A one-million-dollar gamble on a plastic Gibson SG controller became a billion-dollar empire and then a cautionary tale about market saturation. This episode traces Guitar Hero from its 2005 origins, when hardware maker RedOctane partnered with rhythm-game developer Harmonix to bring the Guitar Freaks arcade experience to Western living rooms, and explains why the illusion of mastery, a five-button note highway with hammer-ons, a rock meter, and tilt-activated Star Power, hijacked players' reward centers where earlier novelty controllers had failed.

We follow the corporate scramble after the original sold 1.5 million copies: Activision buying RedOctane for 100 million dollars, MTV acquiring Harmonix, which went on to build Rock Band, and Neversoft's Tony Hawk DNA driving Guitar Hero III past one billion dollars in retail sales. Then comes t ...