Win some, lose some
Collaboration of music with any other media can be a tricky business when it comes to high-profile artistes.
As often happens, where there is good news there is accompanying bad news. In this case, both of these news pieces have emerged from the cross-pollination of music and high tech video game development.
Let me divulge the bad news first, only because it is a more fitting example of how the collaboration of music and games can go horribly wrong. Most of us know the best-selling video game “Guitar Hero” and its potential to provide the music business with an extended arm in assisting in the development of new audiences and therefore new commercial avenues. But the recent release of “Guitar Hero 5” has the game developer Activision at the receiving end of much negative criticism and understandably so. Described by Pitchforkmedia.com as a “sacrilegious, vomit-inducing Kurt Cobain avatar”, the game allows users to unlock the late singers avatar, to have it perform in a manner that can only be seen as a ridicule of Nirvana and Cobain’s musical legacy. The shocking portrayal of Cobain in the game has his widow Courtney Love reasonably outraged as seen from her Twitter posts and, predictably, a court battle with Activision will ensue.
The collaboration of music with any other media can be a complex business and especially when the music involved is the creation of highly regarded artistes like Nirvana and The Beatles. But while Cobain is caught in a pitfall in “Guitar Hero 5”, The Beatles have once again endeared audiences with the release of “The Beatles: Rock Band” game developed by Harmonix Music Systems and released on September 9.
When The Bealtes album Love was released in late 2006, it was a momentous achievement in terms of reviving the band’s music without subjecting it to a banal re-packaging strategy. It was then that I wrote in this column that The Beatles, over nearly half a decade have stayed at the forefront of our musical imaginations. The album was a critical and commercial success as is the Cirque du Soleil production that prompted it.
With the release of “The Beatles: Rock Band”, the band once again stamps its ongoing relevance on the world by collaboration with the MTV owned Harmonix to create a game that, as pointed out by Jeff Howe in Wired, is a result of “three years of ardent courtship, tech wizardry, and dizzying legal acrobatics”.
Judging from the trailer and the numerous clips online, “The Beatles: Rock Band” is impressive to say the least. The game takes players through the band’s entire career from their beginnings in Liverpool to the height of Beatlemania. It utilises brilliant and the bands precious music catalogue to create a multi-instrument and multi-player music game/ extravaganza that can be played on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii consoles.
The idea for the game made its first appearance in 2006 through a chance meeting with George Harrison’s son Dhani and the president of MTV Networks, Van Toffler. From then on it took three years and near insurmountable hurdles to finally release it to the public.
“The Beatles: Rock Band” was released on the same day as a box set containing all 12 Beatles albums re-mastered for the very first time. Both released on the same date in an obvious bid to buck the music and game industry’s downward spiral sales trend. And initial reports suggest that the strategy will in all probability pay off well.