If it truly is better to burn out than fade away, then the original Guitar Hero series was doing something right. In 2009, a mere four years after the series was introduced, Guitar Hero 3 became the first single video game to exceed $1billion in sales. Less than two years later the series was dead, a victim of its own excesses that brought the whole genre down with it. FreeStyle Games, developer of Guitar Hero's Activision stablemate DJ Hero, was one of many casualties.
"We went through some tough times, we had to let people go and I don't mind telling people it was the worst year of my life," says Jamie Jackson, creative director at FreeStyle Games. "We're a family, we care about each other and to have to go through that was f***ing horrible."
Things, thankfully, are looking up for FreeStyle Games right now. We're speaking to Jackson in Tammy Wynette's caravan, which would be odd enough on its own were it not for the fact that the caravan is sitting in an airy, breezeblock-walled room at the back of the Zephyr Lounge in Leamington Spa, a handful of minutes walk away from FreeStyle Games' small studio.
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