RedOctane Speaks Out on Guitar Hero's Future

njkid1 writes "In the first published interview since the news broke that Neversoft would be taking over development, RedOctane is speaking out on the decision and what it means for the future of the franchise. From the article: 'Internalizing development allows for more control of the creative elements of the game and, in this instance, provides for a much more robust and feature laden franchise. We believe that having the talented group at Neversoft, with their unprecedented string of market success with the billion dollar Tony Hawk franchise, develop the next Guitar Hero game will allow us to vastly enrich the consumer experience. We are excited to further the music and rhythm-based videogame genre, and Neversoft has the full experience, knowledge, and talent to do this.'" As nice as it is to hear from RedOctane, I'd rather hear the fully skinny from Harmonix.

Comments

It's alright

[Cthefuture]

Well I finally got the game (actually Guitar Hero 2) and... Meh. It's not as fun as I would have thought from all the people on the Internet.

I mean I love these type of games. I built a DDR machine in fact. But Guitar Hero doesn't get the formula quite right. It takes itself too seriously and that damn 3D scrolling fretboard sucks ass. Not only is it hard to read because everything starts tiny and gets larger but after playing a few minutes it seriously screws up your vision. Look at a wood grain pattern after playing for a while, it's like you're on LSD.

The "too serious" and the fretboard design (is it trying to make it easier because they think you need more time to see what's coming?) feel very American and that's not the formula that made DDR so popular.

Re:It's alright

[TomHandy]

What do you mean everything starts tiny and gets larger? The fretboard in the game is larger at the bottom of the screen and goes off into the distance in 3D.... so really, the fretmarkers start largest at the bottom and get smaller as they go off into the distance (not that it matters, since you've already played the notes anyway). I don't quite get what you mean really. Also, I never got the feeling that Guitar Hero takes itself too seriously; what specifically makes you think it does?

Re:It's alright

[Cthefuture]

Yeah well, whichever way it goes. :)

By seriously I mean the graphics mostly. I mean yes it matches with rock culture but it's all dark and serious looking versus the pop candy Japanese look these types of games normally have.

Re:It's alright

[Anonymous Coward]

The second one has vastly improved multiplayer and rehearsal.
It also is made very difficult on the high end.
The first one has waaaaay better songs though, well, except for TROGDOR!

Re:It's alright

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

Whoosh. Of all games ever made I'd say this series takes itself the least seriously. Coming from such a high and mighty society that you obviously do, I'd think that you were aware of the concept of tongue-in-cheek. Well minor quips aside I'll just say that I think you picked the wrong GH to start out with. The setlist of GH1 was much more entertaining to non-gamers and gamers alike. It is unfortunate because the extra features added in GH2 would have made GH1 much better.

Re:It's alright

[Cthefuture]

Since when is expressing an opinion a Troll?

Surely you jest. Party on dudes.

Re:It's alright

[Fallen Kell]

Which is one of the reason why I and more than a million other people like Guitar Hero. I HATE Dance Dance, and Karaoke Revolution, and even most of the Drum Beat whatever. They are too, how should I say, flowery. Its freaking METAL! I don't want to see stupid butterflys, or pastel balls flowing on the screen. I want to see Gene Simmons's tongue, or Ozzy bitting heads off of doves or bats (did I say that this is heavy metal? I think I said that...).

Re:It's alright

[starman97]

It's gotta be BRUTAL!!
or it ain't METAL!

Re:It's alright

[Dysfnctnl85]

Actually, the notes in the game START far off in the distance and scroll towards the bottom of the screen, getting larger as they do so.

Re:It's alright

[gregtron]

If you watch someone finish Bark at the Moon on the hardest difficulty, you'll understand the seriousness. Also, your face will melt completely off into the floor, and then Guitar Hero will kick your face's ass with maximum wailage.

Re:It's alright

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry about the moderation. A lot of children here, combined with the group-think you can't win even when you're right.

Re:It's alright

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, that moderation just serves to prove the point you morons!

all in a name

[User 956]

Neversoft has the full experience, knowledge, and talent to do this.

Neversoft? Weren't they the ones developing Duke Nukem Forever?

Re:all in a name

[Loadmaster]

Might as well be.

Swi

Re:all in a name

[the_nightwulf]

The only Neversoft product that comes to mind is the Tony Hawk series. Exactly how that relates to Guitar Hero is still up in the air ...

Re:all in a name

[Stormwatch]

They also did Apocalypse and Spider-Man.

Re:all in a name

[odhen]

They made Gun, too. Which, while incredibly short, was a solid game with a great story and great voice acting(although those really don't have much to do with Neversoft). Honestly though, have they had any experience with music games before?

Re:all in a name

[Thansal]

What type of experiance do you need with a "music" game?

