GUITAR HERO: TwitchGuru Looks at Guitar Hero, the Hottest Underground Phenomenon in the Game World
On February 9th, the ninth annual Interactive Achievement Awards were held at the Joint, the Hard Rock Hotel's concert venue in Las Vegas. The big winner of the night was the game God of War, but it had to share the spotlight with a strong young upstart, Guitar Hero, which won five awards, including Outstanding Innovation in Gaming.
In their coverage of the awards, The New York Times called Red Octane, the creators of Guitar Hero, "a small publisher akin to an indie film house," and Harmonix, one of Octane's partners in the game, "a relatively obscure developer." Yet no matter how small either company may be, they're clearly making their mark. As Alex Rigopulos, the CEO of Harmonix, told the Times, "We thought that maybe a few people would like Guitar Hero, but we had no idea that we would get a response like this."
The genesis of Guitar Hero began when John Tam, game producer for Octane, realized that rhythm games had been popular overseas, but that genre of game hadn't captured America's heart in a big way. "The theory was that the Japanese inspired ones were based on music that wasn't appropriate," Tam says. "What is the music genre you'd want to go with in terms of America, you'd probably say rock music. And what's the spirit of rock and roll? It's electric guitar."
The gist of Guitar Hero is that you're an up and coming rock star. If you hit the right notes with your guitar controller, you can move all the way up to headlining arenas. If you hit bad notes, the crowd revolts in a hurry.
A real music game like Guitar Hero was clearly an idea that was long overdue. Before Tam knew it, a number of potential partners with the right attitude jumped in, wanting to be involved. "The vision of the project came together rather quickly," says Tam. Everyone involved was of a like mind and worked together for the good of the game. "Harmonix was one of the developers that always wanted to do an electric guitar based game as well," Tam continues. "A predominant number of their development staff were at one time touring musicians. I would say that two thirds of them play guitar or were in bands. The art director owns four flying Vs, the director of development toured with a band called Tribe, and Tribe's former producer has one of his songs in the game as well. They know what they're doing."
