Guitar Hero - Did You Know Gaming? Feat. Danny Sexbang

[Music] [Applause] [Music] did you know guitar hero was directly inspired by a Japanese arcade game called the guitar freaks it was part of the bomani series by Konami which began with 1997 s beatmania guitar creaks had similar gameplay to beatmania but utilized a guitar shaped controller and a more rock-and-roll based soundtrack harmonics and developers of guitar era were not actually the ones inspired by guitar freaks the ones inspired were hardware manufacturers redoctane who previously made dance pads for dance dance revelution the company was aware of guitar freaks and knew they'd be able to make a comparable guitar controller redoctane wasn't a game developer however so they proposed a collaboration with music games developer harmonics guitar hero with the result of their partnership the gameplay and presentation of Guitar Hero was an evolution of two previous Harmonix games frequency and Karaoke Revolution neither frequency North's equal amplitudes sold well despite being critically acclaimed and backed by Sony this was partially because the games were too difficult to explain to new players Sony conducted a focus group test on amplitude where they described the game with pictures and bullet points then asked the group what they thought the pre play quote/unquote interest score was the lowest of any game Sony had ever tested but after letting the testers actually play the game the post play intent to purchase score was higher than any game Sony had ever tested Sony told Harmonix we can't market this game no one wants to buy it unless they've played it karaoke revolution on the other hand was a commercial success in part because it was very easy to understand in an interview from the book inside game design Guitar Hero lead designer Rob K stated one of the things we learned from frequency and amplitude was that people don't necessarily relate to really abstract visuals they don't always understand how they apply to them unlike frequency which had an abstract psychedelic background Karaoke Revolution had animated singers and dancers in the background this concept was carried over to Guitar Hero even though the core gameplay was more similar to frequency and amplitude interestingly enough before striking a publishing deal with Sony Harmonix approached Microsoft with concept of frequency then vice president of Microsoft Ed fries told Harmonix co-founder Alex regalis that no one would buy a rhythm game without a special piece of hardware attached which is exactly what ended up happening with Guitar Hero later Edie fries expressed regret in not signing a deal with Harmonix because of how successful the studio became Microsoft isn't the only company that regrets not staying in business with Harmonix accessories manufacturer Mad Catz had a contract to make an Xbox guitar controller for the first guitar hero around that time harmonics and redoctane were sued by Konami for patent infringement of guitar freaks mad cats were worried about the lawsuit so they actually paid three hundred thousand dollars to back out of the contract but the lawsuit didn't end up damaging Guitar Hero mad cat CEO darin richardson told kurt Akoo everyone else made hundreds of millions and we paid money not to be a part of it it was brilliant I come up with these strokes of genius from time to time that was my best this is also the reason why the first guitar hero was never released on a Microsoft console the Guitar Hero version of Jordan by Buckethead was the first studio recording of the song ever Buckethead had only played the song at live events prior to Guitar Hero in fact the track didn't even have a name before it was recorded after sending the song to Harmonix Buckethead thought it was the best thing he'd ever recorded in his entire life it was named Jordan as an homage to sports icon Michael Jordan as Buckethead is a huge fan of basketball most tracks in Guitar Hero 1 and 2 are cover songs created by in-house musicians but many fans prefer the original studio recordings in an interview with guitar world harmonics guitarist Mark Henderson responded to the critics by pointing out that the use of covers was a stylistic choice as the single-player storyline is about a cover band [Music] when it came to recreating the music of famous artists Harmonix was very picky about the instruments they used each song had to be recorded with the same guitar the original bands used with the cover of laid to rest by Lamb of God Marcus Henderson even used the same amplifier in settings that guitarists Willie Adler used he was able to find the exact settings by pausing a section of Lamb of God's kill adelphia DVD where Adler was shown using his seta harmonics wasn't just insistent on using the same instruments even smaller details of songs were recreated with the cover of Iron Man by Black Sabbath harmonics found out that Ozzy Osbourne used a metal fan to create the robotic effect in the intro