Guitar Hero – Time to Pull the Plug?

  

68592 comments so far (is that a lot?)http://www.parcbench.com/2009/09/14/guitar-hero-time-to-pull-the-plug/Guitar+Hero+-+Time+to+Pull+the+Plug%3F2009-09-14+06%3A30%3A12Ryan+Anthony

Written by Ryan AnthonycloseAuthor: Ryan Anthony Name: Ryan Anthony
Email: mica1884@gmail.com
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About: 20-something Tennessee Journalism student and relentless sports fan.See Authors Posts (214) on September 14, 2009

As an aspiring guitarist myself, and owner of a six-string acoustic I regularly pluck to tunes such as post-grunge group Collective Soul’s “December,” I greeted the news of a coming addition to the Guitar Hero franchise with more than a spark of interest. Even though I don’t actually have GH5, or a Wii for that matter, the notion of introducing budding musicians to aural art they might not otherwise hear is always something I’ve enjoyed.

Until now.

I may not be a businessman but it doesn’t take much in the way of common sense to understand that two things you never want to do are oversaturate your market or alienate your fans.

Has the Guitar Hero series, at a dozen games, jumped the shark by doing both?  The more I think of their predicament, the more I’m reminded of not only the legion of products distributed by former home console developer Sega, but the ’01 box-office bomb that was “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.” Though unrelated, their spectacular crash-and-burns serve as twin warnings: put quality above quantity, and most importantly, never tick off your main source of income.

It seems like Activision isn’t listening.

For the few years preceding the release of RedOctane’s latest, rhythm gaming’s path was foretold as that of the first-person shooter and the tech job fields – to such an extent that CNBC’s Chris Morris designated 2009 as “the year the music video game died.”

Along with Rock Band: Beatles, many other music games have been prepped for stores in the coming months and beyond. These new offerings are replete with cookie-cutter titles such as Guitar Hero: Hendrix; Guitar Villain; Keyboard Hero; Sing Hero, as well as the late-October synthetic turntable offering of DJ Hero.

To make matters worse, this latest release swamps the game itself in music – more than eighty songs were packaged for release combined with a service which allows users to . . . of all things . . . create their own tunes.

Isn’t that missing the Napster-era marketing point of allowing users to listen to performers’ tunes and buy their CDs as a result? I have a sinking suspicion this course of action will relegate successive Guitar Hero games to the status of GarageBand patches in an attempt to cater to every possible taste existing – much like an installation of Windows: 95 percent needless bloat compacted in a neat bundle, on the off chance someone somewhere is going to want it for something.

As if it wasn’t enough to brand and release every form of harmonics but those created by a kitchen sink, they committed the second grave error of alienating the Nirvana fans in their audience. Courtney Love’s headlong dive into the commercialism Cobain desperately tried to avoid during his life was considered, by some, the ultimate slap in the face to the guitarist – in the manner of those nauseating Che Guevara T-shirts some fourteen year old kid always ends up wearing.

I can only surmise that the inclusion of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which reached #5 on Spinner’s list of 10 songs disavowed by artists – right in front of Robert Plant’s “Stairway to Heaven” – sprang from money matters plaguing the rocker’s estate.

Not really like releasing “Cop Killer” on an edition of DJ Hero intended to raise money for national law enforcement organizations, but it’s close, isn’t it?

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