Gib Me Money!

It was Saturday night in the lounge room and I was shredding Sunshine of Your Love to a 10 thousand plus screaming crowd on my new Gibson guitar. Unfortunately the guitar was plastic, it didn’t have any strings and the 10 thousand strong crowd was screaming at me from two speakers affixed to the sides of the TV.

If you’ve been living under several large impenetrable rocks for the last 3 years, or you were unfortunate enough to be born without eyes and ears, you may not be aware that I’m actually referring to the hugely popular gaming series Guitar Hero, where you are given the opportunity to play the world’s greatest rock songs by pressing buttons on your ‘guitar’ (AKA controller) in time with notes on the screen.

It’s a fair bit more difficult than you may think, and the fast moving notes running down the screen start playing nasty tricks with the eyes that would make any respectable person think that someone must have slipped a magic mushroom into their drink when they weren’t looking.

To make the whole gaming experience more realistic, the game’s developers, Activision teamed up with respected guitar company, Gibson to model the controllers on Gibson guitars and also use their likeness in the game. Clearly this was a good idea for Gibson as the game, now up to its third series, has raked in over US $1 billion and sold over 14 million copies in the US alone.


Gibson, whose guitars have been used by many famous musicians including Eric Clapton and BB King, gets more than its fair share of product placement with the name appearing across the top of the Gibson-shaped guitar controller and regularly throughout the game.

Ok, so what is the point of my Guitar Hero ramblings? Well, last week Gibson sent a letter to Activision advising them that the Guitar Hero series violates its 1999 patent for technology that simulates a musical performance. The company has a patent for a method of simulating a live performance using a musical instrument, a 3D headset with stereo sound and a pre-recorded concert.

Now, first of all who in their right mind, as Gibson clearly isn’t, would class the plastic, stringless controller as a musical instrument? You can get some mean clicking noises out of it, but any attempt to entertain an audience without the aid of the game itself and a TV would probably be met with some hostility. Then again, there are the English, and if they can turn a horrendous Crazy Frog ringtone into a chart topper, who am I to say some clicking noises won’t lead to the same fate.

The biggest problem with this lawsuit that Gibson seem to be going for, is that they’ve waited THREE YEARS since the first Guitar Hero was released before notifying Activision of their patent. After giving Activision full company support to base their designs on Gibson guitars, they have suddenly turned around and said, “Aah. Hi. Yeah, yeah I’m great. Thanks for all that publicity and boost in sales you’ve given us for selling so many Guitar Hero games. Oh ah, by the way, you’ve violated this broad sweeping patent we’ve had for a while, so, you need to give us a fair bit of money for that. Whenever you can. Ok, well, bye.”

Clearly Activision disagrees with Gibson’s stance and has filed a lawsuit to clarify the matter and stop any damages from being paid.
Could it be that now, after realising the enormous success the game has had, Gibson are a bit perturbed that they didn’t demand a higher licensing fee from Activision?





Whatever the reason, it’s sad to see such a respected company take such measures simply for more money, especially after working with Activision for so long. With hundreds of millions of games sold worldwide, the advertising Gibson received has been astronomical and helped to secure it as a household name; if it isn’t already.

Everyone’s aware of the money hungry major record labels, but it did not seem to be so prevalent within the respected guitar manufacturers. Maybe I’m just naive. Everything’s for money these days no doubt, but this rampant grab for some more profit makes you wonder how much they’ll reduce their quality to cut costs and increase the bottom line, while charging top dollar for endless extra bits.

Could Gibson be the new Sony of the music world?
Hmm, interesting.