The Day the Music (Game) Died?

Sing with me: "FOR THE ALLIANCE!"

On Wednesday, Activision Blizzard announced that the last power chord of the Guitar Hero video game series had been strummed.  After six years and more than a dozen games, the company is turning off the amps and shutting down the lights on a franchise that was well past its prime.

We should've known the end was near...

The series’ peak came in 2007 when Guitar Hero III sold more than 1.5 million copies in its first month and nearly 3.5 million copies within the first nine months.  The latest installment in Guitar Hero’s main title line, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, struggled to the tune of less than 100,000 copies.  Even though MTV Games sold Rock Band Publisher Harmonix last year, the trimmed down company announced this week that their music franchise would live on.

Just like millions of other people, I’ve been known to strap on a plastic axe from time to time and rock out in front of my XBox 360 for throngs of adoring simulated fans.  More often, I’ve picked up a microphone and sang myself hoarse to some of my favorite tracks.

Personally, I preferred the Rock Band games over Guitar Hero.  As a musician, the Rock Band games always seemed more like “music simulations” to me, while Guitar Hero titles felt more “gamey.”  The instruments never felt right to me.  The notes always seemed to be in the wrong places and the scale of the little plastic guitars made me feel like John Popper playing a toy harmonica (if you don’t know who he is, please do yourself the favor of checking out his band, Blues Traveler).

We really should’ve known the end was coming when Acitivision Blizzard went full-World-of-Warcraft on their latest installment and inserted Night Elves and strange anthropomorphic pigs and bears, complete with heavy metal accoutrements, into the game.  They also tried to make Warriors of Rock an “epic musical adventure” complete with a “save the world through rock ‘n’ roll” plot (of sorts).  2010 seemed to be the year for trying to combine the music game with a heroic adventure.  Did you play the Neil Patrick Harris & Felicia Day zombie-metalocalypse Rock of the Dead?  I didn’t think so.  Apparently, music is the only way to truly stop zombie armageddon.

Epicenter Games' Rock of the Dead

It seems the time for playing with little plastic guitars has finally come and gone.

Did you play music games?  Do you lament or celebrate their demise?