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The Design Failures That Led To Rock Band
CNN is running an interview with Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos, founders of Harmonix, about the long road that eventually led them to the creation of Guitar Hero and Rock Band . It wasn't an quick or easy process, and the two worked on a number of unsuccessful concepts before arriving at the games that redefined a genre. Quoting:
"I was watching people interact with our product, and the realization came crashing down on me — we had spent 18 months on a music system that was fundamentally flawed. Karaoke isn't about personal expression. It's about people reproducing the songs they know as accurately as they can. The whole notion of adding improvisation elements just wasn't connecting. So I retreated to my hotel room and was depressed for the next two days. The company was on the rocks. We had zero revenue. We had been trying for four years to make something work. We were out of ideas. Those first four years had been a graveyard of mis-starts and product concepts that never made it anywhere. Worse, there was adequate information about two years into those four years to realize that our big concept was fatally flawed."
Does this mean Guitar Hero-Abba edition isn't coming out?
CNN is running an interview with Eran Egozy and Alex Rigopulos, founders of Harmonix, about the long load that eventually led them to the creation of Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
What, were they making C64 games?
...thinking that other people are creative too.
Most people aren't (or at least, not in that artistic sense). Adding elements that require improvisation or creativity just makes the game like work for those who aren't inclined that way. There's nothing necessarily wrong in pandering to an audience that would prefer to be entertained rather than try to entertain themselves. That's why rail shooters are popular and Deus Ex was a flop.
Rock band and guitar hero are just piss poor rail games with better music.
They claim they sold to MTV because :"Harmonix has always been about music first -- games are a means to an end for us"
I wish MTV was about music. For at least the last decade its been all trash reality tv and teen celeb gossip.
They ripped off Konami.
I didn't blame anyone, Esp Not the developers.
I simple stated that the game runs on a rail, Nothing more.
I didn't read the article. My daughter has a number of GH games. My disgust is the
planned obsolescence and incompatibility of hardware from release to release.
Having to pay $100> for a new controller+game for each release borders on extortion
when your 14 YO daughter wants *only* that for xmas.
Video Game CRACK.
I've never seen this game. I've never played it. I'm not sure exactly what it is. I think that there is some kind of small plastic guitar-shaped controller with about six colored buttons on the fretboard. From what I've been able to determine, a version of a 1960s-1990s classic rock song plays and the person presses buttons on controller in a sequence determined by a video display.
Allow me to suggest an alternative.
Get a cheap guitar from Craigslist or a friend. Get a beater electric. Don't worry about the tone, but it should have all six strings and they should be close enough to the fretboard so that you don't have to press them more than 1/8th of an inch even at the highest frets (where the neck meets the body). A cheap 'strat' or 'telecaster' clone is an excellent choice. Don't buy one on eBay because the shipping charge will be more than the instrument is worth (if you take my advice and get a cheap guitar). Acoustic guitars sound great, but they are too loud. Electrics can be loud, or very quiet; you control the volume. Acoustics are always loud when you strum them briskly, and they hurt your fingers after a few hours.
Get a book from the library about guitar chords or have a friend show you some. Learn how to tune it. Get a real cheap electronic tuner from eBay or plug your new guitar into the line audio input of your PC and download a tuning program.
Look up some songs that you know from recordings on the web. Google the song name in quotes along with 'tab'. With luck, you'll be able to find the chord patterns to songs that you like. Try playing along with the song but be aware that the tab file and the actual song are likely to be in different keys.
Try 'dork' or pop songs that you may know from radio or old recordings. The older the song (at least for songs back to the 1960s), the more likely that it will be found as a good quality tab file.
When you get some skill at playing, try downloading a MIDI notation program and some MIDI files. You can play them through the sound card or IC on your PC. They sound cheezy, but that's not the point. Try learning how to read the music and chords from the sheet music displayed by the notation program. You learned to read English; you learned to read C++, you learned Perl and Python, you can learn to read music. It's not hard. Search the web for MIDI files of songs that you know, download them, and feed them to the MIDI notation program.
