Project director Brian Bright, who is working on what is thought to be the very last Neversoft-made Guitar Hero game, bares all
Neversoft lost its soul and spark in the pursuit of chart success, according to one of its senior staff.
Guitar Hero project director Brian Bright (pictured) described the mood at Neversoft in the last two years – a period which saw the team chase fame in the face of Rock Band, its nearest competitor, as well as ensure the release of four Guitar Hero games in the space of a year.
“With Guitar Hero World Tour [2008] we kind of lost our souls a bit,” he tells Develop.
“We lost that spark by trying to cater to everyone. We were in this arms race with our competitor [Rock Band 2], and in the end I felt like we sold a bit of our souls”.
After the success of Guitar Hero World Tour, Neversoft was told to finish work on three other games in the next year – Band Hero, Guitar Hero Metallica, and Guitar Hero 5. At the same time, the group also had to support two other studios that were working on various Guitar Hero spin-offs with older technology.
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“That definitely took our focus, everyone had split,” Bright said.
“We did make quite a few games last year, and if you count up the sales of all of them it was close to how well World Tour sold. But the release of all those games split the marketing team’s focus, it split our studio’s focus”.
Soon after the work was completed, and faced with clear signals of market saturation, Activision reportedly made 50 of its staff redundant. The publisher never confirmed the number of layoffs.
Several months have passed since, and Bright is unmistakably speaking in tones kindred to interviews with musicians after splitting up with their band. He was candid, showed regret on some issues, and was excited by what lies ahead.
Having survived two tumultuous years, Bright is excited again by creating a unique experience with Neversoft.
“We did put out quite a few games last year, and we wanted to make a game that stood out and had its own identity,” he said.
“Rather than go head-to-head with our own games and our competitors, we decided we wanted to make something different”.
Warriors of Rock is the latest, and reportedly final, Guitar Hero project at Neversoft. Set for release in September, the title returns to its roots and is clearly targeting fans who fell in love with the first Guitar Hero games before the series went supernova.
“In the latest game we have shifted back to the core audience,” he says. “We have punk, alternative rock, and classic rock. All that we have now fits the tone”.
And, he said with a mockingly iniquitous smile, the game will be difficult for even the most distinguished masters of plastic guitar.
“When I completed Guitar Hero 3 for the first time, I really felt like I accomplished something. When I got to the end of Guitar Hero 5, I may have had a lot of fun but I didn’t feel that personal accomplishment.
“What we saw at the end of Guitar Hero 5 is that, after a month of release, about 40 per cent of the audience were playing on expert. The core has got to a pretty high level, so we really want to up the challenge”.
Looking to the future, Bright was philosophical about the current state of affairs in the games market, and Neversoft’s future within it. Music game sales have, as was inevitable, fallen off a cliff. According to some analysts, the freefall in music game sales is the reason why NPD figures are routinely dampening spirits.
“Is there a danger that the music genre will become saturated? Most certainly,” said Bright. “But I think it’s a given that there will be a Guitar Hero game every year.
“It’s just that there were so many last year”.
Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock is set for worldwide release in September. Neversoft is thought will no longer be working on Guitar Hero games after its release.
[Image: Joystiq]
I don't care what anyone says I thought GHWT was an amazing set list and the game only went uphill from there (GHM, GH5, Band Hero).
The chart innovations are frowned upon by Rock Band Zealots but I find them to add so much more to guitar charts.
See: Little Wing GHWT vs. RB2 Chart
Thank you Neversoft for everything you've given us and for forcing Harmonix to add a bunch of the stuff you already did to make their game even better (Party Play!).
Can't wait for GH:WoR
Aw come on Toymachine. Don't play the GH fanboy, please...you're better than that! Both borrowed from each, to say Rock Band where to ones playing catchup is foolhardy at best. Harmonix were the original innovators (with RedOctane's help of course) and both fed off the ingenuity of the compitition. Aren't you the one always preaching about healthy competition? I understand you have a liking for both, but to say that...
There are zealots on both sides, you know this better than anybody.
There's nothing more that Toymachine loves more than waking up and sucking a glorious mouthful of Neversofts scrotum.
I'm just saying that the so-called "charting gimmicks" are things that differentiate the two franchises.
If you don't want to admit that Neversoft did anything for music gaming than so be it.
I surely am a weird Fanboy of Guitar Hero that's for sure with all my Rock Band DLC and my latest purchase of Green Day: Rock Band.
Shucks!
I will admit I have a greater connection to Neversoft due to the fact I've met most of them in person.
Whoa man, I hope your talking to the other guy. I know Neversoft added things, in fact I think we've discussed this in the past. I was simply saying your original comment seemed a bit one sided and unnecessarily harsh.
But, to be fair, at least you didn't clump all us RB fans into that...just the zealots. :)
I'm not downplaying Harmonix's role at all btw I'm just saying that Neversoft doesn't get much credit for the stuff they do.
It's just dismissed as "LOL OVERCHART" "NOT MUSICIANS" "GIMMICKY" "UNREALISTIC"
I'm just glad Harmonix decided to put in their own party play style mode (improving on it even more), Drum sustains (while still showing the charted notes), Pro Drum Mode (cymbal charting), and fixing strum limit / guitar trill woes.
RB3 is a hell of a game and so is GHWoR they just give different experiences.
Not so enthusiastic about GH7 but hopefully it continues in the path of this last one.
I don't know about GH7. Whole new studio, new people, new ideas. It's gonna be a crapshoot. Could be great, could bomb something huge. :)
Time will tell.
Rb3>anything guitar hero will ever be able to accomplish. Guitar Hero has basically ruined the market for rhythm games, with their over-saturation of games. The biggest disappointment was GH: Van Halen, awesome set-list, but they failed by using old graphics.
rb fanboys rb fanboys rb fanboys RUNNIN' WILD!
Wow, well it's good to know that Brian Bright himself knows what kind of a hole Guitar Hero had dug itself into, and it puts the whole thing into perspective.
Hopefully WoR will be a good note for Neversoft to go out on, and if they decide to return to the way Guitar Hero was and should be, I will consider checking it out.
My main question for him is the reason that there was not a patch released to fix the broken aspects of the GH5 engine. Hopefully that is all fixed for this game.
@ Fatalfien37. Using over-saturation as an argument that RB3 > the entire GH series is a fallacy; The number of games released by NS doesn't account for the quality of said games.
Also, why is a game with an awesome setlist bad when they used old graphics? Better even, had they used the GH5 engine, there would've been a major bug in expert drum charts that have X+ counterparts, like GH5 had (which was fixed in Band Hero, by the way).
Mostly because Activision felt that forcing people to buy Band Hero to appease a small number of individuals (Expert Drummers) makes more sense than diverting money from their MW2 community which has received numerous patches iirc.
/speculation
This article is an autopsy of a train wreck I saw coming years ago. It is pretty much an admission of everything I disliked about the series as it has progressed... the over-confidence, over-competitiveness, greed, and hubris.
To make a rock analogy, the franchise is like the hit band that grew arrogant and lost touch with its roots after striking it rich.
I just wish they didn't have to leave the franchise in smoking ruins to learn these lessons. They seem like a nice group of guys, I wonder how much management pressured them to get off track like this.
Why RB3 will be better, mainly because I can actually play the piano parts in Bohemian Rhapsody rather than play it on guitar, and honestly everything they have done since 3 is a joke. I mean c'mon unleashing your inner warrior of rock ? There is no way they can dig themselves out of this hole, but hey, they are still better than MW2 so Guitar Hero is o.k when it comes down to it, I just buy it, play it for a month and sell it to buy RB DLC
