Dan Rosensweig
The virtual Shirley Manson from rockers Garbage.
The Guitar Hero CEO talks the future of virtual music
Dan Rosensweig has clearly led a charmed life. This amiable, laid-back forty-something New Yorker published the world’s biggest technology and video games magazines and websites in the late 1990s, came through the burst of the dot-com bubble around the turn of the century, going on to become the chief operating officer of Yahoo in 2002. A hugely successful internet entrepreneur, before most of us had any understanding of what the World Wide Web actually meant.
Following a successful stint at Yahoo, Rosensweig left on a high in 2006 to work with venture capitalists.
Fast forward to 2009 and Bobby Kotick, CEO of video game mega-corp Activision Blizzard and who had been a good friend of Rosensweig on the board at Yahoo, was repeatedly phoning him up to discuss the internet, the connectivity of games consoles and to find out where the gaming industry was heading in the future.
“Over a period of time, we got into really exciting conversations about how interactive content was really going to dominate consumer entertainment, how the merger of interactive content and video games and connectivity can create whole new experiences for consumers on a global basis,” he recalls. Kotick then asked Rosensweig to run Guitar Hero.
“The history of Guitar Hero is pretty spectacular,” he affirms. “I don’t know of another franchise that has captured the imagination of the world so quickly and so powerfully and so positively in such a short period of time.”
However, before taking the job the first thing that he did was check in with his daughters, who it transpired loved the game. “I’ve been having a blast ever since,” he says, failing to stifle a wide grin.
“What Guitar Hero has done is to throw music inside out. Whereas the iPod made music very personal, very singular – you put your ear-buds in and you listen to it – Guitar Hero turned it around and made it very social. So it is fun to play against people. It’s fun to watch people play.”
In addition to the latest edition of Guitar Hero 5, which features 82 artists and 85 songs, Activision also has two new titles, the family-favourite Band Hero and turntablist simulator DJ Hero, backed by massively popular hip-hop legends including DJ Shadow, Eminem and Jay-Z.
As for the future, Rosensweig talks of 3D, motion-control technologies and “direct-to-TV” gaming, with guitars and other controllers that plug straight into your television.
“If the capability allows for the expansion of Guitar Hero beyond the console, then of course we will go there,” he says. “If that is where our fans want to play the game, whether direct to the television or on mobile devices, we of course are always looking for ways to create experiences that our fans would really like to take advantage of.”
And while there are critics that claim the game is stifling creativity and musicianship, for Rosensweig the sales figures speak for themselves. Simply put, as Guitar Hero has grown, more people have bought guitars and signed up for music lessons.
“Although we don’t teach them how to play, we allow them to have an experience of what it feels like to play. And that has led a substantial number of our fans to actually want to go and learn to play a real instrument. We are very proud about being able to get people to get excited about music and to then take that passion in a lot of different directions.” hub.guitarhero.com
