(...Story Continued from Previous Page) I think we're
taking it to a different level than the previous bands do, and it's cool that
the younger people are getting to that as well, even if they use a video game to
understand it. It took video games for them to understand guitar!"
Donegan and his band mates noticed the same phenomenon. The video for
Disturbed's hit single "Stricken" is posted on YouTube alongside videos by fans playing "Stricken" on
"Guitar Hero III." From there, fans began sending videos of their own attempts
at the "Stricken" guitar solo, played on actual guitar. They wanted a lesson.
"We realized that since this whole 'Guitar Hero' craze happened there are
more and more kids who are asking these types of questions," he says. "At first
we started off just critiquing their video and trying to give 'em pointers. And
then we realized there might be a cool way to make it more personal by actually
getting on our instruments and showing them."
The production for these "distructional" videos, set to launch this fall on
the band's Web site, will be downright "Guitar Hero"-ic, natch. "Our camera guy
will show the fretboard of the guitar and lights up the fingering as it's
going," Donegan says. "We try to make it as simple as possible so it can be for
kids who are just starting to learn these riffs." Thanks to "Guitar Hero," the
guitar hero is being demystified.
Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher is thrilled that "GH" brings new fans to his
band but is less optimistic about the notion that kids are learning to play an
instrument by playing a video game.
"If they are, they're gonna be totally confused, like, 'Oh, this is nothing
like 'Guitar Hero,' playing a real guitar'," he says. "You gotta remember it's a
video game, you're not really playing guitar. That's the whole thing about video
games -- you go into a fantasy world to do things you normally wouldn't be able
to do."
For some bands, that means merely staying relevant. Witness the June '08
release of "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith," in which players crank leads by Joe Perry of the hard-rock godfathers. The game sold more
than 567,000 copies in its first week, as reported by Rolling Stone, and grossed
more than $25 million. Compare that to the 160,500 copies and $2 million sold by
Aerosmith's last studio album, 2004's "Honkin' on Bobo." That comparison underscores the logic
behind Metallica's willingness to release their ninth studio album, "Death
Magnetic," simultaneously in the real world and as a download for "Guitar Hero
III."
"To kids it's just a song," says Mastodon's Kelliher. "They don't have to
know who Aerosmith is. They just download the song and play it. And then if you
like it you find out who wrote it, and you go to the store and pick it up or
whatever. It's all marketing, trying to sell your music, obviously."
Along with game sales, downloadable songs are a massive moneymaker, for
Neversoft and for individual bands. According to Rolling Stone, fans have
downloaded more than 20 million $2 tracks, with bands and labels earning about
50 cents per track, more than they net from iTunes and other download sites.
"People go on about the video game industry sucking all the money out of the
music industry," Li says. "I think selling games can actually help the music
industry, or the musicians anyway."
There's a lot of money flowing through that plastic guitar, but the more
intriguing development is shifting creative currency. Video games are actually
changing the way music is made.
Li describes the lead single from DragonForce's album "Ultra Beatdown,"
released on Aug. 20 with a concurrent "GHIII" download: "We actually wrote the
song, called 'Heroes of Our Time,' thinking about 'Guitar Hero.' We said we
can't have the intro less extreme than 'Through the Fire and Flames.' That's why
the beginning of "Heroes of Our Time" is absolutely insane. The guitar is really
over the top."
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Jonathan Zwickel writes about music for the Seattle Times
and is working on a biography of the Beastie Boys. |
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