It will look overwhelming at first, but the music notation has every little riff and every complicated chord progression displayed in the notes and staffs of the music notation. It's an order-of-magnitude harder than 'Rock Band' because you have about 20 notes on each string and the instructions for playing are not numbers on a display, they are the position of the music symbols on the staff display of the MIDI notation program. For complex lead solos of classic rock, such as the Stairway to Heaven or Dark Side of the Moon, check out all the people on YouTube who are showing off their ability to copy solos in real time. There are also tab files available of most if not all the great classic rock guitar solos from the 60s and 70s. Some from the 80s and 90s are also available.
Use an old boom box as an amp if you can't afford a real and expensive one. Get cheap effects pedals from eBay. I recommend any Death Metal Distortion pedal to start, or a cheap Grunge pedal. If you know electronics, keep in mind that it is always cheaper to buy effects pedals on eBay than it is to make them. But check out all the effects schematics on the web so you get an idea of how effects work. The DSP-chip-based 'All-in-one' effects boxes suck. Anything with a seven-segment LED display is going to suck, don't waste your money.
When you feel good and up to it, start playing with other people.
This is the 'old-school' tri
Konami only had essentially what this game was in 1998 and now it's in the seventeenth revision. Really, Harmonix and Red Octane have been riding off Konami's Bemani series for almost a decade now and it's really sad that this watered down product with a different paint job and lowered paintjob is thought of as doing anything new here.
Yes and no. I find it completely insane that they don't mention guitar freaks in the article, when they mention karaoke revolution and say that Konami talked to them about it.
The article is about how they were doing something weird, that couldn't be explained to people who didn't play it, and it didn't sell. Then they sold some games, that also didn't sell well. Then Konami gave them a shitload of cash and credibility, they did something else that sucked, then Red Octane was like "Well fuck, we already rip off DDR and have a deal to rip it off even more with ITG let's get these guys to rip off another popular bemani game Konami hasn't brought over to America yet". And bam, two extra buttons and a whammy bar on a piece of plastic later, we have America's guitar hero. Then they were like "But wait, in Japan they can play keyboard, guitar and drums together. (maybe karaoke and ddr, though I don't think DDR was in there.. it's not in rock band so I'm assuming it didn't interface with konami's instrument games either ;)) So how about we do that?"
And then we ended up with a shitty ripoff of drum mania and a combination with karaoke revolution. It's annoying, because the guitar controller for rock band is far superior to the official konami home drum mania controller that I used. But the game is just .. inferior. In pretty much all possible software-related ways. Oh well. I still play it since it's about the songs, and none of my friends know any of the songs I'd play given the chance.
Though just be glad they didn't make ITG, can you imagine what they'd have us dancing to?
Indeed.
"...our big concept was fatally flawed."
It still is, if you have a life.
Here's a better idea. Learn how to play a real freakin' guitar.
So every video game that allows you to do anything you are capable of doing in real life (well, without being given a life sentence) is fatally flawed?
Seriously guys, who in their right mind honestly believes that there is any correlation between Rock Band/Guitar Hero and learning to play a guitar. The two have absolutely nothing in common. People play guitar hero or rock band for a bit of fun, they have no interest in learning how to play a guitar.
Just like most people would rather play Halo than to build a FPS.
Actually that is a lot closer a correlation:
Guitar Hero/Rock Band = Playing Halo
Learning to play a guitar = Writing and designing a game.
So get off of your bloody high horses and realise that this is all about ENTERTAINMENT, not CREATIVITY.
I am not stubborn. I am right!
over the years, this topic has been beaten to death.
NEWSFLASH: not everyone wants to play a guitar
i've been playing bass and guitar for about 10 years, and i enjoy guitar hero. i have had some auditions where we had no common ground for jamming, so one of us left the audition frustrated. one reason guitar hero is popular is because not everyone has to know how to play or even know the song (thought it does help) to have a good time with your friends (or strangers!).
I haven't tried it
so... what you're telling us is that you aren't a competent judge of the situation? try it before you declare it to be worthless.
face it, not everyone likes the same things or has the same aspirations.
