How not to handle a brand - Guitar Hero
Yesterday I talked about the value of employees and was all business. Today I want to talk about the need to earn money by offering products and services that people actually want to pay for. Bill Harris had a great write-up on the brand destruction of Guitar Hero and he accurately nails the core problem. Guitar Hero has been on a steady decline since it came under new management, and Activision is desperately playing catch-up to EA’s Rock Band. The quality of Rock Band’s peripheral’s have kept me at bay, but I won’t deny that the software foundation of Rock Band is superior to Guitar Hero simply because of the difference in approach. Even if you ignore that you can move beyond just the guitarist, the main focus of Rock Band is a platform for interactive music games where every Guitar Hero iteration is purely a stand-alone release with some downloadable content to augment the experience. However, downloadable content in Guitar Hero has no effect on the actual gameplay.
I’ve worked in software for over 9 years now and I’m keenly aware that your products are your lifeblood. When quality drops then the focus of a smart company is to do everything to improve it. Do you need more people? Do you need more time? Do you need more funding? Whatever it is, do it and get the quality back because unless your name starts with “Mic” and ends in “oft” you cannot continue to release shoddy software and expect to remain profitable.
Ever since Activision took over the brand they’ve seemed unsure of what to do with it. Guitar Hero II was amazing, clearly the best release in the series, yet that did not mean there was nowhere to go but down. With real competition from Rock Band, made by the people who brought you Guitar Hero II, what Activision needed to do was knock the next release out of the park. Instead they handed off this important brand to Neversoft, a company whose only focus is creating games that appeal to 13 year olds with over-active hormones. Guitar Hero II was a blast, Guitar Hero III was punishing. Guitar Hero III was the kind of game some hardcore uber-gamer would brag about beating, but the masses aren’t going to enjoy that kind of game. I always felt like Harmonix’s focus was a game for everyone and if you’re really hardcore nutty they had the Expert difficulty. Frankly, if you can coast through Expert, why don’t you learn to play for real? I digress, the direction of the brand took a much different turn. Women became hyper-sexualized just like in every other game, the gameplay punishing, and they introduced ridiculous ideas like boss battles that no one wanted.
When I read the reviews and comments about Guitar Hero: Aerosmith I sense a team that has not learned their lesson. Only one boss battle and its skippable? That’s a step in the right direction but it smacks of “We refuse to admit we were wrong”. Cashing in on the brand is just going to weaken it. Especially if you’ve got a band like Aerosmith. The next expansion rumored is Metallica, which just seems silly to me. Yeah, I know, Metallica is big but they’re really only known for being one of the few Heavy Metal bands to hit mainstream. Even then, I can’t think of a single song that stuck with me. Most of the classic acts like Aerosmith, Van Halen, or the Rolling Stones have an entire stable of songs in the public consciousness. I never hear anyone walking down the hallways humming a tune from Master of Puppets.
Rock Band was a huge success, and Rock Band 2 seems poised to fix some mistakes while riding good public sentiment. Guitar Hero World Tour is going to have a rough go not only competing with Rock Band but has made matters worse by deviating from a winning formula, changing things for the sake of changing them, and showing absolutely no real improvements. Flashier graphics and annoying light shows are not “enhancements”.
I’m an avid fan of Guitar Hero and I will be getting this latest release. I need the extra guitar if nothing else and I might as well get a game out of it to. That said, this is it. I don’t care enough about Metallica to want another game, it’s not a real Guitar Hero release, and they’ve done enough to shatter my confidence that I’m going to be leery of any future releases. I’m just one fanboy, but if you can’t get me excited about World Tour then it’s time to start rebuilding goodwill with the fans.
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July 21st, 2008 at 10:58 pm
>Frankly, if you can coast through Expert, why don’t you learn to play for real?<
Let’s start here. I can’t believe a fan of the game would spout this, seeing as everyone who doesn’t see the point of a game like Guitar Hero says this line at least once.
I never really noticed a great change in the games difficulty in it’s ongoing iterations, except for the “boss battles” in 3, and those simply required some patience and forethought to get through. Easy is still that, normal is pretty much the same outside of the boss battles. It was hard and expert that got a boost in difficulty, seeing as the only people who played on these modes were LOOKING for a challenge.
I honestly look at Guitar Hero’s change as keeping up with the culture of excess that the rock industry is infamous for. Bigger, flashier, louder, live fast and die young, this is what the industry itself has presented to people for decades, only fitting a game based from it should go the same route.
And your comments about Metallica says more about the company you keep than the status of their renown. Everone I know has heard of Master of Puppets, Enter the Sandman, Justice for All. There are few bands that have achieved what they have and are still performing and releasing recordings. Every dog has its day, next will probably be a country group to round out the selection.