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The Start of a Revolution
In 2005, Harmonix and RedOctane, two small video game studios, released Guitar Hero, a smash hit video game that made players feel like actual rock stars by letting them play on a guitar controller. After the release of Guitar Hero 2, Harmonix and RedOctane split up, with Harmonix going on to make Rock Band. What would follow was an industry-changing revolution that would lead to some of the biggest profits both the video game and music industries had ever seen. What we will call the Guitar Hero revolution, is something that will probably never be replicated. An event that introduced millions to new genres, had musical acts and bands rushing to make deals with both Activision and Harmomix, and saw the most passionate music lovers make the greatest rhythm games of all time.
The first Guitar Hero was something of an experiment. RedOctane, the company that made the guitar peripheral, teamed up with Harmonix, a rhythm game developer, to make that first game. Neither company had ever had much luck with sales, but when they brought their two strengths together, they made something magical. Guitar Hero 2 was one of the best-selling games in 2006 (Hotten, 2024). And as soon as it was clear what was happening, the bigger companies saw money to be made.
RedOctane was acquired by Activision, one of the biggest video game publishers, in 2006, who kept the rights to Guitar Hero and the guitar peripheral, while Harmonix was also acquired in 2006 by MTV, one of the biggest names in music (Sliwinski, 2007). Harmonix would be developing Rock Band, which would now include drums and a microphone, while RedOctane would be making Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock with Neversoft as the developer. The war had officially begun and a whole new generation of people were about to be introduced to music they had never heard before.
Let There Be Rock
2007’s Guitar Hero 3 Legends of Rock marked the start of the revolution. It’s setlist has a mix of rock from various years, but it had a heavy emphasis on classic rock, with 24 of the 46 main tracks being from before 1990. As a very young kid at the time of the game’s release, I didn’t know most of these songs, but I was very quickly introduced to the likes of Guns n’ Roses, Pearl Jam, Queens of the Stone Age, Metallica, The Sex Pistols, Pat Benatar, and Rage Against the Machine just to name a few. Of course, I can’t go without mentioning Through the Fire and Flames (the hardest track in the entire game), which elevated DragonForce to the mainstream. The game also featured When You Were Young by The Killers. It was my first time ever listening to them and it was love at first listen because The Killers became my favorite musical act. My music taste was heavily influenced by the songs I played in Guitar Hero and Rock Band. And I wasn’t the only person discovering this music, as many of the songs included in the game saw increases in digital sales following the release of it (Kuchera, 2007).
Guitar Hero 3 also introduced a whole new generation to rock stars they may have never heard of before. The game famously featured Slash, the guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, on the cover. Not only did Slash give a recognizable face for people that didn’t play video games, kids started to know him as “the guy from Guitar Hero” (Hotten, 2024).
Harmonix had their own answer to Guitar Hero 3 with 2007’s Rock Band. The goal was simple, evolve past the guitars and let players be in a full band, with drums, bass, and singing. The setlist is a lot more modern rock focused, with some indie, metal, and alternative mixed in, making it stand out from its competitor. The game also had a campaign titled World Tour, which let’s players go on…well you know. The real stand out for Rock Band though was its DLC, with Harmonix releasing new songs every single week. A trend that would continue for every future title.
With real musicians getting involved, DLC songs being a huge success, and the genre becoming a cultural icon, Activision and Harmonix had all the momentum in getting the biggest acts and songs included in the next game because the music industry had realized the potential profits of video games.
Look Ma, I Made it Big Time!
The first three Guitar Hero games and the original Rock Band’s setlists didn’t have the master recordings for most of their songs. For the games to be able to stop the guitar from playing when you miss a note, they need the multi-track recording. RedOctane and Harmonix were not rich, and that meant working with WaveGroup, a sound company, to re-record songs, which cost about $10,000 each (Hester, 2021). This small price tag was about to increase exponentially, but with the backing of Activision and MTV, Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2, the sequels to the 2007 games, would have the master recordings for their entire setlist.
