Rock Band and User Generated Content

I've talked about EA's Rock Band before and do not hide the fact that it sits proudly upon my list of most anticipated upcoming titles, but I've been hesitant to blog about it with any depth in the past for fear of disappointment (as a player). Simply put, up until now I've seen very little mentioned of any 'user generated content' for Rock Band. I know they'll have online multiplayer (certainly a plus) but without the ability for players to craft their own songs and share with friends I'm worried it might feel crippled.

Now, obviously there are serious legal issues to be considered here and I'm guessing EA will ship the title without a feature that would allow players to create their own songs knowing full well that doing so would immediately open the doors to Copyright infringement issues. Clearly this is something EA wants to avoid given how closely they are working with various rights holders.

Whether Rock Band supports it or not, though, the fans will eventually find a way. I've recently come across this tutorial for uploading your own custom songs to Guitar Hero II (PS2 only, I believe). You can see an example of this in action in the video embedded below.

Copyright issues here are obviously less of a concern given how complex it is to upload one's own songs. Only the most dedicated players would invest the time and money to do so.

Its a pity really -- I'd still like to see a way for players in Rock Band to be able to easily create their own content in order to get the true 'band' experience in a way the copyright holders could accept. What do you think? Is it even possible? Or would user generated content in Rock Band be a Pandora's box of legal issues and/or crippled functionality?

E3 2007

I'm not at E3 this year, but man do I ever wish I was. The quantity and quality of exciting news coming out of the once-mighty behemoth is staggering. We all knew that this was going to be the year that 'Next-Gen' became Current-Gen and came into its own, but even with my already high expectations I'm finding this a very exciting time to be in the game development industry.

A bunch of games caught my attention as particularly exciting this year. I don't claim that my list below will be particularly unique or uncover any hidden gems that you haven't already heard of, but I'll endeavour to explain a little why I think these games are special from both a player and production point of view.

First off I have to tip my hat to the Assassins Creed team for a truly impressive demo. I had the good fortune of playing through the E3 build myself (one of the perks of working just down the hall from them) and can honestly say that they nailed the free-running, open-world feel. There is an incredible sequence in the demo where you're chasing an NPC through the streets, avoiding the crowd, using the buildings and rooftops to your advantage to take shortcuts, all in the name of catching up to and eliminating him with a satisfyingly dramatic assassination. I played the demo three times and the chase sequence unfolded differently every time. This game deserves the hype and the team deserves all the accolades they're sure to receive!

I've never been the largest Halo fan (although I've purchased, played and won both games) but a lot of attention is being given to one particular aspect of Halo 3 that I'm very excited about. The User-Generated content that is being called 'Halo 3 Game Films' is an idea whose time has come and will revolutionize competitive gaming, meta-game participation and community building in general. One important detail about these films is that they are recorded entirely in-engine and so are only playable by those who have the game as well. This will be important for some of the advanced features (pausing an explosion, rotating around 360 degrees to capture the perfect angle then sending a screenshot to your victim) but will cut out some of the more mass-market appeal of easily uploading one's user-generated videos to YouTube. I'm anxious to see how long it takes for someone (maybe Bungie themselves) to come out with a simple tool that will allow players to feed their video files into an application that outputs a non-interactive video. With that we will see a true explosion of Halo3 content on YouTube.

I'm excited about EA's Skate for many of the same reasons as Halo 3 -- in that Skate is also going to feature a very robust Game Film feature (likely even more so then Halo3) to try and attract the significant culture that revolves around distributing real-life skateboard videos. This talk by Skate producer Jason Balmer doesn't focus on the user-generated content but is an excellent example of how anyone representing a game should act when confronted with a question regarding their competition. Jason is gracious, humble and gives plenty of credit where it is due. I would not at all be surprised to see someone from Activision making it a point to return the favor, giving reciprocal praise to Skate due in no small part to the grace Jason shows here. Oh yah, and Skate looks sh*t hot, too!

I can't pass up Rock Band because I'm pretty sure it will come out of E3 as a front-runner for Game Of Show. I defy you to watch the embedded video without dreaming of all the fantastic parties you'll have while playing Rock Band, your pile of Mario Party games sadly gathering dust in the corner. EA and MTV have lofty ambitions to change the way the world looks at the distribution of and participation with Music entertainment (the way MTV did in the '80s with music videos). It is not yet clear to me how succesfull they'll be in this endevour but I'd bet money that no game will come close to the party appeal. Rock Band is going to help make it cool to play videogames!

I'd really like to know what games coming out of this year's E3 most excite you and why. Are there any titles (*ahem* Bioshock *ahem*) that you're surprised to see not recieving much press? Any 'must-play' titles added to your list because of this year's E3?

Rock Band

Penny-Arcade's Tycho has some interesting analysis of the video:

...the way that a kick drum note is represented by a glowing bar on the staff. Or that the drummer is given fill sections to extemporize after sections. Or that there is a huge freakout at the end of a song that feeds into a universal bonus. [...] it's nice to see normal, bonus, and atonal sections in play

I've already called Drums in the band my wife and two friends are forming. I just hope and pray they've done justice to online band competitions.