Timing games (as that is what DDR et all are) are not a complex idea, and that is one of the main things that is the draw of them (you can bop in, put on a song you are working on, and burn through it).

Neversoft has shown that they can put out good, solidly designed games with good solid content (Tony Hawk), I don't think they need to have experiance in this type of game to be any good at it, they just have to take GH1/2, get some more songs and fret them, make it look better, and add in a few more features.

I am not all that worried in all honesty.

Hardly Red Octane Speaking Out

[JimmyTuscadero]

I believe Dusty Welsh was planted by Activision corporate to head Red Octane after the acquisition. Bio here.

I'd like to hear what Red Octane REALLY thinks.

they ought to have asked...

[MarcoAtWork]

if they ever plan to re-release GH1 with the GH2 engine (as GH1's songs are in general better than GH2, but GH2 is so much nicer to play given that HO/PO actually work)

Re:they ought to have asked...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hammer ons and pull offs worked just fine in Guitar Hero 1. Just because they were excessively difficult in the first game does NOT mean they were broken. Guitar Hero 2 did not "fix" them, they made them vastly more forgiving and hence easier to do, but with enough dedication, they can be done in Guitar Hero 1.

Re:they ought to have asked...

[ShawnMcCool42]

Thanks for the pointless ass reply captain obvious.

Re:they ought to have asked...

[donnacha]

For some reason, probably too much gaming and too little exercise, ShawnMcCool42 (557138) spat the following acid:

Thanks for the pointless ass reply captain obvious.

Actually, I really appreciated the fact that someone explained what the abbreviation HO/PO meant.

Hey, Shawn, I thought trolls like you usually remained anonymous?

Re:they ought to have asked...

[JFMulder]

The 360 version of GH2 is coming out in about two months and Red Octane confirmed there would be downloadable content. Ever since this has been announced, there has been rumor and speculation that they would release all the songs of the original GH on marketplace to use in GH2, with all the new bells and whistles. If you own a 360 and don't own these two games for your PS2 (if you had one in the first place), this ought to be a real treat for you.

Re:they ought to have asked...

[Gizzmonic]

I can beat Bark at the Moon on Expert. I can't for the life of me do hammer-ons and pull-offs consistently. I'm one of the thousands who didn't even bother because the feature DOES NOT WORK in the first Guitar Hero.

If the majority of people who beat the game can't hammer on and pull off (which is introduced after beating "Medium" difficulty), then it is broken.

And no, I don't have any problems doing it in Guitar Hero II...

Re:they ought to have asked...

[Have Blue]

They can be found on Medium, they're just very rare because the notes hardly ever fall close enough together to warrant tagging them as allowing HO/PO.

Re:they ought to have asked...

[MarcoAtWork]

I do own already both games and 2 guitars for my PS2, likelyhood of me re-buying the games and the guitars is pretty slim...

DING DING DING!!! We have a winner!

[Fallen Kell]

You nailed it. I completely agree with you on that one. The entire interview was/is simply damage control. People are very upset that developers were changed on a great product/franchise without any reason at all, other then possibly corporate greed. When they were caught making that change sooner then they anticipated, they throw one of their PR "firefighters" out to put a "smiley" face on the situation. Trying to get everyone to see that the guys who just lost their jobs for being too good at them (and wanting to be paid appropriately) get dropped after making a crap load of cash for the franchise.

"Punk" music?

[muridae]

Does this mean there will be a Guitar Hero game littered with the same "sk8ter punk" with a few real punk songs scattered inbetween?

All it needs is some Greenday and it will be Guitar Hero: Teen Angst edition.

Re:"Punk" music?

[scenestar]

Dude, what the fuck are you bitching about.

since when are the dead kennedies and the clash "sk8rpunk"

The whole tony hawk series have allways had a great variety in music available.

Re:"Punk" music?

[muridae]

Notice where I said 'a few real punk songs scattered in between'?

No? Didn't think so. I wasn't refering to them, or the Sex Pistols. Go ahead, take a look at the track lists for all the Tony Hawk games, see if you can't find the "sk8rpunk" music I was referring to.

Re:"Punk" music?

[vaksion]

What the fuck are YOU bitching about?

I'd buy Guitar Hero Redux

[Hecatonchires]

All the original songs, but the multiplayer features of GH2. Now I'm off to read this link which talks about getting your own songs onto Guitar Hero.

Phew!

[Bega]

Good thing that they're taking the Guitar Hero series further, unlike Konami, making Guitar Hero ripoffs like Beatmania!

Re:Phew!

[radish]

I'm sorry - did you even read the first sentence of the article you linked to?