They have of course gone the other way. Kids now think controllers make music.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Learn how to play a real freakin' guitar.
Don't really want to. Does that mean I'm not allowed have have innocent fun without people telling me I'm not allowed to? I can go get drunk and have a bunch of idiotic fun with my friends right now, without having to spend years learning guitar, and decades to actually be good at it. For what? Growing up (too late) to be a rock star, like the people I acknowledge will always be much better than me at it. I'm never going to be Adam Jones, or Pete Townsend, or Les Paul, or Tom Morello, or Slash, or... You get the point.
Can I play racing games without being an Formula One racer? Can I play an FPS without joining the Marines? A sports game with out being professional Athlete?
Does this also apply to books and movies? I watched the X-Men movies, and I'm not a mutant. I read the Bible, and I'm not God (or even Christian).
Relax, people do what they want. Its harmless fun. And on the upshot, a certain percentage of the people who play might actually get interested in music, and learn to play something real. Stop caring about what people do, you'll live a longer happier life.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
As stated above: Relax, and stop caring what people do for fun. You'll live a longer, happier life that way.
I love music, but I'm not a musician (unless you count playing the jews harp), don't have the desire to be one either. I support my local musicians, half of my friends are musicians (who play, surprise, Rock Band), I buy them beer, and hype their shows. I don't get my music for free, I pay real money for it. I every time a band is in town that I like I go to it, and spend money on t-shirts to show my support. But I also think Rock Band is a very fun game to play, especially with a couple of beers in my gut. Oddly enough, I also play it with a lot of my friends who are musicians, some of whom are (locally) successful ones. Odd, some of them have seemed to realize that music isn't "serious business". Some of them, I might add, are pretty serious, and classically trained.
And, as I also stated earlier, these games might get a certain percentage of their players actually interested in music. Interested enough to actually pick up an instrument and make their neighbors life hell for awhile. They force people to actually LISTEN to the music that they enjoy, deeply. Not all of them, obviously, but some. This is actually somewhat noble, being that most of the schools I know of have dropped any music programs that they used to have. This, to me as a non-musician, is tragic, as the selection of music would go up if people actually appreciate it.
Another fun thing, the drums in Rock Band is actually decent training for real drums, as is the bass guitar, since they teach actual rhythm and beat, which is pretty difficult to actually grasp for most of us.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Here's an even better one. Get a real life, and drive a racing car instead.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Good article. Interesting read. But fuck the premise. Frequency was awesome!
"long load that eventually led them to the creation of Guitar Hero and Rock Band."
Heh. At first I thought that said "bong load."
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
Real guitars are for old people.
He's wasting his time then. He could be practising.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I just developed an algorithmic composition applet, very similar to the first application by Harmonix. The users can control the music dynamically with the mouse. I thought it was unique idea, but these guys did it already 15 years ago!
I think their earlier ideas were much cooler than the Rock Band franchise, too bad they couldn't sell them.
We're having some trouble hearing you guys down here. Can you descend to our level temporarily so we can receive the wisdom we so desperately need? It's probably our fault we can't hear. God, we're pathetic.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
You're missing the point of the game. Rock Band isn't about playing a guitar, it's about - doh - being in a rock band, just like Gran Turismo isn't about driving a car, but about racing.
Rock Band isn't a replacement for a real guitar, just like Gran Turismo isn't a replacement for the car in your garage.
I'm looking forward to your "People can't be bothered to drive real cars anymore" rant about racing games, though. It's always fun to read posts from people who have nothing better to do with their lives than complain about what other people do with their lives.
most people ARE creative. They just don't find overly creative past times as a way to zone out. giving people a way to zone out and a sense of achievement at the same time is a huge profit center.
Guitar Hero copied DDR and Rock Band copied Guitar Hero.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I still enjoy their game before Guitar Hero, Amplitude much more than subsequent games.
I know how, thanks. Been playing for over 11 years.
Rock Band, etc. are still fun. It's not really trying to be like actually playing guitar, any more than playing Madden is anything like actual football. It's a game.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
The genius of what they did is that they made DDR for fat or lazy people.