Guitar Hero and Myspace

If anyone reading this knows me personally, you know my wife is not a fan of videogames. That was, of course, until she played the original Guitar Hero. For several months after I bought it every guest we had over was an opportunity for my wife to convert them to Heroes. She batted 1000 and sold the wonders of Harmonix's masterpiece better then I ever could have. Partially due to her passion for the game, but mostly due to the fact that Guitar Hero is a masterpiece, I happily place this title amongst my all-time favorites. It was a no-brainer then that I would buy Guitar Hero II as soon as it came out and spend all weekend playing it (which I just did).

Most people reading this blog probably know at least a bit about Guitar Hero by nature of our common interests, but if you haven't played you probably assume that the only songs available are the popular licensed tracks that were so instrumental in making it the success that it is. GH2, in fact, ships with some 20+ additional 'bonus tracks' that are indeed still licensed, but from much less well known bands. The facts that these bands are 'indie', though, makes the songs no less fun to play. You aren't really a geek unless you have rocked out to Trogdor The Burninator.

All weekend while playing I couldn't get out of my head something I read on gamespot two weeks ago -- an article on using games to launch the careers of new bands and artists -- Games as the new MTV (some would probably argue that the current trend of featuring new artists in serial-dramas on TV has partially replaced MTV, but I digress).

GH2 is effectively doing this in some small fashion by giving smaller relevant (read: guitar rock) bands an opportunity to showcase their talent with a level of stickyness I don't think exists in any other medium. I _promise_ you that a song will never stick in your head as aggressively as if you've struggled through it several times on Guitar Hero. I fell asleep last night desperately trying to get FTK by Vagiant out of my head (you can hear the song at their myspace page here. warning NSFW lyrics.). If it weren't for GH2 I would never have come across Vagiant. Now I might even join their myspace...

So, of course, this got me to thinking -- wasn't myspace originally created as a way for 'small' bands to attract a web audience? Not everyone is as lucky as FTK and can take their song and turn it into a truly interactive sticky ear-worm 'phenomenon', but why not? Why not allow anyone and everyone (in true long tail fashion) to attach Guitar Hero gameplay on to any song they wish and then share it with their friends (and on their myspace)?

The question is obviously rhetorical. First of all there is no system in place to distribute new songs to guitar hero owners other then forcing them to purchase a new DVD full of tracks (at least in the current form on the PS2, but that will all certainly change if/when GH hits the 360). Secondly, there are certainly very significant technical recording challenges that the fine folks at Harmonix had to face in order to make the songs they feature work as well as they do with the GH experience. Third, and certainly not least of all, the legal issue -- a service like this would invite people to distribute non-licensed music with GH gameplay possibly competing with the fully licensed tracks RedOctane is working on for future iterations.

To address the first point -- lack of proper distribution channels. I would love to see RedOctane simply move to the PC for this service. It would facilitate distribution and probably be a requirement to run whatever tool was used by consumers to create their own GH tracks (quick tangent on the tool element, though: just as Wii developers can soon create the control systems for their games by playing with the wiimote, so too should wannabe guitar heroes be able to lay down their own GH tracks using the guitar hero controller directly. Turn the creation of a custom GH track into a game in itself). Perhaps less of a 'party game' sensation standing around your desktop with a guitar in hand then crowded around your TV, but I don't see that as a showstopper. In the best case the tool would be PC based but distribution would be through a networked console.

The second point is important to maintain the full quality of the experience -- something RedOctane and Harmonix obviously take very seriously. Songs can play at several speeds and are certainly recorded in tracks to separate the vocals, bass, lead guitar, rhythm guitar and the rest of the band. This gives a lot of power to the game to alter the audio experience according to the player's actions. Miss a note and the guitar line is audibly impacted. In practice mode (new to GH2) you can slow the song down to a crawl and filter out all of the distracting band elements. I'm sure none of these features would be possible if someone were not to record the song according to very specific technical constraints. However I don't think that would matter, at least not for the masses. Any MP3 could have a GH 'track' created by a consumer and layered over it -- simply a synchronised playback of the GH notes lined up to the beat of the song. If the player misses a note, the engine wouldn't necessarily be able to silence the guitar track, but it could easily play a 'squelch' note to reinforce the failure.

Thirdly -- license issues. True some commercial bands might take issue and RedOctane (or Harmonix or Activition or MTV or any of the other companies with vested interest in the financial success of GH53) might balk for fear it would reduce future sales. Given that these songs would be much less feature rich then the officially licensed songs, though, they would likely be free to download (buyer beware -- no guarantees on the quality). To avoid the distribution of MP3 issues the actual content being distributed could only be the GH track, too. It would be the consumer's responsibility to get their hands on the appropriate song to synch up with said track.

But despite all of these issues (PC based tool, perhaps even player; weaker total experience when compared to the console songs; responsibility on the part of the consumer to own the song in question) the bands who would most benefit from this would go out of their way to make sure the experience would be the best they could possibly making it (spending hours tweaking the difficulty curve of the GH tracks, I'm sure) because they have the greatest vested interest in the content they are providing being high quality. A truly great GH track could quickly become viral and generate incredible press and buzz.

The bands needing attention would love it. Fans would an incredible long tail database of song content to extend the value of their purchase. The suits would get incredible press for being so forward thinking and embracing participatory culture. In general, I think it would 'rock'.

...And really, isn't that what being a guitar hero is all about?