Will Rock Band and Guitar Hero Save Us?

In high school, I quit guitar lessons after just six months. I have really tiny hands and got frustrated just making chords—plus, my teenage self thought it'd be more fun to date an ax master than to be one. Later, I decided that writing about rock bands was a lot more satisfying than pining after them. But I've always wondered if I shouldn't have been so quick to give up on those lessons. What if I had kept with it? Could I have been the next Joan Jett? Crooning "I Love Rock and Roll" at karaoke bars is one thing, but groping a glossy Gibson or Fender and making it explode with beauteous bombast? That's something else entirely.

Pushing multicolored buttons on a fake plastic guitar while virtual fans cheer isn't exactly the kind of high I have in mind, but it is the idea behind Guitar Hero, a videogame that's become a phenomenon these past few years, transcending the gamer geek contingent and sucking in real rock fans, not to mention turning a new generation into rock fans too. Maybe more significantly, it's given the flagging record industry a nice kick in the amps, and not just for dinosaur rockers either.

When the game's new version, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, featured the song "Through the Fire and Flames" by the band DragonForce, its label, Roadrunner Records, reported a 183 percent sales increase for the single and another spike for its aggro metalers Killswitch Engage, who also have a featured cut. Early SoundScan numbers for all Guitar Hero III's singles—from Weezer's "My Name Is Jonah" to the Strokes' "Reptilia"—show download increases across the board.

My first Guitar Hero fix came late—at an after-party for a Sex Pistols show (which the game sponsored) at L.A. on the Rox. I did a surprisingly good job on the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black," and like Keef, Slash, Jonesy and an ex who shall remain nameless, I think I now finally understand the rhythmic bliss of shredding. From its vibrant visuals to the music selections themselves, however cheesy it sounds (and looks), Guitar Hero is a love letter to rock and roll, and it just might be saving it.

While Hero, its recently released rival, Rock Band, and other interactive games such as Dance Dance Revolution, Karaoke Revolution and SingStar, have music-driven functions that help to popularize songs in an overt way, it's really the videogame industry as a whole that's changed the playing field for music artists. And it's been doing so way before joysticks starting looking like musical instruments.

"We are in many respects the new MTV," says Steve Schnur, worldwide executive for music and marketing for Electronic Arts, creators of popular titles such as Madden NFL and the Need for Speed racing games, and a distributor for Rock Band. "We warm up the marketplace and create a familiarity for many artists."

In the case of Guitar Hero and its competitors, that means introducing older acts to new fans. But for most other games, particularly Schnur's titles, it means exposing brand-new bands. "We made a commitment to use 99 percent new breaking artists for our games," says Schnur, whose music-biz background includes marketing, publishing and programming for everyone from Capitol to Arista to BMG to MTV in its formative years. They also decided to include chyrons (those three-line tags at the right-hand bottom corner of the screen that tell you who you're listening to).

After being included on EA games, then unknowns such as Avenged Sevenfold and Good Charlotte were almost immediately getting requested on radio stations. "The labels were thrilled," Schnur says, "but more importantly the artists were too. They want to be on these games because they're on the front lines. They hear fans telling them they discovered their music on games like Madden NFL."

This may finally explain why there are always so many jocks doing head butts at metal and punk shows lately, but we digress.

These days it's not just sports enthusiasts, cyberfanatics and frustrated musicians-cum–rock journalists like me (yes, the cliché is true) getting in on the gaming trend. Schnur, who just embarked on a joint venture with Nettwerk Records to release CDs from acts such as Junkie XL (no stranger to videogames), says that thanks to the new rhythmic games and consoles such as the Wii, we are entering the era of the "casual" gamer: mom, dad, sis, bro, hipsters and hotties (anybody see the Guitar Hero party scene on the CW's Gossip Girl?). The antisocial video nerd who never leaves the basement not only has to surrender the joystick more often to his Hannah Montana–loving little sister, he's getting less attention from videogame marketers looking for an ever-wider audience.