It’s probably old news to those who really cared. I knew about it earlier, this post just had to take a back seat in the queue. I caught the scoop while I was home sick and during one of the few windows I could concentrate well enough to read HuffPo’s tech section on my iPad.
The economy going down the toilet was the deciding factor to put the game down for good. All of the other missteps weakened it it further: avatars of Kurt Cobain (blech!) or Taylor Swift (puh-leeze); moving the emphasis away from music in GH3 for a lame, linear videogame storyline; and the biggest event I think doomed the franchise from day one, getting acquired by Activision (now Activision-Blizzard). The publisher is great at twitch games for people with poor social skills or button-mashing subscriptions masquerading as roleplaying. GH lacked the essential shooting/stabbing then rolling the corpse for ammo/gold/mana element their core audience liked so they probably didn’t know how to develop the product further. Sure there was the Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen licenses but once Rock Band rolled out the Beatles, those previous three looked like Roger Corman productions.
However, I want to remember all the great memories GH gave me.
- Receiving GH2 for Christmas was a great experience.
- Trying to figure out the original game one afternoon at Fry’s to Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out.”
- My 39th birthday party wouldn’t have been the same without the Eighties finale Harmonix and Red Octane whipped together (before their divorce through Activision).
GH came before RB and proved there was a market for music-based games beyond DDR and Nintendo’s taiko drums. Let everyone indulge their inner Beavis & Butt-head to more than air-guitaring. I can only hope Harmonix fares better because they were dumped by Viacom and acquired by a private firm weeks earlier.