For a brief time in the ’00s, Guitar Hero was the king of party games. And for an even briefer time, some entries in the bestselling series were developed in an office on South Linn Street in Iowa City.
Budcat Creations, a high-budget game development studio owned by Iowa natives Jason and Jeremy Andersen, relocated from Las Vegas to Iowa City in 2005. Though only a handful of their employees were willing to follow, the Andersens told Nicholas Yanes of Game Developer that Iowa’s great schools and low cost of living made the move worth it. They wound up having no trouble hiring new talent, either.
“I’ve worked all over for a lot of companies, and it was easier to recruit for Budcat in Iowa City than anywhere I had ever worked,” Jeremy Andersen told Yanes.
The Andersens sold Budcat to Activision in 2008, hoping the company could provide some financial stability for the studio. Activision tasked the Budcat team with creating new entries for their hit Guitar Hero franchise, including Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock, Guitar Hero: World Tour and Guitar Hero 5. They also developed the band-specific spinoffs Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero: Metallica and Guitar Hero: Van Halen.
Despite being one of many studios in the mix, Budcat Creations’ games stuck out. THEGAMER placed Guitar Hero 5 as the third-best entry in the entire series. Entertainment Weekly ranked Legends of Rock as the second-best; that game included “Through the Fire and Flames,” an iconic Guitar Hero level.
But a combination of too many Guitar Heroes in a small guitar town and effects of the 2008 financial crisis led to Activision reporting losses, and the franchise fizzling out.
On Nov. 16, 2010, Activision closed Budcat with no warning.
“I never thought our studio would get shut down,” Jason Andersen told Yanes. “Who would shut down a studio that always delivered on schedule and on budget?”
Many of the creators moved to tech hubs across the country. Today, there aren’t a lot of blockbuster game titles coming out of Iowa, but you can find heroic development studios, including Gold Creek Games in Des Moines and EPX Studio in Iowa City. The next generation of scrappy, never-miss-a-deadline game developers are also taking advantage of increased opportunities to learn the craft at the state’s colleges and universities.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s December 2023 issue as a part of Peak Iowa, a collection of fascinating state stories, sites and people.
