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Source: Press
The first billion-dollar franchise in gaming history, Guitar Hero inspired a new generation of kids to pick up a musical instrument. It also made Slash, the third game's cover hero, a celebrity. In 2010, Classic Rock magazine recalled how guitarist Guns N' Roses became as famous among gamers as among rock fans.
Classic Rock Separator«
In his book «"The turning point »"Malcolm Gladwell has identified and explored the "critical mass moment, the threshold, the boiling point" at which something cool becomes something global, something unstoppable, a cultural landmark.
Talk to any talent manager, any journalist, any advertising executive, look through your record collection or DVD stack, watch TV shows like «"Shark Tank"/"Dragons' Den"» , and you will discover many good things that never reached a turning point, did not become global, but remained only small and banal pleasures.
Guitar Hero , a simple and clever computer game that reduced the essence of playing a musical instrument to pressing a button and became so profitable that it may yet create a new and unprecedented future for the fading record business, almost missed a critical milestone. It almost missed becoming the first game in history to generate a billion dollars in revenue; it almost missed becoming the entry point for a new generation of kids eager to learn about guitars and guitar music.
That it happened is one of the most remarkable success stories of the new century, and at its center is a man who has rarely been in boardrooms over the years.
Game Guitar Hero was developed by RedOctane, the company that created the hardware for the arcade game Guitar Freaks , which had become a hit in Japan, and she liked the idea of releasing a home version. They teamed up with the developer, Harmonix Music Systems, and created the first version for about $1 million. Their hunch proved correct: the first edition Guitar Hero , with a metallic logo on the box and a handheld controller shaped like a Gibson SG—the guitar favored by AC/DC's Angus Young and Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi—became a hit. The game won awards and was called "arguably the greatest rhythm game of all time." RedOctane realized that the guitar-shaped peripheral was what they called the "magic sauce"—that little extra ingredient that made the game special.
Source: Press
В Guitar Hero II , which became the fifth-best-selling game of 2006, initially featured 47 tracks, later expanded to 64. The game was now available for both PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360, with the latter version coming with a Gibson Explorer guitar controller. Key to the expanded artist roster was the inclusion of such well-known bands as AC/DC and Aerosmith, Van Halen and Guns N' Roses.
«"We hit the nail on the head," said developer John Tam. "They [the bands] realized we weren't going to demean their music, but rather pay homage to it and elevate it to a level where people would understand their music in a completely different way than ever before.".
The franchise was now worth serious money, but it hadn't yet reached its peak. It was a brand unknown to the average person. The game meant nothing outside gaming circles. Then Activision bought RedOctane, paying $100 million for it. Guitar Hero . A few months later, Harmonix was acquired by MTV Networks (who subsequently developed a competing game Rock Band ). After Harmonix left, the third part of the franchise Guitar Hero developed by Neversoft, a subsidiary of Activision, whose team was so captivated by the first parts Guitar Hero , that she spent all her weekends playing it.
While the template was set, the game still lacked something special to take it beyond its natural audience of hardcore gamers. In Guitar Hero There were real songs from real bands, but the game didn't feature real rock stars, instead it used avatars created specifically for this purpose - avatars with fictional rock star names like Axl Steele and Izzy Sparks. The company decided to fix this problem in the third installment.
Slash, the man who would eventually "lead the way"« Guitar Hero into popular culture, was already familiar with the game and, at best, ambivalent about its charms.
«I was on the Gibson tour bus with the Gibson guys going to a meeting, and I had my wife and kids with me,» he says. «You know how little kids are in meetings, so I was looking for something to do, and they had Guitar Hero . I figured out how it worked and got it running and realized they had all this cool music that you don't hear very often. So Gibson realized I was interested in this game and sent it to my house. I have a little office in the back of the house with a TV, and I hooked it up. I was obsessed with this damn game! I had to finish it. I think I spent most of a week in that room, not answering calls, skipping dinner. It was on the medium difficulty level. Then I started on the expert difficulty level. I started playing the same damn songs over and over again, only much faster. I was about halfway through and I thought, you know what? This is embarrassing. So I unplugged it and put it in the closet. About a week later, they called from Guitar Hero"» . and asked me if I would be interested in collaborating with them on developing the game.
Slash pondered the idea for a long time. "I'm not a big video game fan," he admits. "I often get asked to do something, and my first reaction is, 'Is this cool or not?' You can't do everything they ask you, because a lot of it sucks, and I have a bad habit of just taking everything. But I thought about it for a while, and I guess at first I didn't think it was that cool, but the fact that I was so passionate about the game itself kind of convinced me. Anyway, I went and met them.".
However, there was no immediate rapport between the two sides. «The meeting was in one of those big conference rooms with all these executives,» says Slash, “and I think there was one person there who actually knew who I was. There are a lot of different levels of management at Activision because it’s a multibillion-dollar company, and it’s mostly executives. Apparently, they weren’t really keen to meet me because they didn’t know what to expect. It’s funny, actually, because five years ago I probably would have scared the living daylights out of them, but this time I was in my right mind when I showed up. I showed up sober and everything.”.