[blockquote]
It's easy to forget that the rhythm peripheral craze all began with Beatmania, a turntable-inspired rhythm game that hit Japanese arcades in 1997 and is the forefather and namesake for Konami's entire Bemani rhythm series.[/blockquote]

Now Beatmania may well suck (I don't know, never played it) but it sure as hell isn't a GH ripoff, in fact, quite the opposite. All GH did (IMHO) is bring the already established rhythm game formula to a new musical audience - by making it guitar based instead of using dance or electronic music it suddenly appealed to people who weren't interested in DDR etc.

Re:Phew!

[Bega]

Sorry, dug out the link from my archives. Gamespot has changed the review, because in the original review said explicitly in the summary it being a Guitar Hero rip-off. I know that the reviewers are just ordinary humans, and can't hold knowledge of everything, but I think that the reviewer should have done some research before saying it being a rip-off.

Now, on the topic of Guitar Hero, was that it introduced the guitar simulation to a larger audience that wasn't interested in hardcore gaming -- i.e. removing the timing judgement completely, and introducing two more buttons, compared to Konami's Guitar Freaks -series that came out in 1998.

The most likely reason why I think the reviewer originally called Beatmania a GH ripoff, was that he probably never played anything besides the 5-key mode that Beatmania offers for beginners.

Re:Phew!

[daVinci1980]

Dude, I hate to pick nits, but who do you think makes the controller for Guitar Freaks?

None other than Red Octane. It's true. Go to your local arcade, check out the Guitar Freaks cabinet, and notice that Red Octane is credited for the guitar.

So all Red Octane did in this instance was take technology they had already produced for another company, find a developer who would put an engine to it (one very similar to the engine they used in their existing--and great--games Amplitude and Frequency), and release it on the PS2.

GH and GH2 are pretty good games, but they're hardly revolutionary. If anything, it's Harmonix who deserves all the credit here.

Re:Phew!

[Anonymous Coward]

you sir are an idiot, RedOctane didn't even exist when GuitarFreaks first started hitting arcades. And uh, Konami makes all their own hardware for their arcade games thankyouverymuch.

Crawl back under your hole, please.

Re:Phew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, beatmania was the music game to start the whole craze. The first 5-key game was released in Japanese arcades in 1997. Since then, there have been 13 beatmania, 13 beatmania IIDX, and 6 beatmania III arcade games released in Japan. And though beatmania has never been well established anywhere other than Japan, there were two US releases under the name HipHopMania. So, beatmania is hardly a Guitar Hero ripoff. If anything, Guitar Hero is a ripoff of Guitar Freaks, which had its first release back in 1998.

Re:Phew!

[Vacuous]

The funniest thing is gamespot isn't the only place to do this. G4TV did the exact same thing, it's sad how little reviewers really know about the stuff they review sometimes. You'd think someone reviewing a rhythm game would know a little bit about them.

Re:Phew!

[Bega]

I'm having a hard time believing this. Either the arcade that you've seen RedOctane's guitar controllers on GF arcade cabinets have been modded by the arcade owner him/herself or then it's a bootleg AC. Why? Mainly because of; 1) RedOctane is an american company founded in 1999, that started out with renting games and manufacturing 3rd party DDR controllers, and 2); Konami is a japanese company, who mainly produce and manufacture their own hardware themselves. Why I'm finding difficult to believe this is that Guitar Freaks has not been licensed outside Japan as of yet (Konami registered a patent in the US, though) and from knowing Konami's habit of licensing/subsidising their stuff, they are incredibly reluctant about that.

Re:Phew!

[ArtanisDTS]

The sheer ignorance of some game reviewers astounds me. I would have thought Gamespot would have been above claiming Beatmania as a direct ripoff of Guirat Hero. Hell without Konami, RedOctane wouldn't even exist. They did start off by making 3rd party dance-mats for the DDR series. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedOctane

Next the ignorance masses are going to visit the arcade and howl that GuitarFreaks is a blatant ripoff of Guitar Hero.

Goddamnit...

[Cyno01]

Would they just announce it for the Wii already. Please, pretty please?

Oh well, at least we got two

[realinvalidname]

All Harmonix did was create 100% fun music games with a real feel for rock, from the Boston bands playing in their basement level up to overblown stadium rock. All they did was make it fun. And before that, they did the spot-on goofy Karaoke Revolution games.

All Neversoft has ever done is crank out tired sequel after sequel after sequel, of Tony Hawk (yawn) and Spider-Man (yawn, big yawn, slip into coma).

Red Octane can spare us the spin. This doesn't do the gamers any good. It's all management and marketing, and even though I was first in my neighborhood to have GH, KR, and DDR, it's going to be very hard to get me to give GH3 a chance.

Re:Oh well, at least we got two

[Toddarooski]

Actually, Treyarch did most of the Spider-Man sequels. Neversoft was involved in the very first one, but that's about it.

They did do Gun, though, for what that's worth...

