It's hard to ignore the Guitar Hero phenomenon. Even non-gamers see the rock game popping up in movies, on YouTube and in any gadget store. It's a simple enough premise that anyone can enjoy it. Just jam along with the notes on the screen to make the pretty music play. Wiggle the whammy bar on long, sustained notes to make funky sounds and tilt the guitar up to activate Star Power and double your points.
I got Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock because I got a PS3 to play Blu Rays. I've gone from Easy mode to Expert in only a few months. Yeah, it's scary. Problem is, I need more songs. GHIII has limited extra content for download, and the biggest bummer is earlier Guitar Hero games for PS2 are not compatible with PS3. So I'm waiting for Guitar Hero: World Tour just to have more songs. It's going to have a lot more than just new music though.
World Tour features a full rock band with a drum kit, microphone for vocals, and two guitar parts, lead and bass, with additional buttons and a touch sensitive pad near the bottom of the guitar neck. There is also a Music Studio so real obsessives can make their own tracks.
SuicideGirls joined Activision for an early preview of the latest Guitar Hero at the House of Blues in Hollywood. Project lead Brian Bright, lead designer Alan Flores and their team demoed the new game. In between jam sessions, Brian and Alan answered questions about this falls hottest request.
Question: Obviously games like Rock Band upped the ante, but what were Activision's thoughts to adding new instruments to a game that's named Guitar Hero?
Brian Bright: Activision's been working on a drum game. Some of you know the Drum Villain/Drum Hero rumors that were out there. We actually copyrighted some of those names a while back but we had a studio working on a drum game at the same time working on Guitar Hero III. When Guitar Hero III started to consume Activision's interest, resources and actually Neversoft just started taking the game up and we had a solid game to go with, the Drum Hero/Villain game just kind of got put on the wayside. It's a fun thing so it's not a no-brainer to say, "Hey, let's play drums." It's not the greatest idea ever. It's just like, "Cool, let's play drums. It's a rock game." That's the impetus for that.
Q: Just because Guitar Hero is such a hit already, was there any thought to if it ain't broke, don't fix it?
Alan Flores: I guess there is that aspect of it. There's a lot of diehards, a lot of hardcores that wanted things to be the same, but we're not really interested in just being idle and resting on our laurels. We wanted to try something new, sort of push it forward, see what we could come up with.
Q: There are some new note patterns, like the chords that progress on different beats?
AF: Oh yes, that's called an extended sustain. There's a couple of points where guys will play a chord and then they'll sort of strum it out. The way that works is you can push the button and then you could walk it up. You could either hold your finger down and then push the extra buttons to hold the sustain. You don't have to play it that way. It's optional, but if you do it that way, you'll get a fuller sound. It's a bit more realistic, a little added level of difficulty.
Q: What are the new features of the guitar?
BB: What's different about this guitar is it's a little bit larger, a little bit bigger, a little more substantial. The back button is right here [below the strum] which can be used for star power if you want. The directional pad is a little more like a knob on a guitar. Whammy [bar]'s a little bit longer to be easier to reach. Fret buttons haven't changed much. We're pretty happy with our designs but we kept them pretty consistent. We added a touch slider here [on the neck]. The touch slider is basically touch sensitive and we use it in game play.
Q: When would you need to use the touch slider instead of the normal buttons?
BB: There are a couple different uses. For game play, you can tap it and play if you want instead of strumming. We also have sections that you'll see where there's clear notes. There's a roving line in between the notes. Those are like tapping and they're also slide guitar sections, so it's kind of however you want to play the game. In those sections, you can just tap, not strum, not touch any fret buttons or you can just do this.
Q: For people used to the simple guitars, what do you expect the learning curve to be on the new one?
AF: I actually don't think it will be that difficult. People can play the game the way they want. They can play it the way they're used to playing it, but if they try and do a little bit of tapping, want to feel like they're Eddie Van Halen, they can do that and it's actually going to work. And also there's the slider parts and some of the slider stuff, it makes it a little bit easier if you want to play it that way so I think people will warm up to it. You'd be surprised. A lot of people are diehards, like, "I'll never play it that way." Then they try tapping and they're like, "Ah, it's cool. I'm fuckin' Eddie Van Halen."
Q: Have you done anything to make it more accessible to novice players?