Unsurprisingly, a DDR-like game where you're required to get much less exercise is much more popular in America.
(Yes, there are other reasons for that, too -- but that one's the funniest.)
Another fun thing, the drums in Rock Band is actually decent training for real drums
I have to disagree here. I've been playing the drums for 15 years and I just can't play drums in Rock Band. Drums have a very improvised and intuitive nature in the way that you don't necessarily have to play the thing exactly the same way every time, especially in rock and jazz music. The kick in Rock Band is pretty much randomly placed which makes it very difficult for a real drummer to follow the visual cues of the song. Basically, I have a tendencie to try and play the real thing when the game does everything but...
The guitars on the other hand, I find are very fun to play, even if I do play some real guitar in life. Of course it is nothing like the real thing but the picking patterns make it "feel" more realistic and "musical".
I thought the most interesting part of the article was the bit about the Beatles and the way they're accidentally debunking Beatles urban legends in their trivia. I'm not much into gaming but I almost want to get it just for that. :)
My friend was into importing games especially rhythm games. He had Guitar Freaks early on. When Guitar Hero came out, I had just assumed they finally released it in the US with new songs. Jamming to J-pop just isn't as fun.
I am a little surprised that the "band" idea was able to take off as well as it has though.
I think it is ridiculous to expect people to necessarily learn to play guitar just to play a game. However, I can never really enjoy GH/RB because I can play guitar too well and having to learn another way to "play" the songs seems really redundant. That is to say I wish they had the game for real guitar - much like Singstar or Lips for vocals. OTOH I love driving and racing simulation games - so - horses for courses.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. It's a little intellectually dishonest to respond to these article questions and not mention konami's guitarfreaks and drummania.
I know it's kind of off topic, but you'd be surprised at how good you can get at playing popular music with little effort. You can even get to compose good popular music with minimum training.
Also I like the way you put Adam Jones and Tom Morello in your list. Know what they have in common? They compose GREAT music that's relatively simple to play - 70% of what i play as a beginer come from one or the other, actually.
So if you are into psycho-prog-rock-metal, you could very well be the next Adam Jones.
I think it is equally harmless to suggest people to try the real thing. If they like music they could be missing something under the false assumptions that it's 'too late' or 'too difficult'. Like I did during so many year (although me finally picking the guitar is not related with Guitar Hero games).
If you're playing on Expert, the drum track is exactly what the drum track in the song is. On the lower levels it can be confusing because you're not playing every hit.
Someone did think of it first: Konami. Notice that they mention Beatmania and DDR as inspirations, but curiously omit Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania...
Well, bear in mind, they were talking about a point in their company's history prior to Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Prior to any of their games. They saw a few specific rhythm games and realized that this might be a way to reach their goal... What really inspired them, I think, wasn't the specific gameplay of these titles, but rather the fact that people were enjoying these music-oriented games. This was leading into the creation of Frequency.
Their thinking at this point, I think, was that they wanted that sort of a rhythm game but they didn't want the barrier to (player) entry associated with a custom peripheral. Hence, Frequency and Amplitude just use the PS2 controller. But what they found later is that without the "prop" a lot of people had trouble relating to the game.
I don't think there's any question that Guitar Hero was inspired by Guitar Freaks. This was very much in line with what Red Octane was doing back then: a lot of their business was selling dance pads for use with DDR, etc. - but Red Octane also had acted as publisher for In the Groove. I think Guitar Hero, for Red Octane, was a similar idea: they wanted to have a stake in both peripherals and software for a Guitar Freaks-style game.
Regardless of whether the concept was taken from Guitar Freaks, I think the fact that they've been very successful says a lot about the quality of their execution of the concept.
Bow-ties are cool.
He's wasting his time then. He could be practising.
Yeah, in the old days the tour bus would bring along a slave-driver - any band members who did anything apart from practicing for their next show while in the tour bus would be flogged.
Nowadays they tend not to bring the slave-driver, and band members indulge in other activities and "relaxation" between the shows. They've gone soft!
Bow-ties are cool.
