I was one of the primary developers on Guitar Hero. It is hard to explain just how weird it was that that game became a massive hit. We had already made a couple of music games that only sold modestly, and expecting people to buy this toy plastic guitar on top of that was borderline ludicrous. I lobbied unsuccessfully to cut multiplayer mode, because what were the chances two people with these guitars were ever going to end up in the same house? We heard stories that retailers loved it when we showed it off to them, but I already worked on multiple games with big buzz and lukewarm sales, so that didn't mean much to me. I was already pleasantly surprised when it became a modest success, much less the monster hit it eventually became.
Well, we knew it was a lot of fun; it was just a question of convincing everyone else. Plus the high price (because of the peripheral) made for an even higher barrier to entry.
It's easy in retrospect to say "Everyone wants to be a rock star, so sure it was going to be a hit!" but that need wasn't obvious. (And in even more retrospect, the need only lasted a few years, so it was kind of fragile.)
I guess one lesson is that just making the best product you can increases the chance of it catching on; we certainly were all passionate about it and tried to perfect every facet of it. Once we got to the point where the second-to-second experience was really satisfying, we knew we were making a great game, but honestly we were still rolling the dice.
It always seemed to me that gift givers are much more inclined to give a tangible object than a small box containing a 'game disc' or similar. I don't have any sources to back this up, but I suspect this reduces the impact from having to buy the accessory.
The gift giver gets to give a big present that gets furiously unwrapped, and it's a great game to boot. It pays to sell to the buyer and not just the consumer, and in this case the buyer was often giving the game as a gift.
As a guitarist and music snob, I absolutely LOVED the game when it came out - bought GH1,2,3 and World Tour. You guys nailed it, and I'm just happy I personally get to tell you thanks. Thanks for sharing your side as a developer.
As a huge GH (but really Rock Band 1/2, which hit the sweet spot for me) fan, thanks! If your open to answering questions, I want to know (in your opinion) why the genre's appeal has more or less worn off now?
The answer everyone always gives is oversaturation, but I dunno about that. Personally I think that the novelty of the experience just wore off, and given the investment that people had to make, not just in plastic instruments but in living room space, it became harder to keep them coming back for more (especially buying a new version of the software every year). The recession hitting in 2008 certainly didn't help, especially given that the games are expensive; fall 2008 (RB2, GHWT) turned on in retrospect to be about the peak of the genre.
Our hope at Harmonix was that before that curve of interest fell off, we'd latch onto another curve by making Rock Band be a core way that people experienced rock music in general; you would expect that your favorite group would release a Rock Band version of their new single, and they'd expect that they'd have to do it to satisfy their fans, and it would become sort of self-sustaining. That was one big idea behind Rock Band Network. In retrospect it failed to accomplish that, but I think it was a really good try to keep the genre sustainable for more than a few years.
Note that we still make money from selling downloadable content; there are thousands of downloadable songs available, and of course sales have gone down some since the good old days, but they're still a money-maker. So people are still playing it.
I know this is very late, but thanks a ton for the answer, very insightful! I know I've bought a ton of DLC for RB2, and it is still one of the best activities for the holidays with my younger brother and wife. So thanks again for the many, many hours of entertainment!
For an alternate look at this from the perspective of Harmonix, the developer of the first couple Guitar Hero games (and currently the developer of Rock Band and Dance Central):
Think about this when people ask the question: "What will people do when robots can make all our needs without needing human labor?" All that does is enable people to work on things like games, art, science, archeology, movies, etc.
None of those endeavors would be possible without labor saving machines enabling production surpluses freeing up labor for such non-essentials.