BB: We've added a Beginner difficulty, which is easier than Easy obviously. It's really like an easy rhythm thing. For the guitar, you just have to strum. You don't have to push any frets. So it's like either for your mom when she comes over, if you try to get her into Guitar Hero, you want to give it to her and put it on Beginner mode. Or it's for your five-year-old kid who can't even do easy. You can play through a whole career like that. Even in a band, one person can dumb it down. It's even on the vocals, on the drums. It really just means you have to make a noise or you have to hit any pad at that time. You'll see just a colorful bar on the screen and that's Beginner level. We've also done a lot of work since GHIII in balancing the difficulties. We've taken a lot of work over the past six, seven months in balancing the difficulty, making sure it's more of a linear ramp for everybody. We don't want you to get blocked from Medium and Hard. Alan and I fully recognize that on Guitar Hero III, it was a little too difficult. We've done a lot of work to streamline that progression.
Q: Why was GHIII too hard?
AF: I'm going to backpedal a little bit. I don't think it's too hard. I think it gets too hard too quickly. I think that's the problem. Most people will play the game and then they'll get to this one spot, it's like tier six, and they just get slammed, right? Then it gets to a point where they're just fucked, they can't play the game anymore. It's like they're playing Raining Blood, they're playing all this super hard stuff and they just can't get past it. I think the difficulty ramping, we had a really aggressive schedule so we worked really quickly to try and get the game done, so we didn't have a lot of time to balance that. I would have liked to have gone back and made the ramping a lot more linear, a lot smoother. We did that with [Guitar Hero: Aerosmith] I think. You don't get slammed until midway through the game. I take that as a personal thing. I think we kind of screwed that up.
BB: We still want Expert for the elite players and we still like pushing that level of competition for players so the game is a big underground hit in bars and people can really compete to try to eke out as many points as possible. That's where things like playing the slide or getting the accents on the drums and stuff really can get you that extra score that you just weren't able to get if you played on different instruments or less competitively.
Q: Did you model the new instruments after any others that are on the market already?
AF: We wanted to make a more realistic style drum kit so we had a lot of actual real drummers come in and actually give feedback. A lot of real drummers talking about what they really wanted in a drum kit so we sort of just went off of that, what would people want to see: Elevated symbols, lots of bounce in the pads, that sort of thing.
Q: How can we write our own songs in Guitar Hero: World Tour?
BB: We have the Music Studio which allows people to create their own music and then we have GHTunes which is a big music community that allows people to download songs that other people have created and play them back from either one player as a guitarist or a whole band or any combination of that. Part of the YouTube underground Guitar Hero phenomenon is people using guitars to create music using a variety of different software. So that was a big inspiration for us was to see how it was embraced by the community and then apply that to our new technology which is a touch strip. We have an accelerometer, which is something cool that nobody else has in their guitars. And using that to inspire people to create music in different ways.
Q: It sounds like you've planned for a full social community with this game.
BB: Well, yeah, obviously we can exchange songs, we can play songs, download songs together online, download songs online, play them together. As far as online bands go, yeah, with Guitarhero.com we have a pretty active website. It's going to get a major facelift going forward and we track everyone's stats. We track bands and we have kind of virtual bands for GHIII and those will turn into more realistic bands for GH: World Tour. So yeah, we've been pushing for GHIII and beyond, we've been pushing the whole web based community, online community.
Q: Now what if I run out of songs again, like I burned through GHIII?
BB: We are working towards a music store and we're really going after this game with a big DLC [downloadable content]. I can't give you any specifics but we are working hard towards supplying a steady stream of downloadable content from big name bands at launch and as we move forward. That's one of the big priorities for Guitar Hero: World Tour is DLC Around 85 songs are going to be shipped in the game. They are all master tracks Tim Riley and Scott McDaniel, our music guys at Activision, they've gotten us A-list bands.
Guitar Hero: World Tour is slated for release in October 2008.
I got Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock because I got a PS3 to play Blu Rays. I've gone from Easy mode to Expert in only a few months. Yeah, it's scary. Problem is, I need more songs. GHIII has limited extra content for download, and the biggest bummer is earlier Guitar Hero games for PS2 are not compatible with PS3. So I'm waiting for Guitar Hero: World Tour just to have more songs. It's going to have a lot more than just new music though.