Re:Oh well, at least we got two

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh don't forget Harmonix created Frequency and Amplitude long before Guitar Hero. Those were the groundbreaking games, personally i think they are better than the GH series. Unfortunately commercially they were flops and wont see anymore sequels.

Re:Oh well, at least we got two

[ImTheDarkcyde]

I think you're forgetting that Harmonix also developed Frequency and Amplitude, two games that laid the foundation for guitar hero in a major way.

Re:Oh well, at least we got two

[realinvalidname]

That's true -- it's not hard to see in Guitar Hero the gameplay of Frequency/Amplitude and the aesthetics of Karaoke Revolution (eg, you see the performer on stage in a reactive environment, not just Random Crap like in DDR).

One thing I forgot to note in my original message was how the loading screens for some of the unlockable songs suggested that many of the Harmonix staffers were members of the bands in the unlock songs... suggesting a passion for and understanding of musical performance that I highly doubt Neversoft shares.

My Theory

[Snowmit]

As nice as it is to hear from RedOctane, I'd rather hear the fully skinny from Harmonix.

"We got tired of making sequels and want to work on a new franchise."

Re:My Theory

[DamnRogue]

The founder of Harmonix came and spoke to the MIT business school a couple months ago and basically said exactly that.

Dream Theater

[7Prime]

Whatever... as long as I get some Dream Theater in the next one... can't quite figure out why they haven't done any as of yet.

Re:Dream Theater

[denmarkw00t]

can't quite figure out why they haven't done any as of yet.

For the same reason they haven't done any 1) Tool, 2) My Morning Jacket, or 3) Pink Floyd - they just can't rock those killer licks & riffs (and they just don't know great guitar-work.

Wiish for good news

[DaAdder]

Now, if they'd only speak out about a possible Wii version, or even a port of GH.

I've been going back and forth between trying to wait out a decision and feeling forced to buy a 2nd console to enjoy this game.
Some clarity would be greatly appreciated.

Re:Wiish for good news

[n17ikh]

To be fair, they ARE working on a 360 port of GHII, to be released early March with more songs than the PS2 version of the game, and possibly downloadable content. If you happen to have a 360/are thinking of buying a 360, let that factor into your decision. I myself have been waffling back and forth on whether to get a used PS2 (100USD) and GHII (80USD), which is likely the only game I'll ever play for that console. My flatmate has a 360 now though, so I'll probably just buy GHII for it when it comes out and play it on that system. I was looking forward to a "Guitar Hero I songs on the Guitar Hero II engine" game, but we might actually end up seeing that with GHII on the 360 with the downloadable content, or at least I really hope so. One thing's for certain though - I'm confused and a little angry about Harmonix no longer developing the series, and I can't understand why RedOctane would want to screw over such a profitable and fun franchise.

Re:Wiish for good news

[trdrstv]

Harmonix no longer developing the series, and I can't understand why RedOctane would want to screw over such a profitable and fun franchise.

It's Activision really, and they have good reason. GH was co-developed by Harmonix, and Red Octane. Red Octane owned the franchise, so Activision bought RO. Now rather than outsourcing part of their development, they have it all 'in house'.

The logic makes perfect sence to me, but it doesn't make me feel better about it.

How would a Wii version play?

[goodenoughnickname]

Would you still get a guitar controller for the Wii version, or would you use the Wii Remote?

Assuming the former, I guess you'd strum with the remote and press C, Z, A, B, and a directional arrow for note buttons. But that doesn't really feel like playing a guitar, which is the fun part about GH. The remote and nunchuk seem better suited to Drum Hero.

If a Wii version happens, I'm guessing a "guitar shell" would be released and the remote would snap into that. Put some Miis in there (I love those bastards), give me a leaderboard I can share with my friends, and I'm in.

Oh yeah, get the Advantage/Minibosses/NESkimos to record some exclusive tracks, too.

Re:How would a Wii version play?

[KDR_11k]

A five buttoned board for the left hand and the remote acting like the pick in the right hand. The left hand part may need to be bigger (perhaps even including the guitar body) to allow proper holding.

This isn't Activision being evil, necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

What I've heard around the industry was that this was not something Activision/Red Octane really wanted to do, but MTV (the new owners of Harmonix) asked for so much money (something like 4X or 5X the cost of developing GH2 on PS2) that Activision blinked. My guess is that this is a tactical decision by MTV so that they can redirect Harmonix's efforts away from making money for Activision and towards some game line that MTV Networks can self-publish with "FROM THE MAKERS OF GUITAR HERO" stamped all over it.

This is all rumormill of course, I don't know anyone at any of these companies well enough to get the full skinny.

Posting as AC because I'm at work and we've done development for Activision in the past.

Harmonix's take on the situation:

[cspariah]

Gamasutra has a brief article up including a quote from Harmonix producer Daniel Sussman. Harmonix Talks Guitar Hero, New Music Franchise