R.I.P. Guitar Hero

[JamBurglar]

I could never get into that whole Hit-The-Correctly-Colored-Buttons-Exactly-When-We-Want-You-To genre so my eyes are dry about the series ending.

And as a musician, this is the only Guitar Hero controller I would endorse:

(it's fictional, but you get the idea. five buttons does not a
guitar player make.)

I think most musicians feel that way about it. My father in law is a great guitar player and he sucks at Rockband guitar, which is always fun to poke fun at. But it's just a game, not the real thing. Being good at Street Fighter 2 does not make you a good fighter. Being good at Spy Hunter does not make you a good driver or a good spy. I can definately see why a real guitar player would not enjoy playing Guitar Hero though.

 

[Schusler]

I think most musicians feel that way about it. My father in law is a great guitar player and he sucks at Rockband guitar, which is always fun to poke fun at. But it's just a game, not the real thing. Being good at Street Fighter 2 does not make you a good fighter. Being good at Spy Hunter does not make you a good driver or a good spy. I can definately see why a real guitar player would not enjoy playing Guitar Hero though.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm a pretty good guitar player myself. And I am HORRENDOUS at these games!

 

[Lindsey]

Most "real" guitar players don't like Guitar Hero because they're not instantly awesome at it like they think they should be so they get fed up and claim "it sucks". Most casual "real" guitar players suck just as much at real guitar.

Just look at it for what it is. A fun game that improves finger dexterity. It makes you put your fingers in positions you might not be used to playing real guitar and makes your hand stronger overall. Sure you're not going to jump into real guitar and start ripping up and down the neck but I bet TONS of kids got into real guitar playing Guitar Hero and it totally translates. Maybe not directly but the mechanics of it definitely translate.

 

[Tighe]

Thanks! I would give Harmonix much credit for that but part of me likes to believe that as the Exec Poducer for GH1-2, I knew what I was doing....

Thanks, that was an awesome rant! I never played any of the games (does a few minutes at a friends house count?), not because I don't care for them or anything, It was just that the instruments were expensive when the game first came out. Also, I figured it would be really hard.

I remember back in the 90's watching these really skinny punk kids playing DDR in the arcades, doing back-flips and breaking dancing while playing. I saw the game and said to my wife

"that looks cool I will give it a try."

So I step up on the floor, and suck and all the little punks start laughing at me. Embarrassed, I went off to kick some ass in Street Fighter. That colored my feelings toward rhythm games.

Some Hardcore DDR dudes:

 

[Schusler]

Most "real" guitar players don't like Guitar Hero because they're not instantly awesome at it like they think they should be so they get fed up and claim "it sucks". Most casual "real" guitar players suck just as much at real guitar.

Just look at it for what it is. A fun game that improves finger dexterity. It makes you put your fingers in positions you might not be used to playing real guitar and makes your hand stronger overall. Sure you're not going to jump into real guitar and start ripping up and down the neck but I bet TONS of kids got into real guitar playing Guitar Hero and it totally translates. Maybe not directly but the mechanics of it definitely translate.

I'm not going as far as to say it *sucks*; I'm just saying I wasn't good at it...

I kinda see your point for a translation for a real guitar, but I would say it is a very *rough* translation.....

 

[joeycuda]

Actually the coin-op Guitar Hero is disappearing because those assholes at ASCAP won and were requiring operators to license these machines as "jukeboxes" and pay extremely high license fees because of the music involved. Otherwise ASCAP goons would file copyright infringement lawsuits against the operators claiming this is "public performance" of copyrighted music.

It's about as authentic of a public performance as playing drums with pencils on a book is.

 

[FrizzleFried]

No DDR discussion would be complete without this...

 

[Tighe]

No DDR discussion would be complete without this...

WOW! Awesome! Of course I am so glad he wasn't there during my one and only public DDR performance. It must be the Batman shirt.

 

[PrairieDillo]

Actually the coin-op Guitar Hero is disappearing because those assholes at ASCAP won and were requiring operators to license these machines as "jukeboxes" and pay extremely high license fees because of the music involved. Otherwise ASCAP goons would file copyright infringement lawsuits against the operators claiming this is "public performance" of copyrighted music.

Thanks Ken, I had not heard about that one. No dissrespect to Jarvis but I think that Raw Thrills as a company just sucks. ATVI lawyers bungled this one i'm sure of it.

Public performance was most likely tied to the lyrics which is what they mean by copyrighted music. It would have been the same type of liscense used to create Karaoke coin drop machines. I have zero visibility into how it was handled.

 

[thebman80]

I think a lot of the problem is that there is only so much good music to put on the game. For christ sakes the new one they had Bohemian Rhapsody what the hell is that doing on there in the first place? They should have just moved on from main stream rock to metal, heavy metal and Death metal.

 

[spmahn]

I actually got into Guitar Hero with the very first game, and was in fact the first person amongst my friends to pick it up, because I specifically remember that Best Buy broke street date on it by something crazy like 2 or 3 weeks. I loved the first one, I thought it was fun and unique, but it didn't have much depth. Part 2 was great too, and a step above the original. By Part 3 however, it had pretty much run it's course. The easy modes were boring, and the harder ones were too difficult. Rock Band breathed a little bit of life into the genre, but not much. It was obvious that they were oversaturating the market, so it's no surprise that it's dead.

 

[PublicSectorTech]

I think a lot of the problem is that there is only so much good music to put on the game. For christ sakes the new one they had Bohemian Rhapsody what the hell is that doing on there in the first place? They should have just moved on from main stream rock to metal, heavy metal and Death metal.

Guitar Hero did focus on metal, and extremely difficult note charts. The result: Guitar Hero didn't sell and is now discontinued.

