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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."
If I have to listen to any more GH1 and GH2 I'll climb a clock tower.
I'm assuming you are referring to the music for GH1/2, not the game itself. I can't speak for Guitar Hero, but for Rock Band the game never seems to get old because of the new music I am able to download. Sure, if you have to keep playing or hearing the same songs over and over it can get old, but every Friday I check on Wikipedia to see what songs are being released the following Tuesday. I'm not a big fan of purchasing music (I will admit it - I downloaded most of my MP3 collection) but I think that the Rock Band songs are well worth the money. The amount of entertainment they can provide, when I have a bunch of friends over on a Friday night playing RB until the early morning hours, is well worth it to me. I also pre-ordered Beatles RB and will hopefully be playing it on September 10th and most likely well into the morning hours on the 11th.