When it came to discussing the details, everything was also unclear, as Slash recalls. «When I first came on, they really didn’t know what they were doing. They had this idea of having a specific person represent the game. They wanted a guitarist character. I think it was decided between the two of us. We sat down and discussed it, and we needed a character I could be, and the game would have these battles. That was all well and good, but I have to admit, when I agreed, it was only my inner nerd that made me say yes. Everything else was saying, «No, don’t do it.»«.
В in the book "The Turning Point" »Malcolm Gladwell writes: «Things can happen suddenly, and small changes can make a huge difference. This is somewhat counterintuitive. As humans, we always expect everyday changes to happen slowly and gradually, and that there will be some connection between cause and effect. And when there isn't—for example, when a movie made on a shoestring budget ends up making hundreds of millions of dollars—we're surprised. I say, don't be surprised. That's how social epidemics work.».
A small detail that played a decisive role in success Guitar Hero III, The big draw wasn't Slash's presence in the game—after all, it also features another rock star, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine—but the box art it came in. Slash's avatar, with its top hat and curly hair, was the center of attention. Suddenly, the game had a face recognizable to an audience far beyond gamers.
Photo: Chris Farina/Corbis via Getty Images
«"I didn't know it came out," Slash says. "I never saw the box. The thing is, we were on the Velvet Revolver tour for the second album [ Libertad ], were going on tour in the US, and I asked them if they’d be interested in providing me with a bus because I was bringing my family. I needed my own bus. They could cover the bus with paper. They said, «Okay, great.» It showed up in Boston. I went out to get something to eat, and on the way back to the hotel, I saw this fucking huge picture of me on the side of the bus. I thought, «Oh my God, how am I supposed to get around in this?» That’s when I first saw what was going to be on the box. It was pretty mind-blowing. After all, Tom Morello is in the game too. It wasn’t so much that I was in the game, it was that my picture was on the fucking box.».
The game hit stores in October 2007 under the subtitle Legends of Rock , another unobtrusive way to convince parents. It featured 73 songs and was available on PlayStation and Xbox platforms, and this time also on Wii, PC, and Mac. Activision called it "the biggest product launch ever." It earned $100 million in its first week and became the best-selling game of the year for the rest of 2007. Activision barely managed to keep up with Christmas demand. Six months later, when things really took off, it had sold over eight million copies. By mid-2009 Guitar Hero III surpassed $1 billion in revenue and now ranks as the second-best-selling computer game of any genre since 1995.
A side effect of all those sales was the impact on the life of the man featured on the album cover. "I have a specific story that will really highlight this," says Slash. "A friend of mine, a producer, has, like, a six-year-old son. I went to their house, and I'd never seen his son before. I showed up, and the kid just went crazy. 'You're that guy from Guitar Hero “"He couldn't believe his eyes. Later that evening, he came up to me and asked, 'Hey, do you play a real guitar too?' I try to ignore all of this, but the biggest change in my daily life has been the acceptance of children under 10.".
Ironically, for a platform that brought a new, unexpected, and much-needed source of revenue to the dying music sales business, Slash didn't actually make much money on it. Guitar Hero .
«"For me personally, when I agreed to participate, the game really took off," he explains. "Before that, the game wasn't that big. When they called me, it was a little less well-known. And I did it for a pretty modest amount of money. No royalties or anything like that were offered. Now, after all that's happened, I'm like, 'Damn...'"»
«"It's definitely changed our approach to selling records, because as the music industry declines, the gaming business sells a lot of music. It's definitely an interesting development. If you're in a band, the happiest thing is when a guy from Activision or Rock Band and says, "We'd like to document your career. There's a lot of money to be made in this.".
In fact, the money was enough to make it a key part of many bands' promotional strategies. For example, Slash's friends from Metallica began working on a version of their 2008 album. Death Magnetic For Rock Band just a few days after we finished recording it.
«"It's nothing like playing guitar. I'll be the first to tell you that," Slash says of the game and its success. "I was off the road and doing nothing when I met Guitar Hero II . I didn't improvise or anything like that during that week. I was physically used to playing. When they sent me a new version with my name on it, I didn't take it out of the box for probably three or four months. My security guard was at my house and wanted to see how it worked. I was on tour, playing the guitar every day for some time—probably about a year—and took it out, figuring I was probably still good. Since I was playing a real guitar, when I plugged it in and started playing, the difference was so noticeable that I couldn't play. in Guitar Hero . "I would have to practice a lot. There's nothing similar, except the way you hold the guitar.".
And yet, despite this, it has a strange and compelling force that is reviving rock music and the rock business.
«It’s a genius creation because it works,» says Slash. «When you’re developing something, you can have a lot of crazy ideas, but it’s when it really hits a nerve that it becomes a phenomenon of sorts. It’s done some cool things. It’s opened kids’ eyes and ears to a lot of music they’d never otherwise been exposed to, great rock and roll that’s just generations away. It’s spearheaded a rock renaissance among kids, it really has. Also, one of the main questions I was asked when I first started working on Guitar Hero , was, as expected, "Oh, it's just another pointless game. It'll kill the guitar industry" and all sorts of other nonsense from skeptics. But in a relatively short period of time, it turned out that statistically more kids started picking up the guitar thanks to Guitar Hero ».
Not a bad legacy for an old man in a top hat who isn't very interested in computer games.
The original article was published in Classic Rock Presents Slash magazine in March 2010.