars. Konami's interest level in polishing the Revolution and Freaks series seems to have ended long ago, Power Gig was a failure, Rock Band 3 sold worse than Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, roughly 500 people across different Activision studios lost their jobs in one go when Activision officially announced the termination of the Guitar Hero business unit, not to mention the studio closings and down-sizing occurring over the past two years - likely as an attempt to keep the Guitar Hero franchise afloat as it hemorrhaged money, Harmonix were sold off by Viacom for $50 and the assumption of their considerable debts - this after having their $150 million performance-based bonus requested to be returned as a result of their lack of meeting s
I'll be impressed if they manage to figure out how to do string detection. Given that on a guitar you can play the same note as an open high E on... well, every string... it's not that simple. There are a plethora of notes you can play on pretty much every string of a guitar and only I think about 9 that are actually unique? (4 semitones on the lowest string, 3 on the highest - at least in standard EADGBE tuning).
Why should it matter? It's an E. You can play it anywhere you want. For that matter, score any E chord the same. I'm a crappy guitarist but I routinely change fingerings and chords off of tab if they're easier to play in some other form.
That said, having played around with some of the "real" guitar games, they all seem to fail pretty hard on chord recognition. Individual notes are ok, but as soon as there are multiple notes it just craps out at random points even when you play correctly. My favorite was a company (I'll keep them unnamed) at CES selling a guitar trainer who admitted to me that they couldn't grade the songs correctly- they would give you a score at the end but couldn't point out where you made a mistake, and even if you played perfectly you wouldn't get a 100% except by luck.
Also I love how the promo video talks about effects and amps being expensive. I suppose that's true... but at the same time, that's part of the joy of playing an instrument... saving up to get that one distortion pedal from the 70s that really wails, or finally buying a gong, or getting that vocal mic that perfectly suits your voice... and virtual effects and amps are of course limited by the output device you have... home theatre systems tend to make pretty crappy guitar amps....
The interesting thing is how cheap all this stuff has gotten if you skip the boutique guitars and analog pedals. I have $200 guitar I play through a $150 (used) floorboard that emulates ~60 amps, ~30 cabinets and close to 100 different pedals, and also doubles as a USB recording interface. That's less than some of the Rock Band games. Yeah, it's not perfect, but I'm not any good anyway.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
As a real guitarist, I'm waiting for Rocksmith: http://rocksmith.ubi.com/rocksmith/en-US/home/.