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Rock Band Q&A Feature
Gwynne Dixon
09/04/2008
TVG travels down the Highway to Hell, and all sorts of other rock related places, as we step-up to talk with Harmonix about Rock Band...
Having been released in America last November, it has been a long wait for us Europeans to get any news of if, when, and in what capacity Rock Band will cross the pond. This was revealed just yesterday when EA announced that the game was coming to Xbox 360 this May 23rd. We were at a simultaneously held event in London where we spoke with Rock Band's Design Director, Rob Kay, about the game.
TVG: With Rock Band coming out in the US last November, why has it taken so long for the game to come to Europe? There have been a few rumblings that this may have been due to difficulties producing enough peripherals. Is this the case, or were there other factors?
The first thing to say is that we want to release the game in Europe as soon as possible. Being from the UK myself, all my friends and family are like, 'When are you releasing the game?!' so we're sorry it's taken so long to get it over here.
There are a bunch of boring operational things that are the reasons, but basically we just wanted to make sure we get the release right; that we put UK tracks on there; that we have enough choice for people to make sure that they can get the right version that they want to play; that we've got it in all of the stores; that we do a really solid release of it as opposed to rushing it and not doing a good job. We think that it's worth the wait and we thank people for waiting this long, but hopefully they'll really enjoy playing it.
TVG: Has it performed as you would've liked in America so far? Did it sell the amount of copies you'd expected and do you think it has appealed to the people you were aiming for?
We're completely blown away with the success of the game - it's done really well - and our challenge is actually trying to meet the demand and make sure that we can make enough units to get out there, as well as getting everything ironed out. It's amazing - the reception has been fantastic.
TVG: I know that Harmonix and MTV Games have been very ambitious with the downloadable content in the states. How has that worked exactly?
The way it works is that Rock Band releases in the UK on the 23rd of May, which is a Friday. On the following Tuesday - which is when Microsoft releases their weekly new round of DLC for Rock Band - that's when everything is going to go live. So, you'll buy the game with the 66 songs on the disc, and the following week you'll get the entire music library that's currently available in the US - it's going to be a worldwide library of music basically.
The way you access that is the Music Store option on the game. We've put a lot of time into designing a slick interface for the Music Store where you go in and there's tons and tons of tracks. You'll see album art and there's an audio preview that you can listen to as well so you can go, 'I haven't heard this one before but I'll have a listen to it.' There are also difficulty ratings for each of the instruments and for playing as a band, so you can add more songs in that way.
We really wanted to make sure that even if you never go online, then you've got an awesome, full Rock Band experience. You can go into Band World Tour and you've got 66 songs. We've made a special effort to get new UK songs on there as well, so we've got Oasis - Rock & Roll Star; Blur - Beetlebum; Muse - Hysteria; Tokio Hotel - Monsoon. These are new tracks that are premiering in the UK. So, the UK will get them first and then we'll make them available on download straight away to the rest of the world as well. But they are there to add more strong British music to the line-up, because we've already got Radiohead, The Police, The Stones, and The Who in there as well.
TVG: How many extra songs will be available in the store?
I think we've got something in the order of just over 70 songs at the moment in the store, but we're releasing new songs every week and the flow of new songs is only going to increase over time. We take the idea of Rock Band as a music platform very seriously and all of the major music labels have bought into that notion. They're just knocking down our door to give us new songs to put into the game, so we're trying to do everything we can to make that a reality and I think it has really come together.
TVG: Do you download them in packs or individual songs?
You can do both. We really wanted to make sure that people had a choice, so you can go in there and buy any song as an individual song, or you can buy them in packs of three or six and you get a little bit of a discount if you do that.
TVG: So generally a bit more versatile than the Guitar Hero III offerings then?
We just want to make sure that people aren't feeling bad about paying for songs. You can buy the things that you like and explore to your heart's content. Having the audio previews in there is huge. If you're not sure about a track then just listen to it, see if you like it and buy it if you do.
TVG: It sounds a bit like iTunes for Rock Band. Obviously it's not related to Apple at all, but it does sound like it has that kind of feel to it...
Right, you know, slowly there's this cross-fade between bricks and mortar distribution of stuff, and the online distribution of it. We're pretty bought into making the online side of it really sing.
TVG: Presumably you'll want to start thinking about Rock Band 2 at some point. As Guitar Hero has become an annual release for Activision, can we expect a similar strategy for Rock Band?
After finishing Rock Band and getting everything out there, we're surveying that at the moment and deciding what route we want to take with it. What we wouldn't like to do is break that notion of a music platform. Everything we're doing, whether it's online stuff or new stuff down the line on discs, it's stuff that's going to keep that Rock Band music platform a reality. Of course we're looking at future stuff, which we're not here to talk about today, but obviously we're looking at that.
TVG: Obviously you've got the whole setup there with the £130 instrument bundle (drums, microphone, and guitar) and £50 game, which is quite a significant investment. However, I suppose that could be seen as a long-term investment with content being provided online for a much longer period.