Guitar Hero World Tour was a huge upgrade. With the success of Rock Band, World Tour now featured drum, bass, and singing support making the rivalry even tighter. The game also featured a setlist with huge names. Nirvana, Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac, Bon Jovi, Beastie Boys, Billy Idol, No Doubt, and Linkin Park. That wasn’t it though as with the success of Slash in 3, Activision went all in on the real-world appearances. Hayley Williams of Paramore (one of my top 3 bands also due to this game), Ozzy Osbourne, Travis Barker of Blink-182, Sting, and Jimi Hendrix the guitar legend himself are just some of the people that appear in the game. That doesn’t even include the sponsorships the game had. While Legends of Rock had sponsors appear with Guitar Center and various equipment companies, World Tour had a lot of companies involved. Venues like the House of Blues, AT&T Park, and a Times Square stage filled with advertisements from KFC, 5 Gum, and AT&T (you actually jump off the building at the end and land in a chariot and it’s the greatest thing ever) are just some of the places you can play in. I also can’t go without mentioning that World Tour famously featured Beat It by Micheal Jackson. It would be the only time his music was featured in any Guitar Hero/Rock Band title.
Rock Band 2 didn’t feature the music industry sponsorships that World Tour did, or have the real-world rock stars, but it did have style. The game continued having a huge focus on alternative and indie music, but also was able to get deals with acts like AC/DC, The Grateful Dead, Alanis Morissette, and System of a Down. The game also expanded on it’s campaign, with a huge world tour mode. This also marked the start of the music industry starting to be a little more particular in their deals. Warner Music wanted a bigger cut of the profits the games were making and stopped putting their music in the games (Pham, 2008). MTV and Warner would strike a deal to bring Green Day exclusively to the Rock Band games, starting with DLC for Rock Band 2 (COMTEX, 2009). This would also include an entire game dedicated to them and introduce them to me, making them one of my other top 3 bands, but we’ll get to that later.
Both World Tour and Rock Band 2 shared tracks, as well as the previous games, but now, music labels were going to start locking their catalogs to highest bidders.
Both series had huge years, ranking in more than $400 million in profits in 2008 (Matthews, 2009), a huge difference from the $45 million the original Guitar Hero made (Hester, 2021). It was clear the cultural impact that was occurring, and Activision and Harmonix were gearing up for the biggest war of all time. Licensing deals were getting expensive, and players already owned the hardware, so the focus moved to making more games. And oh boy, did they make games!
Spin-offs, Sequels, DS Ports, and Lego Bricks?
2009 marks the start of what can only be know at frenzy to cash in on the revolution. In just one year, 7 games (2 Rock Band, 5 Guitar Hero) were released. The big title of the year was Guitar Hero 5. Keeping in spirit with evolving the series, it featured Party Play, which let players jump straight into playing music as they booted up the game, switching through random songs. The setlist was actually very diverse and focused on more modern music, with the classic songs being from artists who hadn’t really been in past titles. Some of these artists were Arctic Monkeys, Bob Dylan, Gorillaz, Elton John, Kings of Leon, Blur, Muse, and so many more. The trend of real-world rock stars appearing also continued with Johhny Cash, Carlos Santana, Shirley Mason, and Matt Bellamy all appearing as playable characters. There was a swirl of controversy though with Kurt Cobain, who was also playable, being able to sing any song with multiple people close to him speaking out about it being wrong (Sinclair, 2009). In a way Guitar Hero 5 felt like the series evolving while still staying true to its roots of introducing players to new music and old music alike. The same can’t be said for the millions of other spin-offs that came out that year.
2009 also saw the release of…well just buckle in. Guitar Hero: Metallica and Guitar Hero Van Halen, two band-focused game following 2008’s Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. Joe Perry, Aerosmith's lead guitarist, saw the potential in using Guitar Hero to reach new audiences, as seen in the video below. Due to these games, that meant Rock Band could no longer use their music. The bands made a lot of money off these games, with Aerosmith making more money off theirs than any album they had ever made (Ambrosino, 2014). With that, Activision and the music industry only saw dollar signs. Guitar Hero Smash Hits took some of the best songs from the first two games and put them in the modern engine as its own game, now including their master recordings. These spin-offs, while different, still stayed true to Guitar Hero's roots.
