Guitar Hero Live: how a UK developer re-envisioned the music gaming legend

Can the reactive crowds, first-person perspective stage performances and new controller re-awaken interest in guitar games?

Looking back, it's hard to appreciate the impact Guitar Hero made on gaming a decade ago. It wasn't the first rhythm action game, of course. Konami had already paved the way with its Beatmania and Guitar Freaks arcade titles. But with that huge licensed track list and cleverly designed guitar controller it brought the concept of music gaming into millions of homes, kickstarting a multimillion-dollar industry. Original developer Harmonix would later go on to extend the concept with Rock Band, introducing drums and a mic, but Guitar Hero plucked away for another five major releases, adding hundreds of tracks and enlivening many long nights indoors.

Then it was over. A bloated release list of downloadable content (DLC) and themed editions, together with an ever expanding roster of revised controllers, accelerated the general sense of genre fatigue. People felt they had taken all they could from the idea of copying note sequences from a rolling onscreen display.