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UKMusic.com Ltd
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May
16
2008
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Interview With Rob Kay Lead Designer on Rock Band |
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Friday, 16 May 2008 |
 A few years ago the idea that millions of people would have fun strapping on little plastic guitars and hitting coloured buttons to their favourite bands’ music would have seemed ridiculous, but since the release of the original Guitar Hero in 2005, music rhythm games have gone from a novelty idea to mainstream multi-billion dollar game franchises. Now the original developer behind Guitar Hero, Harmonix, is set to take the UK by storm with Rock Band, in which players can use a guitar, microphone and even drums to create their own band and play along to a huge catalogue of music. With Rock Band set be released here in the UK on the 23rd of May, UKMusic.com got the chance to talk to Rob Kay, Lead Designer about Harmonix, the rise of the music game genre and to get some details on Rock Band and the music in the game.
UKMusic.com: Tell us a little about your background. How did you end up working on Rock Band?
Rob Kay: I’m from Manchester originally, with an arts and computer animation background. After I went to Art College I did computer animation as a degree. I got into video games doing animation on Looney Tunes characters- things like Sylvester the Cat. I was also a drummer as a kid and have always loved music, so when I got the opportunity to move to Harmonix four years ago I kind of pounced on it. They made amazing music games even before Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Karaoke Revolution.
UKM: You were a drummer, do you still play in a band?
RK: I recently set up a band with a few of the guys at work and we play every week-we’re absolutely terrible, but we enjoy it!
UKM: Looking back at Guitar Hero, did you ever expect the rhythm game concept to be such a hit?
RK: No, we didn’t and when we were making Guitar Hero we were making that game for ourselves really. It was something that we were just kind of pouring our passion into. Everybody at Harmonix has got a real passion for music- and rock and roll in particular-so it was a labour of love. We thought we’d sell 50 thousand units or something like that, which is pretty low sales for a game- and we’re just really happy that it did so well and set the path for us to do Rock Band.
UKM: Rock Band does seem a very rational step up from Guitar Hero. When you conceived Guitar Hero, did you have the vision for something like Rock Band in the back of your minds?
RK: Yeah, Guitar Hero was just one of the steps on this journey that Harmonix has taken. We were set up 12 years ago with the mission of bringing the joy of making music to everybody. At first that wasn’t even in video games- there were Disney World style installations of interactive music that we did, where you’d wave your hands around and make funky sounds. So we started making games as a way to deliver that fun. We did this karaoke game (Karaoke Revolution) and that was the first time we had success making something that would appeal to everybody, not just gamers. Guitar Hero was a single instrument thing, but we knew the next step would be to make it into a full band experience-into a social music making experience. Everybody told us we should do it, so we just kind of bit the bullet and went for it. So we spent 2 years working really hard on Rock Band.
UKM: I’m sure you’ve been asked this a few times before, but why did it take so long to release Rock Band here?
RK: I have been asked this several thousand times before, because I have family and friends here in the UK who kept asking! We wanted to line everything up and make sure we did the release properly, so the new music had a good UK-centric track listing. We wanted to make sure that the hardware that we’ve got, drum kits, guitars and mics were ready to go. So it was really just a case of making sure we released it right.
UKM: What influenced the choice of tracks that you had going into Rock Band?
RK: What we tried to do on the game disc was make sure that we had a good breadth of songs that cover something like the last 50 years of Rock and Roll. We want to make sure we cover different decades and all the sub-genres as well. We want to be open and inclusive and give people the choice of music they want to play, obviously within the remit of the Rock n Roll genre- that’s what the games all about. In terms of the process, our Audio Director has a big list of songs that we want to go after. There’s a whole music licence operation going on that gets the songs we really love and want into the game.
UKM: You must have been pretty happy when you got access to all the MTV music content?
RK: Yeah, they’ve been really helpful with the licensing side of things; obviously they have a lot of experience with that.
UKM: Fans are always talking about original tracks vs. covers in these games. Is it easier to put a track together in Rock Band using covers or working from originals?
RK: Most of that is on the music licensing side and now we’re pretty devoted to doing masters as much as possible going forward. We kind of just had to do covers before! We had this company on the West Coast doing covers for us who did a tremendous job. Once a track hits Harmonix on our end, whether we get a cover or master tracks doesn’t matter, as long as we can have the multi-track masters we can make the game play work well with it.
UKM: What’s been the reaction in the music industry to what you guys are doing?
RK: Oh, completely psyched! All of the major music labels are behind Rock Band and we have phone calls from bands who want to be in the game all the time. Which is wonderful, because only 2 years ago that wasn’t the case - we were pretty much chasing down the bands we wanted in the game. Now it’s kind of flipped around, which is wonderful. Really everyone who is playing the games, the music industry and ourselves love this opportunity to give people a new way to experience music. Not just listening to it or watching it on MTV, but being able to interact with it, to feel it and really get to know the music you love. Maybe you’re just never really listened to bass part of a song before, but then you play it in Rock Band and kind of get to understand it on a deeper level! Everybody seems to have pretty much bought into it, which is great.
UKM: In terms of songs, were any redone by their original bands for Rock Band?
RK: No, we haven’t done that. We like to stick with the originals -sometimes we get live versions because they play a little better on stage, but we tend to use the originals.
UKM: Rock Band has a particularly America flavour, but did you try to add more stuff from this side of the pond before bringing it out here?