Activision wanted to grow their audience, so they kept on going with the spin-offs. Band Hero was focused on popular music featuring songs from some of the biggest pop stars of the time like KT Tunstall, Maroon 5, the Spice Girls, and an in-game appearance by Taylor Swift herself. Remember that one for trivia night. Instead of trying to introduce players to music they may have never heard of, the series was now trying to have the music they would know. That brings us to new hardware. Guitar Hero On Tour was made for the Nintendo DS and featured a new peripheral you would put on your DS. The weirdest title though may have been DJ Hero, which was a whole new game with a turntable controller that let you play through songs from popular DJs like Daft Punk. What started off as a series that was introducing people to music they had never heard before had shifted to appealing to mass markets, very similar to how the music industry tends to favor pop music over everything else. The truth is licensing music from the labels was expensive and Activision felt the hardcore fanbase wasn’t enough to sustain the costs.
On the other side of the war was Harmonix making some of the best rhythm games of all time. Their big title for 2009 was not a third Rock Band, but instead The Beatles Rock Band. As my introduction to The Beatles, it’s a love letter from start to finish. Featuring 45 songs from their catalogue, the game has stages that take you through the band’s entire history with all the beautiful art and colors you would expect from that. It was also developed with both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, who helped give the game access to the newly remastered master tracks. The game also featured video clips and interviews which personally taught me a lot about the band. It also showed how the music industry was cashing in on the games, because a bidding war for the Beatles license was the whole reason Harmonix got to make the game (Linde, 2008).
That wasn’t the only band-focused Rock Band game that year though as Rock Band Green Day also came out, and talk about a game being influential for me. The game featured the entirety of Dookie, American Idiot, and the band’s new album 21st Century Breakdown, which is somehow now 15 years old, and still the best Green Day album in my opinion due in large part to playing it repeatedly in game. 2009 also saw the release of Lego Rock Band, which was developed with TT Games. It featured an insane tour mode with pirates, dinosaurs, and Queen (the band) crowning you as rock gods on an alien planet. You could also fully customize your band in a way none of the other games in the series had allowed. It’s track list was a bit more restricted as Lego didn’t want any mature songs, but it still featured a huge variety of music from classic acts and modern ones alike. It was easily Rock Band's best attempt at making players feel like rock stars.
While Guitar Hero was chasing trends, Rock Band was helping me grow my love for the music industry, even releasing track packs focused on specific genres. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the DLC bought for the first two games which was compatible with all future titles. Unlike Guitar Hero, players were building a digital library in Rock Band, just like their iTunes accounts. Harmonix truly seemed to have a love for music. With a whole lot of games releasing, one would expect profits for Guitar Hero and Rock Band to be higher than ever, but it wasn’t that easy. Now that people owned the hardware that cost over $100, players just needed to buy the games, and the revenue took a huge hit (Matthews, 2009). Despite being at its height of popularity, things were declining. Was it oversaturation, or was the revolution just a fad?
The Greatest Hits are Sometimes the Last
The writing was on the wall. The Guitar Hero Revolution was coming to an end. The next two mainline titles for both Guitar Hero and Rock Band would perhaps be their best. Almost as if the developers knew they were only going to get one last big-budget shot.
2010’s Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock is to put it simply, a golden love letter to one of the most influential video games of all time. A game that is pure music from beginning to end, a rollercoaster that gets players feeling that same rush they had when first picking up a guitar controller. It features a campaign that follows the original characters from the series, a major part that we have kind of ignored, as they become rock warriors to defeat The Beast. Each character has a setlist that is catered to them like Johnny Napalm’s punk rock list, Axel Steel’s classic rock list, or Judy Nail’s alternative list. The 93-song track list is honestly out of this world. It brought back the series trend of having a huge variety of music. The game is also clearly a love letter to many of the music industry’s legends, featuring the entirety of Rush’s 2112 as a key part of the campaign in a way that would make non-Rush fans be interested in the album, and Gene Simmions voicing the Demigod. The final song of the game was also written by Megadeath, keeping in spirit with getting the legends of the industry involved. Warriors of Rock is easily in my opinion the pinnacle of Guitar Hero and stands as testament to how the people making these games still clearly has a passion for music unlike anything else.
