[Hot on the heels of The Sims 3, it’s time for another guest post from Martin!]
In the early days of the pandemic, facing an indeterminate period of time spent never leaving the house and in need of something to fill my time, to fill the void, one of the things I turned to was Guitar Hero. It was a series I’d been pretty into a few years prior, and had since moved on from, but there was a comforting familiarity there that was, at the time, very much welcomed. So I went on Ebay, found myself a second hand guitar controller bundled with several Guitar Hero games and clicked “Buy It Now”. The package arrived a few days later, and for a while, it served exactly the purpose I’d ordered it for. Then, playing through the career mode on Guitar Hero: World Tour, the game blindsided me by demanding, without warning, that I strum along to the song “Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast)” by Lostprophets. No horror game can come close to producing such an effective jumpscare.
I put the games down again shortly after that, partly because I was trying to escape from existential dread, not be confronted by it, and partly because my guitar controller developed a fault whereby it would register every strum twice. Picking it up again in preparation for writing this piece, though, it seemed to have repaired itself through rest, and I found that it was once again easy to remember that there was a reason why I held such nostalgia for these silly plastic guitar games. It’s nothing like a real guitar, obviously – I’m actually pretty good at it, for one – and it’s all the better for not trying to be. The satisfying click of the strum bar, the way you flick the neck up to activate Star Power, this was never trying to simulate the experience of playing a real guitar. Rather, it aimed to simulate an adolescent fantasy of rock stardom, and it succeeded at that goal and more. This franchise brought people together in a shared love of music, introduced them to some great songs they might never have given the time of day otherwise, and, in spite of the aforementioned lack of resemblance to the real thing, still inspired a generation of guitar players.
Guitar Hero 5 was the first and, to date, last game in the Guitar Hero franchise (or its ‘split due to creative differences’ counterpart Rock Band) to hit the top of the video game sales charts in the UK. This is an immutable fact, but it contains some pretty big implications that may not be reflected in reality. A relevant comparison would be “Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter”, the first and, to date, last Iron Maiden song to hit #1 on the UK Singles Chart. Again, its status as a chart topper is an immutable fact, but that does not, by any means, make it their most popular song, or their best, or any other superlative you might like to throw at it. It means it sold more than any other single in one particular week of one particular year, no more, no less. Sales weeks are not created equal; achieving the same numbers on a less quiet week for big releases might only be good enough for a top five position rather than a number one. And, even more so in games than in music, sales figures are not a direct reflection of how much people like the product, but rather, how much people expected to like it.
It is perhaps telling, for example, that “Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter” is not one of the five Iron Maiden songs to have featured on the soundtrack to a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game. (Guitar Hero 5 gets “Two Minutes to Midnight”, which I doubt would be many people’s first choice, but, well, they’d already done “The Trooper” and “Number of the Beast” and Rock Band took “Run to the Hills”, so moving to the second tier was kind of necessary. No “Fear of the Dark”, though? What were they thinking, etc.) The point I am gesturing at here is that, in spite of its status as a chart topper, Guitar Hero 5 does not represent a series at the peak of its popularity or power. No, this is a series rapidly approaching a terminal decline. (This is where the Iron Maiden comparisons must diverge – past their peak, yes, but certainly still going strong).
There’s a concept called the “Trust Thermocline” I’ve seen bandied about a lot recently in online discussions relating to such disparate topics as Twitter, Dungeons & Dragons and Netflix. The basic concept is similar to that old metaphor about boiling frogs; people using a product or service will stick with what they know past the point that they’ve lost some of the faith they once had in it, but if you keep pushing that trust, eventually it will break, and then there’s no going back.
The original Guitar Hero came out in 2004. Five years later, Guitar Hero 5 was actually the eleventh game to be released with the Guitar Hero name, and the third of four to release in 2009, after Guitar Hero Metallica and Guitar Hero Greatest Hits, and preceding Guitar Hero Van Halen. Additionally, that same year also saw the release of DJ Hero and Band Hero, itself just another Guitar Hero game with more confused branding. It’s like Activision looked at the EA Sports release model and thought “Yearly updates? Surely there’s more blood in this stone!”. They took a sledgehammer to the camel’s back and did a surprised Pikachu face when it broke.
Top of the charts for week ending 12 September 2009:
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