When people go out for Karaoke no one calls it a waste of time and that they should get REAL singing lessons.
But most people who do Karaoke do need singing lessons.
Well, no. Even if they're not good at singing, they don't need singing lessons... And depending on what kind of venue this karaoke is happening in, poor singing can be entirely acceptable, because it's about letting the singer have a good time.
Bow-ties are cool.
No: get a life and fight in World War II. Real weapons.
Excepting for the fact that you don't have a hi-hat pedal and, especially if you're playing Rush songs, you don't have a thousand different pieces of kit.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
a. two super smart kids got into MIT
b. how much does it cost to goto MIT?
c. both have music training in specialized instruments
d. how much does it cost to get lessons on those things?
c. they spend a couple of years at MIT honing on business opportunities
d. (and partying--hey it's college)
e. with there MIT connection, both get hundred of thousands raised to start a business
f. if anyone's been in a startup: the first 2 yrs is hard work at communication & team building, the 2nd 2 yrs is partying with the marketeers, and yrs 4&5 is the real hard technical work to get a good product out the door.
g. almost "closing shop" they build Guitar Hero, a hit.
h. Sell assets to MTV for big bucks.
Design failures my a**. horrendous failure --what a JOKE. A long road? Ha! What 4 yrs?
Product development is not a mental exercise, it's engineering, it's never going to be the same as design on paper... While I'm sitting here with a crappy 8-6 desk job, with a MS EE, no career path, and office politics, and when I struggled paying for my no name state university degree and no business network to get new ideas invested. And living in a small place with ok salary...
Folks, get real. Harmonix had everything going for them. This failure story, though a good read, is hype to make them the 'good guys'. Brillant marketing strategy: now that you guys are hooked, please got buy The Beatles: Rock Band...
It's Friday and it's a rant...
For anyone interested IEEE Spectrum also has a story about Harmonix and the new Beatles game they are making: http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/gaming/the-making-of-the-beatles-rock-band
My Blog - http://www.jasonernst.com/ Academic Website - http://www.uoguelph.ca/~jernst
"The Design Failures That Led To Rock Band": everything they tried before they said "fuck it" and made a Guitar Hero ripoff with more instruments?
Property is theft.
Yeah, and what's up with that Bic company and their ballpoint pens? Seriously, they slap a new coat of paint on the quill pen and inkwell and they act like it's something new. It's really sad that this watered down product is selling like crazy.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
should I fucking give two flying fucks?
was to rip off GuitarFreaks? I'm not sure how complicated that really was. TFA makes it sound like these guys imagined shit out of thin air when it had been done before.
Just wait for it... eventually there will be a Rock Band Terry Bozzio set. Which would be rather funny, but I have a feeling that it would lead to the loss of arms for many people. Same for Rock Band: Tool, and Rock Band Meshuggah.
I am a fan of Rock Band, and have to admit that playing bands like Rush in it make me somewhat sad.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I think it is equally harmless to suggest people to try the real thing. If they like music they could be missing something under the false assumptions that it's 'too late' or 'too difficult'. Like I did during so many year (although me finally picking the guitar is not related with Guitar Hero games).
This is true, but a lot of people throw out the "waste of time, learn to play a damn guitar" as a holier than thou statement, and generally stated with complete ignorance of the irony contained in it (i.e. they play racing game, or RTS and FPS instead of doing it in real life).
I'd rather not pick up a guitar because I tried it for awhile, and found it not to my tastes. Guitar Hero/Rock Band is still fun, and as an added benefit I get to keep my finger tips.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Wow... the picture of Terry Bozzio's setup on that Wikipedia page is ridiculous!
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
Seriously, you should expect these things to happen when you sell out to EA. Sucks to be you.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
Wait a minute - who said anything about Rock Band or Guitar Hero being about learning to play the guitar? It's not mentioned at all in either the slashdot summary, or the article itself.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Look into Guitar Rising and LittleBigStar.
I was once a horse.
I want to be able to plug in MIDI instruments to my console. That way I could use MIDI drums, guitar and keyboards instead of the non-player instruments.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for