Dragonforce bite the Guitar Hero hand that feeds them

Via 1UP comes an interview with British power metal band Dragonforce in which they make it clear that they're sick of talking to kids about Guitar Hero:

You may have achieved immortality by getting 100% on "Through the Fire and Flames" in Guitar Hero III, Chris Chike, but that doesn't mean the authors of the fan-favorite and blisteringly difficult song want to keep hearing about it. In an interview with Metal Injection (embedded above), DragonForce guitarist and co-founding member Sam Totman made it explicitly clear they don't want any more Guitar Hero questions. "Yup, definitely. Don't ask if I can play my own song in Guitar Hero, because I've answered that question about five times a day," Totman said when asked if he was sick of Guitar Hero-related inquiries. But that didn't stop the band member from also crediting the game with giving his British group more popularity in the U.S. "It's made more people like us... it's definitely helped a lot, yeah," Totman said.

My take
1. I've watched Dragonforce go from a run-of-the-mill European power metal band (there are lots of them) to a mainstream phenomenon with American high school and college kids. This is entirely due their presence on Guitar Hero. Turning their back on their fans who have come to them through the game is the worst possible thing they could do.

2. Stepping back one level, Dragonforce represents the role that games play in the contemporary marketing mix. Avenged Sevenfold and Taking Back Sunday also saw big spikes in popularity after appearing on the Madden soundtrack. Games are now a huge brand-building platform in the same way that movie soundtracks used to be, and represent a source of income for bands in a post-filesharing economy. For example, rock fossils like Motley Crue and The Offspring are remaining relevant and gaining new fans by releasing albums as downloadable content in Rock Band (see here and here).

Read more at 1UP