Is that your plan going forward? With 70 tracks right now, would you like to expand that to hundreds in the future for Rock Band owners to download at their will?
Yep. Straight up - yes. Nobody should feel that if they buy Rock Band then the fun is going to be over in six months time - the fun is going to go on and on. The notion of Rock Band as a music platform also applies to the hardware. Once you've got this amazing drum kit in your living room with the guitar and stuff, we want you to have real opportunities to continue using and experiencing that for years to come, not just the next few months.
TVG: In America it took quite a while for the Rock Band instruments to be made available individually after the game and bundle's November release. What will the various European SKUs offer?
We've set it up differently because we want to give people choice. It's actually the way we wanted to do it in the states but now we can take our time and get it right here first. We make the guitar available separately (which is wireless) and the drums available separately.
You can choose, so you can be like, 'Okay, 50 quid for the game, and I want to get all the instruments, so I'll spend another £130 on all the instruments.' If you want you can just go and buy the game and use any USB microphone to sing in the game. You can even use the Xbox 360 headset to sing in the game. So, there's a game right there if you go out and buy the £50 box copy, and then you can go out and buy the guitar, or just go crazy and buy the whole thing. It's up to you, however you want to do it.
TVG: This is obviously a much better situation than in the US, where you couldn't buy a guitar individually (with the aim of playing guitar and bass simultaneously in the full four-piece band experience) until quite recently...
There was a little bit of that, which was part of the teething problems we had in getting the hardware out there in the US, and that's also part of the reason why we wanted to get all of our 'ducks in a row' - which is an expression I learnt recently - and get everything lined up so that when we release in the UK, there are none of those problems. You want to go and buy another guitar? There's a wireless guitar available - you can just go and grab that. If you want to play drums head-to-head, which you can do as well, then you can just go out to buy another drum kit, and playing drums head-to-head is amazing - I totally recommend that.
TVG: What sort of options will the various modes offer?
You can play Rock Band in a bunch of different ways and the most awesome way to play it is the Band World Tour. In the Band World Tour you get your mates or family together (or whoever) and figure out who's playing what instruments. Then you need a band name, so you go in and chose a band name. If you want you can chose a logo or customise your characters. We have a fully-fledged character creator that allows you to do everything from adding tattoos and patches, to designing your own logos for all the clothes, or choosing the character's hairstyle and makeup. It's everything that you'd want in a Rock 'n Roll character creator.
Once you've got your band you choose a hometown. So, let's say you choose London. When you start out you can only play in London. As you open things up there are better transport options, which allows you to travel to different places in your van, on a tour bus, and eventually in a plane that allows you to travel across the world. We really wanted to create a mode where you can live the life of a touring rock band.
So, that's like our premiere mode. We also wanted to put in a traditional play-through-a-song-list mode as well for solo players, because that's really good for helping people to learn how to play an instrument. So, if you want to learn how to play drums, a great way to do that is to go into the solo mode, which starts off with the easiest songs and, as you beat them, it unlocks harder songs that step you through the curve of learning how to play drums. The mode is available for all of the different instruments.
We've also got Practice mode, so you can go in there and practice every instrument and song without the fear of failure in front of a crowd. Maybe it's the solo or intro that you're having trouble with, so you can go and practice that. Again, that's on all of the instruments. Additionally, there are tutorials for all of the different instruments and there's the Music Store. Well, this isn't really a game mode, but it's one of the things on the main menu that you can go and do.
Head-to-Head modes are another feature, which aren't really at the core of what Rock Band's all about, because it's about being in a band, but they're awesome. You can go Head-to-Head with two guitars or two drum kits, and playing with drums is amazing. It's the most physical game experience you'll ever have where there are two of them side-by-side, playing in parallel, and you're competing against each other.
TVG: Are there any power-ups in that, or is it just points based?
The only power-up in Rock Band is that you earn energy and you can go into overdrive. We try to be careful about how game 'designy' we get - how 'gamey' we get with game mechanics - because our job is to connect players to the music. The whole idea of having this one cool power-up thing is to make you feel like you're a showman, which is why we attach it to things like the drum fills, tilting the guitar up in the air, or screaming to the crowds.
TVG: What online offerings are there other than the Music Store?
You can play as a band online and the best thing about it, with the UK release, is that you could be a drummer in London and, if you search for a game online, you might be linked up with a guitarist in New York, a bassist in Boston, and a vocalist in Paris. Also, if you think you're a really good guitar player, you can get out there and test your skills against some of the best guitarists in the world.
TVG: Is that with an online Head-to-Head mode then?
Head-to-Head, yeah. And the same thing on drums and vocals.
TVG would like to thank Rob Kay, the Design Director on Rock Band, for taking the time to talk with us about Harmonix's upcoming rhythm game, which will be coming to Xbox 360 this May 23rd.
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Date Added:Thu 1st May 2008 17:18
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Date Added:Fri 11th Apr 2008 21:47
I know this cos I bought Rockband from the States... total cost including shipping and VAT (from customs) and extra postage was just under £130.... cheaper than all this ... [ Read full comment... ]
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