World Tour features a full rock band with a drum kit, microphone for vocals, and two guitar parts, lead and bass, with additional buttons and a touch sensitive pad near the bottom of the guitar neck. There is also a Music Studio so real obsessives can make their own tracks.
SuicideGirls joined Activision for an early preview of the latest Guitar Hero at the House of Blues in Hollywood. Project lead Brian Bright, lead designer Alan Flores and their team demoed the new game. In between jam sessions, Brian and Alan answered questions about this falls hottest request.
Question: Obviously games like Rock Band upped the ante, but what were Activision's thoughts to adding new instruments to a game that's named Guitar Hero?
Brian Bright: Activision's been working on a drum game. Some of you know the Drum Villain/Drum Hero rumors that were out there. We actually copyrighted some of those names a while back but we had a studio working on a drum game at the same time working on Guitar Hero III. When Guitar Hero III started to consume Activision's interest, resources and actually Neversoft just started taking the game up and we had a solid game to go with, the Drum Hero/Villain game just kind of got put on the wayside. It's a fun thing so it's not a no-brainer to say, "Hey, let's play drums." It's not the greatest idea ever. It's just like, "Cool, let's play drums. It's a rock game." That's the impetus for that.
Q: Just because Guitar Hero is such a hit already, was there any thought to if it ain't broke, don't fix it?
Alan Flores: I guess there is that aspect of it. There's a lot of diehards, a lot of hardcores that wanted things to be the same, but we're not really interested in just being idle and resting on our laurels. We wanted to try something new, sort of push it forward, see what we could come up with.
Q: There are some new note patterns, like the chords that progress on different beats?
AF: Oh yes, that's called an extended sustain. There's a couple of points where guys will play a chord and then they'll sort of strum it out. The way that works is you can push the button and then you could walk it up. You could either hold your finger down and then push the extra buttons to hold the sustain. You don't have to play it that way. It's optional, but if you do it that way, you'll get a fuller sound. It's a bit more realistic, a little added level of difficulty.
Q: What are the new features of the guitar?
BB: What's different about this guitar is it's a little bit larger, a little bit bigger, a little more substantial. The back button is right here [below the strum] which can be used for star power if you want. The directional pad is a little more like a knob on a guitar. Whammy [bar]'s a little bit longer to be easier to reach. Fret buttons haven't changed much. We're pretty happy with our designs but we kept them pretty consistent. We added a touch slider here [on the neck]. The touch slider is basically touch sensitive and we use it in game play.
Q: When would you need to use the touch slider instead of the normal buttons?
BB: There are a couple different uses. For game play, you can tap it and play if you want instead of strumming. We also have sections that you'll see where there's clear notes. There's a roving line in between the notes. Those are like tapping and they're also slide guitar sections, so it's kind of however you want to play the game. In those sections, you can just tap, not strum, not touch any fret buttons or you can just do this.
Q: For people used to the simple guitars, what do you expect the learning curve to be on the new one?
AF: I actually don't think it will be that difficult. People can play the game the way they want. They can play it the way they're used to playing it, but if they try and do a little bit of tapping, want to feel like they're Eddie Van Halen, they can do that and it's actually going to work. And also there's the slider parts and some of the slider stuff, it makes it a little bit easier if you want to play it that way so I think people will warm up to it. You'd be surprised. A lot of people are diehards, like, "I'll never play it that way." Then they try tapping and they're like, "Ah, it's cool. I'm fuckin' Eddie Van Halen."
Q: Have you done anything to make it more accessible to novice players?
BB: We've added a Beginner difficulty, which is easier than Easy obviously. It's really like an easy rhythm thing. For the guitar, you just have to strum. You don't have to push any frets. So it's like either for your mom when she comes over, if you try to get her into Guitar Hero, you want to give it to her and put it on Beginner mode. Or it's for your five-year-old kid who can't even do easy. You can play through a whole career like that. Even in a band, one person can dumb it down. It's even on the vocals, on the drums. It really just means you have to make a noise or you have to hit any pad at that time. You'll see just a colorful bar on the screen and that's Beginner level. We've also done a lot of work since GHIII in balancing the difficulties. We've taken a lot of work over the past six, seven months in balancing the difficulty, making sure it's more of a linear ramp for everybody. We don't want you to get blocked from Medium and Hard. Alan and I fully recognize that on Guitar Hero III, it was a little too difficult. We've done a lot of work to streamline that progression.