harmonics went and found the same fan model on Craigslist to recreate the vocal effect the story of a band rising to fame by playing cover songs has been noted as a flimsy narrative this criticism actually spawned the basis for an interesting unused storyline in Guitar Hero 3 Harmonix employs Steven Kimura and Joe Kowalski pitched the idea to set the third game in a post-apocalyptic world where rock and roll was banned in this dystopian future we're making music is illegal the only songs that remain are the ones passed down orally the player would be part of a group of outcast rebels fighting a tyrannical government with the power of rock and roll this version never made it past the planning stages because Harmonix was pulled off the project after they were purchased by Viacom development of Guitar Hero 3 was handed off to Neversoft and Harmonix went on to create the rock band series Guitar Hero 3 was the best-selling game in the series and actually broke the record for fastest game in history to reach 1 billion dollars in sales as well as being profitable for the games industry Guitar Hero also positively impacted the music industry digital sales of Dragon forces through the fire and flames went from 2000 a week to over 35,000 after Guitar Hero 3 and the band Aerosmith made more money on Guitar Hero Aerosmith than any single album the group ever released the retailer Guitar Center cited the success of Guitar Hero as one reason for a 27% increase in sales from 2007 to 2008 meaning games actually inspired gamers to become musicians but this massive boom in popularity was followed by a crushing bust the rapid success of music games spawned a series of spin-offs and copycats that saturated the market Alex were gapless stated even without intense competition you're manufacturing a very expensive product with very thin margins so getting the volume right is key shipped to light and you produce an inadequate inventory for the demand and you have a lot of unhappy customers you ship too many and you lose a lot of money and you need to make decisions like that six months in advance when you commit to manufacturing volumes in addition to the challenges of inventory management Harmonix ran into problems when competing companies would bid for the same music this drove up the cost of music licenses making it even more difficult to turn a profit retail space also became hotly contested and more expensive as the boxes for plastic instruments were relatively large by 2009 both rock band and Guitar Hero's suffered a 55% and 30% loss in sales respectively compared to the previous year by 2010 Harmonix was sold off an Activision canceled the Guitar Hero game mid development five years later Activision announced a reboot of the franchise starting with Guitar Hero live the reboot lacks drums and microphone support and features a brand new guitar controller with six harmonics will also relaunch rock band in the same year with support for the previously purchased controllers in DLC Harmonix is also gearing up for a reboot of the Guitar Hero predecessor amplitude after a successful Kickstarter campaign before you go we'd like you to vote on what you'd like to see covered in the future a video on lego games or a video on minecraft you can also vote by leaving a comment below and don't forget to subscribe for more facts and trivia that's all for today but don't forget to hit equip on our normal boots channel page to get an email update on new videos make sure you also check out did you know gaming comm and if you like this video check out some more videos by the way i'm danny sex bang from the comedy band ninja sex party you can check out my channel at youtube.com slash ninja sex party if you'd like to check out my band here's a video called road trip

Channel: DidYouKnowGaming?

Views: 1,595,857

Rating: 4.9524803 out of 5

Keywords: Gaming, didyouknow, facts, secrets, trivia, Guitar Hero (Video Game Series), Music Video Game (Media Genre), Rock Band (Video Game Series), guitar hero, rockband, guitar hero facts, guitar hero 3, guitar hero expert, band hero, guitar hero 2, guitar hero songs, guitar hero live, guitar hero metallica, danny sexbang, ninja sex party, Ninja Sex Party (Musical Group), game grumps, grumps, Did You Know Gaming? (Blog), Music (TV Genre), music, rock band 4, Leigh Daniel Avidan

Id: BnPO5Xbcif4

Length: 7min 20sec (440 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

the use of covers was a stylistic choice

I don't buy this. If that was the case, why did they use a few original recordings for Guitar Hero 2 and then struggle with being able to use every original track aside from a select few in Rock Band (with Activision struggling just as much with being able to use the originals in Guitar Hero 3)?

[u/TheDaliComma]

Man, I used to love playing Guitar Hero. Such a unique game that got whored out a bit too much until the series became stale.

[u/[deleted]]

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