Interviews// Guitar Hero 5

SPOnG: You’re obviously trying to ramp up the online presence of Guitar Hero with this game, but people will always say that the best experience can be had in your living room with friends. Would you say that element is most important to a Guitar Hero game?

Brian Bright: I would agree that the best experience is playing with people around you and being the vibe of a real party, but we are keen to expand the online audience as much as possible. We tested the waters somewhat with World Tour, and there’s this real sense of ‘always online’ – that people are always connected to the Internet in order to communicate and improve their media experiences. We really try to push that forward, and sometimes your family and friends aren’t always around so it’s nice to be able to have that connectivity to play with them even when they aren’t in your living room.


SPOnG: Could you explain some of the new Rock Fest challenge and multiplayer modes that we’ll get to play in Guitar Hero 5? We saw ‘Momentum’ which perpetually changes your difficulty level when you hit a 20-note streak or miss 3 keys. What are the other modes here?

Brian Bright: One’s called ‘Streak Streakers’, where for every 10 notes that you streak, you get a point – whoever gets the most points wins. It’s not based on normal points, but how many streaks you can get. We have one called ‘Elimination’, which has songs split into quarters and at every threshold the player with the lowest points gets cut. It’s the classic ‘last man standing wins’.

There’s another one called ‘Do or Die’, where the song is broken down into sections and if you miss three notes you get cut from that section, and you start again at the next section. That’s a score-based mode, so you want to be playing flawlessly to not lose out in getting points there.

And you can do all these in a Rock Fest scenario, so say you want to play nine games, it throws up the different challenges you have to perform on each song and whoever wins the most rounds wins the whole game. And you can do this with one on one, two versus two, or online with four teams of two or two teams of four.


SPOnG: You mentioned in the presentation that with the number of songs you have for download and the manner in which you can just jump in and out of play, that people could theoretically have Guitar Hero parties where the computer plays the songs until someone decides to play. Do you think that would actually happen?

Brian Bright: I don’t see why not. We’re building a bigger and bigger library of songs, and we have something out there for everyone. Your downloadable songs can be used in future Guitar Hero games and things, so I don’t see why people wouldn’t do an ‘iTunes’ with it and use Guitar Hero as their music database. You have some cool visuals going on the screen with the game; it is cool shit to look at… I mean, it’s better than the Xbox screen or something (laughs).


SPOnG: Do you think the Guitar Hero series will hit its peak, and too soon? We have GH5 this year, Metallica’s just around the corner, Van Halen’s been announced and of course you have Greatest Hits, too.

Brian Bright: Those other ones are quite specialised though, so if you don’t happen to like Metallica or Van Halen you don’t have to buy it. There’s a lot of music CDs that come out every year, so I don’t really see a difference. I mean you have all these Pop Chart compilations that come out, right? Our Greatest Hits is essentially one of those.


SPOnG: Would you say that Guitar Hero is less of a brand today then, and more like a format? There’s this Guitar Hero TV show that’s been announced too, and a lot of people could get tired of the brand all too quickly and go ‘Oh, Guitar Hero again?’ – do you think it’s reached that over-saturation point or do you feel it’s transcended that and is more of an accepted format for music to appear on?

Brian Bright: I do think that, if you know it and play it, and like it… experiencing the music in that way, and having the parties with friends – I think that part has transcended the brand somewhat.

I wouldn’t be the one to speak to about the over-saturation (laughs) but I think you’re on to something there with the format thing. I mean there were kids that grew up on the original Guitar Hero and because of that they may buy music and experience it completely via Guitar Hero, which is a different way to past generations who grew up on CDs and tapes. And I think if we keep improving the service and keep pushing the boundaries with the games, it may well become the next format. Who knows?


SPOnG: Thanks for your time.