Q: Why was GHIII too hard?
AF: I'm going to backpedal a little bit. I don't think it's too hard. I think it gets too hard too quickly. I think that's the problem. Most people will play the game and then they'll get to this one spot, it's like tier six, and they just get slammed, right? Then it gets to a point where they're just fucked, they can't play the game anymore. It's like they're playing Raining Blood, they're playing all this super hard stuff and they just can't get past it. I think the difficulty ramping, we had a really aggressive schedule so we worked really quickly to try and get the game done, so we didn't have a lot of time to balance that. I would have liked to have gone back and made the ramping a lot more linear, a lot smoother. We did that with [Guitar Hero: Aerosmith] I think. You don't get slammed until midway through the game. I take that as a personal thing. I think we kind of screwed that up.
BB: We still want Expert for the elite players and we still like pushing that level of competition for players so the game is a big underground hit in bars and people can really compete to try to eke out as many points as possible. That's where things like playing the slide or getting the accents on the drums and stuff really can get you that extra score that you just weren't able to get if you played on different instruments or less competitively.
Q: Did you model the new instruments after any others that are on the market already?
AF: We wanted to make a more realistic style drum kit so we had a lot of actual real drummers come in and actually give feedback. A lot of real drummers talking about what they really wanted in a drum kit so we sort of just went off of that, what would people want to see: Elevated symbols, lots of bounce in the pads, that sort of thing.
Q: How can we write our own songs in Guitar Hero: World Tour?
BB: We have the Music Studio which allows people to create their own music and then we have GHTunes which is a big music community that allows people to download songs that other people have created and play them back from either one player as a guitarist or a whole band or any combination of that. Part of the YouTube underground Guitar Hero phenomenon is people using guitars to create music using a variety of different software. So that was a big inspiration for us was to see how it was embraced by the community and then apply that to our new technology which is a touch strip. We have an accelerometer, which is something cool that nobody else has in their guitars. And using that to inspire people to create music in different ways.
Q: It sounds like you've planned for a full social community with this game.
BB: Well, yeah, obviously we can exchange songs, we can play songs, download songs together online, download songs online, play them together. As far as online bands go, yeah, with Guitarhero.com we have a pretty active website. It's going to get a major facelift going forward and we track everyone's stats. We track bands and we have kind of virtual bands for GHIII and those will turn into more realistic bands for GH: World Tour. So yeah, we've been pushing for GHIII and beyond, we've been pushing the whole web based community, online community.
Q: Now what if I run out of songs again, like I burned through GHIII?
BB: We are working towards a music store and we're really going after this game with a big DLC [downloadable content]. I can't give you any specifics but we are working hard towards supplying a steady stream of downloadable content from big name bands at launch and as we move forward. That's one of the big priorities for Guitar Hero: World Tour is DLC Around 85 songs are going to be shipped in the game. They are all master tracks Tim Riley and Scott McDaniel, our music guys at Activision, they've gotten us A-list bands.
Guitar Hero: World Tour is slated for release in October 2008.
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
RiderMusic said:
I hate to rain on your parade
So don't. Of course, you're not actually raining on our parade anyway, since nobody gives a fuck about what you have to say.
BUT
The dreaded BUT! In capitals!
why don't you people take the time spent learning Guitar Hero whatever and use that time to actually learn to play the real instruments.
Maybe because that actually takes a lot more time than learning to play Guitar Hero?
Do you really think that you're going to really be a 'Rock Hero' by playing this band kareoke game!!!
No. Contrary to what Jack Thompson and Fox News would like you to believe, gamers actually can tell the difference between video games and real life.
What happens when someone hands you a real guitar???
Shit, do people just hand out guitars on street corners? I need to get out more. I'd give it back, because I don't know how to play, and since they're just handing them out on street corners, I probably can't resell it for much.
As always, you all want the percieved glory without any of the work and dedication, but hey, that's the American way.
Umm, actually, we just want to have fun with our friends. Do you have any of those, or has the stench of pompous musician driven them away?