Rock Band focused on popular and fun to play songs. It might not be the juggernaut it was in 2008, but they didn't ruin their brand name and it wouldn't surprise me if they have a resurgence.

 

[YellowDog]

My son and his friends were way into Guitar Hero several years ago and kept bugging me about why I didn't have it for the PS3. So I finally found a set (the Aerosmith "Limited Edition") on Ebay for $20 + shipping and bought it. I don't play guitar much now, but this was an atrocity if you do know how to play a guitar. As far as the myth of it being a gateway to get kids interested in a real guitar, that is just a myth. I've asked a bunch of kids that are into GH if they have any interest in learning to play a real guitar and the answer universally is "F**k no, that is way too hard". There might be 1 in 100 that picks up a real guitar because of GR or RB. When I was growing up, everybody had a guitar and wanted to play because of the real Rock Bands or maybe just the groupies. How many groupies does a real Gutar Hero get?

ken

 

[norton9478]

Actually the coin-op Guitar Hero is disappearing because those assholes at ASCAP won and were requiring operators to license these machines as "jukeboxes" and pay extremely high license fees because of the music involved. Otherwise ASCAP goons would file copyright infringement lawsuits against the operators claiming this is "public performance" of copyrighted music.

I would have thought that they would have fixed that before the release.

Anyways... What's a license cost nowdays? $300 per machine? Still not too much for high traffic areas.

High production costs? - no actually the production budgets including master recording still were lower compared to other game dev budgets. We actually had broken open the model on how someone could earn in games. Activision simply got too greedy and they just squeezed out everyone else and ruined a delicate balance of it all... It's complicated but I wouldn't point the finger straight at budgets. Budgets can be controlled. GH1 for PS2 had an insanely low budget for a PS2 game.

Thanks for the unique perspective.

I figured that licensing of master recordings was eating into the profits. I mean, when you got big sales, you can have do it. But once the sales start to slip, the royalties are so much more cumbersome.

I do agree with the over saturation (of a fad).

Also, didn't Activision do the same thing to skateboarding games 5-10 years ago?

 

[JamBurglar]

I think the drums actually translate much much better. If you can play Rock Band drums on hard or expert you can bang out some simple beats on a drum kit. It teaches you the basic coordination. Some of the tracks are almost note for note on the drums. It's still not the same experience as playing real drums, but it's a much better intro trainer than the guitar is.

The guitar on guitar hero and rock band is still hard as balls but it's very different from a real guitar. It's not note for note.

The keyboard looks like it would be similar to the drums and would translate okay.

Rock Band seems like it's still going pretty strong. In this last edition they added "pro modes" to make some of the "instruments" more challenging. It's really more about the songs though. They've got Primus on there for crimeny's sake!

 

[PrairieDillo]

Actually master recordings ruin the experience cause they ultimately don't sound very good. Analog recordings also degrade and didn't pop out as much as what we had done with the re-records.

Pay more money for a worse experience only so that you can say... no re-records and put "master recordings" on the box.

IMHO our version of More than a Feeling sounded better than Boston's. Vocals aside, the master recordings just weren't as good as what you could go into a studio with a good team of session guys and re-record digital files right into Pro-tools.

If master recordings are so important then why were the first two versions the most favorite of the series, where we had access to like 1 master recording.

 

[LyonsArcade]

I'm surprised people are arguing that crappy guitars was the problem becuase it broke the illusion of you being a guitarist.

I play a little bit of guitar, and I can tell you that in my experience at least, guitar hero is nothing like playing a real guitar. You play a real guitar by ear, you play guitar hero by sight.

If you play what you think you should play, when it sounds like you should play it, you'll be pretty bad at guitar hero. It has nothing to do with music, it's a visual game like simon says, press the button when it lights up. The timing is off, and even changing the settings provided in the game didn't make it match up correctly.

 

[norton9478]

Actually master recordings ruin the experience cause they ultimately don't sound very good. Analog recordings also degrade and didn't pop out as much as what we had done with the re-records.

Pay more money for a worse experience only so that you can say... no re-records and put "master recordings" on the box.

IMHO our version of More than a Feeling sounded better than Boston's. Vocals aside, the master recordings just weren't as good as what you could go into a studio with a good team of session guys and re-record digital files right into Pro-tools.

If master recordings are so important then why were the first two versions the most favorite of the series, where we had access to like 1 master recording.

Does that go the same for newer music?

Cuz I did like playing a lot of the newer popish tracks in Rock Band... Even if I was unfamiliar with the bands.

 

[LyonsArcade]

I have no idea, I only played Guitar Hero. Rock Band may have been much better.

When I played Guitar Hero, I played tons of songs on it that I had never heard before. The timing is visual, not audible, so for instance if you were playing a new song on guitar that you were learning, or just playing a riff or whatever, you'd play with a tempo in your head, to where it matched up with the band. On the video game, you play the tempo according to what you SEE on the screen. They have a 'delay' adjustment in the game I played (I think I played Part II, and Part III), but it didn't correct it for me.

I'm not knocking it, it's a game and was pretty fun. NOTHING like playing a real guitar though, so my point was that the guitar controllers dont' have to be like a real guitar, since the game isn't like really playing a guitar.

 

[animesuperj]

I love rhythm games, and honestly, hated GH after #2. #3 did have some good songs, but the series was way overdone after a while:

I like Rock Band's idea better. Download the music you want, and the ability to import everything. I still play that at parties, and haven't touch GH since #3. The arcades were horrible as well. I'm glad to see those go. They were horribly off-sync, you could barely pass songs. Go to see this series go.

It does suck that DJ Hero is going as well. That, I will miss.