RK: Yeah, we wanted to make sure we got a good British selection in there for the UK release. We already had stuff like Radiohead, the Stones and Bowie, so by adding some more modern stuff like Muse, Oasis and Blur, we felt we’d kind of round it out a little more.
UKM: With regards to downloadable songs, will we be getting everything that’s currently out in the States?
RK: Yeah, that’s right, the game is released on Friday May 23rd and then on the following Tuesday, which is the day we generally do our weekly releases of new Rock Band songs, the whole library will become available to the UK. That’s around 70 songs and we’ll release new songs every week.
UKM: When can we look forward to full albums?
RK: That’s absolutely on the agenda, we’re hoping to have them in the game as soon as possible.
UKM: The Rock Band game disc is being sold separately from instruments over here, why is that?
RK: We wanted to give people the choice-you can buy the game for the regular price of £50, and then if you want, and you have a USB microphone, you can do the whole singing side of the game. If you want then to spring for the guitar, you can buy the guitar controller, which is wireless, at £60 or the drums at £70. But if you want the whole Rock Band experience you can buy the instrument bundle for £130 – which comes with the lot.
UKM: Talking about the future, how do you imagine extending the Rock Band idea?
RK: The thing that we’re really keen to do is this; we’ve noticed that when people start playing Rock Band, they form a strong sense of ownership over their band and their alter ego musicians. We wanted to create a world that those ‘fake’ bands could live in. So we’re spending a lot of effort working on a website with new features that will help create that place, where you can go and do things with your band and the way you’ve custom crafted your band .We eventually want to turn it into not just a music platform, but a world wide community of ‘fake bands’, who are chatting to each other about their musical tastes and embracing the social aspects of music.
UKM: Is that just on the web or also via Xbox live?
RK: Well, both really, so we’re doing stuff in Xbox live as well, in terms of people being able to see player scores for their band. When you play a song in Rock Band, you get your high score uploaded onto the score board for the world, so you can see how you’re doing compared to the rest of the world and your friends. We’re trying to push the idea that this isn’t just the experience of you sat in front of your TV playing; this is a social experience with your friends and the world.
UKM: The whole concept of Rock Band is based on timing, with regards to online play, what have you done to optimise online play, so that if I’m playing somebody in the States’, we both have the ability to hit the same ‘marks’, as it were?
RK: That’s a really good question and you’re absolutely right, there’s this technical challenge to get a game that’s got really a tight timing requirement to work online.
Fortunately in one of the games we made a few years back, ‘Frequency’, we had the same problem, and we got online working in that game, which was also a music game. So we had experience in that area and our engineers at Harmonix developed this really smart solution to keep everything in sync, and it never misses a beat! It works fantastically well, so you can do the whole thing of having your drummer in New York, your guitarist in London, your bassist in Paris and your singer in Edinburgh and everything works seamlessly.
UKM: As of late, over here at least, video games have had a bit of a rough time in the media, but at the same time we’ve seen a rise in mainstream family friendly gaming, things like Rock Band and the Wii are a good example, do you think that’s a direction gaming is moving in general?
RK: I think so. I think games are becoming a part of popular culture and they’re able to be more diverse. Traditionally a lot of games have been male power fantasies, about shooting things or driving fast, now that’s spreading out as games become more popular, we’re able to create experiences that appeal to a wider group of people. Certainly for Harmonix, we’re really keen to make games that bring out the best in people and the joy of making music. That’s pretty different to other games, and very much about accessibility of games. When you talk about the Wii, and our games as well, we’re changing the interface from a joystick or a controller with lots of buttons on it and making it more inviting for people. A guitar or a microphone is something that people can just pick up, because we want to be inclusive.
UKM: We quite like the free-form sections in Rock Band, where you get to play as you like in a song, any chance of getting more chances to be creative like that in the future?
RK: Absolutely, that’s big on our agenda; it’s something we’d like to be able to introduce more, that kind of creativity and musical choice. We’ve already got sections for the drummer where you can play whatever you like, for the guitarist you can change the pitch with the whammy bar and the vocalist can kind of ‘ad-lib’ to the crowd in certain sections of songs, and it’s something we reward them for. That’s something we intend to magnify going forward-it’s really challenging and difficult to make something in a game that’s really creative but also sounds good! And players need the chance to learn to be creative rather than just throwing them in at the deep end – those are the kind of challenges we’re researching at the moment.
UKM: What’s your favourite instrument and track in Rock Band?
RK: I would say my favourite track on drums is, ‘Won’t get fooled again’ by The Who. Playing as Keith Moon with his crazy improvised part in that song is amazing. I love singing Radiohead’s, ‘Creep’, it gives me goose pimples!
UKM: You mentioned earlier that a lot of people are coming to you to be a part of Rock Band, is there any one track that you’d personally like to see in the game?
RK: I recently had that wish met as I was pushing to have Oasis ‘Rock n’ Roll Star’ in the game for the longest time, so when we got that in the UK version I was pretty happy. Our Audio Director gets a million and one requests and he just tries to manage the chaos!
UKM: Are you getting to meet any of your favourite bands and Rock heroes through your work on Rock Band now?
RK: I spend a lot more time in the studio than outside, so I don’t get to meet as many of the Rock Stars as I’d like! Our PR and Community guys get to do all that- they’re the lucky ones!
UKM: Thanks very much for talking to us Rob.
Interview by : Sam Bandah
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