Harmonix Co-Founder Talks Rhythm Games

Thanks to GameCritics for its interview with Alex Rigopulos of Harmonix Music Systems, discussing how the company "is breaking new ground by putting a uniquely North American spin on the music game genre", including titles such as Frequency, Amplitude, and Karaoke Revolution. He explains of their games: "People didn't want to learn a bunch of new skills, so we decided to use [the gaming skills] that people already had and repurpose them onto the task of making music", but reveals there may not be a sequel to Amplitude, lamenting that "...in order for that to happen, we need to sell, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of units of each title, which is not a sales level we achieved with those games."

Maybe part of the problem is

[xenocide2]

Sony's inability to market to a wider audience than the 14-24 year old male. Music games is an appreciably broad market. The real trick to DDR's popularity is that the console version is only an accessory to the public and social arcade version. An expensive accessory, but well worth it for those who like it. Not everybody wants to sit down and think as a leisure activity, and DDR helps break the mold on this. Its like the powerpad with style.

I think Alex Rigopulos has a fairly good grip on why his idea didn't sell to the US, but there's some other reasons as well. He wanted to take a known type of game and add a musical component into it. I suppose the idea was to cast the idea broad and far. Instead they lost most of the fringe who have a playstation, but really aren't interested in playing the typical long and involved games, and they lost the avid gamers who saw music games as some bastardization of their culture.

Starting on the right foot with Frequency is one point, where he mentioned using more popular music. Another point is that you can't just advertise in Sony's magazine and the unofficials if you're aiming for a broader market. Finally, eye candy just won't work with games like this. It needs to be drastically apparent where the "game" is. In DDR, its the arrows. The background is barely noticable if you're playing the game, you're focused on the part that's clearly game. To me, the newer street fighters and Megaman X games suffered from a similar problem. They're both 2d games for the most part, but its difficult to distinguish background from the plane of interaction. Maybe it was because

The good news as I see it is that music is gradually becoming a tool in game designer's chests. Goldeneye used music to indicate the altertness levels of guards, from red alarm to another boring day in Severnaya. Ocarina of Time had a strange focus on music but it wasn't terribly musical. You played a sequence of notes and cast a magic spell. Wind Waker included some more elements, both obvious and subtle. They kept the music magic item, but replaced it with a baton. The improvement was that the music was now a timed sequence of notes, which is far closer to what music is. Less obvious however, is the musical presentation inside the game. When you're in combat, the music fades back to a soft drum beat combined with notes that arise from the blows. Attack swiftly without losing a beat and you'll piece together the meledy, a rising scale. Some of the enemies also bring music into the game, like the imps with pitch forked. With about three in the area, they sound like a jack-in-the box when combined on you. This kind of musical integration may be where games as a whole are headed, and you can't help but rejoice at the improvement.

Bleh, no sequel.

[Jerrith]

Amplitude is a great game. I spent a ton of hours getting good at that game last year. Unlocking the last song (only available on the highest difficulty level) was tough, and gave a real sense of accomplishment when you finally did it.

The music they picked for it was probably still the problem. I showed it to a bunch of my gamer friends, and while there were a few of the more mainstream names they liked, their main complaint was they didn't like a majority of the music.

It's a shame there's no sequel in the works. Hopefully whatever Sony has them doing under NDA will be great. :)

Re:Bleh, no sequel.

[Phil Wilkins]

This is the fundamental problem with music games. If you don't like the music, you're not going to enjoy the game. I tried playing Amplitude a few times, and a few tracks were fun, but the rest were like, "I want to finish this, so I don't have to listen to this shit again".

Added on to that, both Frequency and Amplitude are very abstract games, and that seems to confuse the mainstream. At least in DDR it's fairly obvious what you're supposed to be doing.

Re:Bleh, no sequel.

[silentbobdp]

They're currently working on more Karaoke Revolution - I know, I just preordered it ^^

Re:Bleh, no sequel.

[Jerrith]

More Karaoke Revolution was obvious. I mean, there's a menu option for expansion discs in the current game. :) It's whatever else they're doing I hope to find out about soon. :)

I am curious what you've heard about it though. All I've seen is that you can preorder it from EBGames, though they have virtually no info on it, other than that it will exist.

Why the hell not?

[silentbobdp]

"...but reveals there may not be a sequel to Amplitude, lamenting that "...in order for that to happen, we need to sell, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of units of each title, which is not a sales level we achieved with those games."

So fucking what? Only the first two home DDRs and the first home Beatmania (both for PS1) were million sellers.

Fans of Beatmania IIDX recently had to go through an excruciating process to get a new home version released (this will be "7th Style" - 3rd through 6th Styles