Harmonix spent took extra time when making the follow up to Rock Band 2, and that shows in every inch of it. If Warriors of Rock is the greatest Guitar Hero game, 2010’s Rock Band 3 is the greatest rhythm game ever made. The track list features 83 songs, with a focus on going more global, getting songs from all over the world. That same success bands were having with the original Guitar Hero games was now going to spread out even more. Rock Band 3 took the instruments another step forward also. The pro guitar was introduced to stores, which allowed players to play certain songs with what was basically a real guitar with buttons. There was also the new keytar controller which let players play the keys on many of the game’s songs. It also supported electronic drum kits. You could also use all the old instruments and new instruments simultaneously together, with up to 7-players. The game also allowed all DLC and past game setlists to be brought forward, meaning some players music libraires could be well into the thousands. From the customization options, the career mode, challenges, training, and DLC support that lasted till 2015, Rock Band 3 was Harmonix’s magnum opus.
With both Guitar Hero and Rock Band releasing what was the best entries in their respective series, one would hope for a miracle in sales, but it was already over before their release. Warriors of Rock was the first time a Guitar Hero had zero input from RedOctane, as Activision shut the studio down months before the game’s release, and with a downsizing of Neversoft, the game was completed by a small group of passionate devs (Sinclair, 2010). And while Rock Band 3 fared a bit better in sales, it was mostly the hardcore fanbase left buying the weekly DLC. The time for big-budget games and close collaborations with the music industry was over. The music industry had moved on to other trends like streaming and other rhythm game genres. The Guitar Hero Revolution was over.
An Encore and Legacy for the Passionate
Both series took a five-year break. The world had seemingly moved on, but one last shot couldn’t hurt. Activision released 2015’s Guitar Hero Live, a reboot of the series featuring a brand new six button, three-fret guitar and live performance backgrounds moving away from the series iconic art style and charm. The track list was pretty good and even featured Green Day for the first time in a Guitar Hero game. While it was received well for trying something different, it didn’t move units and turned away many of the hardcore fans of the series.
Harmonix instead relied on what already worked with 2015’s Rock Band 4. While it was very much what the fans wanted, it was a much lower-budget version of Rock Band 3, lacking keys support and many of the 3’s biggest features. The game did allow all music to be brought forward though, meaning player’s digital libraries were still intact. Sales for Rock Band 4 were not good though and famously killed controller manufacture Mad Catz. That didn’t stop Harmonix from supporting the game though as weekly DLC continued releasing until January 2024.
The world has moved on from Guitar Hero, but that doesn’t mean the games did not leave a legacy behind. In the music industry, the games were what kept it afloat through the growth of digital music, as a lot of the people playing these games were buying music they heard in them (Ellison, 2008). A study from Youth Music even found that around 6 million children that were playing the games at their peak, and that a fifth of those had picked up real instruments (Ahmed, 2008). People had learned to love music through these games.
While there may not be any new Guitar Hero or Rock Band games to play in 2024, Harmonix is the main developer behind Fortnite Festival, a game mode very similar to Rock Band that even allows players to use the guitar instruments. The community has also made projects like Clone Hero and Guitar Hero World Tour: Definitive Edition which keep the Guitar Hero legacy alive with user made content and totally legal charts of many of the music industry's biggest artists. And with Microsoft and Xbox now owning Activision, who knows, maybe we’ll see a Guitar Hero revival in the future.
The Guitar Hero Revolution is one of the most important moments in not just video game history, but the music industries too. It introduced millions to genres they would have never listened too and showed us what it felt like to be a rock star. To watch two small companies, make a game because of their passion of music explode into massive licensing deals, acquisitions, and a dozen games in a single year is like a fantasy. The legacy of the revolution still stands in the music industry today and inspired a generation to go and be rock stars. Its why you can’t tell the story of music without RedOctane and Harmonix. Whatever the future holds for both series, I know I'll stay rocking forever.
Works Cited
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COMTEX. (2009, June 11). MTV Games, Harmonix and Warner Bros. / Reprise Records partner with Green Day to bring their music exclusively to rock band(r). FOXBusiness.com. https://web.archive.org/web/20090905211645/http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/media/mtv-games-harmonix-warner-bros--reprise-records-partner-green-day-bring-music/
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Linde, A. (2011, June 27). Rock Band, Guitar Hero Publishers Vying for beatles licensing agreement. Shacknews. https://www.shacknews.com/article/53257/rock-band-guitar-hero-publishers
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