Blog - Reflections on DJ Hero -- Music Games aren't Dying, They Just Forgot Who They Are
Friday, January 22, 2010I have read about how sales are down on the music-game-with-plastic-instruments game genre as a whole. That they haven't been meeting sales expectations. I've heard cries that the genre is waning. Dying out. DJ Hero is one of those titles that just wasn't meeting sales expectations (despite Activision now boasting that it's generated more sales than any other new IP this year, ironically... although it seems that was in terms of revenue, not copies sold.)
Playing DJ Hero, though, I get the feeling that the problem isn't that the genre isn't dying-- the genre has just forgotten who it is. Or, more accurately, it forgot what made it hot in the first place.
I've mentioned many times here before that I'm a huge fan of Harmonix's first game, Frequency which is also a DJ game in a sense but in far more abstract terms. But Frequency and it's sequel were never the successes that their later game Guitar Hero was... Guitar Hero was the game that REALLY kick started the recent craze in music games, despite the fact that they've been around for quite a while now. And comparing the two games, it's not hard to see why. I think people at Harmonix would be the first to admit all the things that Frequency does that make it no where near the commercial and popular success that their later games have been. And I say this saying that I actually like Frequency BETTER than I like Guitar Hero -- that doesn't stop me from viewing it's flaws critically and admitting that it's not nearly as accessible of a game.
Playing DJ Hero, and the few times I've been able to play Activision's contributions to the Guitar Hero franchise as well, makes me wonder if the developers of the game really took the time to look back into the past and see the paradigm shifts that happened at Harmonix to take them from Frequency to their smash hit Guitar Hero (and it's continued legacy in Rock Band).
I say this because playing DJ Hero gives me the feeling that it's falling into all the same traps as Frequency. And as the Guitar Hero series progressed post-Harmonix, they just got harder and harder... and I stopped finding them less fun as a result.
Two things really made the initial Guitar Hero blast off in a rocket of success:
First, it was super-accessible. The music itself was, for one thing -- rock music is more generally popular and accessible than the stuff in Frequency, and they had enough flavors of it to more or less satisfy everyone. But also there's the interface -- the interface of Frequency/Amplitude is a big scary octagon of doom which intimidates the hell out of people who have never experienced the game before. A friend of mine watched me play Frequency for 20 minutes straight and said "I still have NO idea what's going on." But Guitar Hero? Pretty straightforward.
Second, it made you feel like a rock star. You could pick up the controller and after you get the hang of it after a couple songs, you're really rocking out. It's easy to get all stupid getting into character with friends and trying to look your most badass while shredding...
Frequency, although it got you into a real groove sometimes... and sometimes you'd pull off something impossibly hard in the game and feel a bit like a legend... was in the end too abstract to really make you feel like a rock star in any capacity.
So-- DJ Hero. When I played it, I initially jumped into playing it on medium. I guess I knew that it was going to be a different experience and would probably be lost jumping straight into expert mode... but cocky enough about my skills at other rhythm games to swallow my pride and try easy mode.
So, starting on medium difficulty-- I was immediately overwhelmed. On MEDIUM.
Oh sure, I got the hang of it eventually, and beat the whole game on medium... but initially it left me very flustered. I've now gotten used to where the controls on the mixer are located, but first starting, I'd be watching the screen and groping-- nay, flailing, trying to find them while keeping my focus on the screen.
Feel like a rock star DJ I certainly did NOT.
Even now, having beaten all of the hardest songs in the game on medium... I still don't think there's too many songs easy enough that I could properly show-boat and act like a cocky pro DJ if friends were over to play it as a party game. ...on medium.
I eventually decided though that it was unfair that I was judging the game in this way by medium difficulty mode, and went back to try the others. I take some of it back now. For example, beginner mode can't help but be too easy for anyone but the person who has never played a single rhythm game in their life before, and are hopelessly uncoordinated. So, accessibility as far as difficulty goes? I'll give it to them after all.
And having played through some songs on all difficulty levels now I'll admit that there actually is a really decent curve of difficulty between all the different difficulty modes. I can't think of a better way than they did it. But... it still doesn't feel quite right to me. But as I can't admittedly think of a way it could be better -- sure, you win this round, DJ Hero.
I've since, btw, jumped into playing Expert mode now, and at first I thought it was actually pretty cool -- terrifyingly difficult, but it's interesting that it's far more accurate to real turntablism than the rest of the game, and the challenge of actually having to scratch in the right directions is kind of fun.
(...But those damn peak spikes! WTF ARE THOSE?! They are just annoying as hell, impossible to juggle on top of everything else and are entirely unlike anything a DJ does ever!! Again, W-T-F?! ...there, got it out of my system... sorry)
However, all that said, there's still a problem -- the interface. At first it seems simple -- 3 note track. Not bad! But as the game goes on, it adds more and more things that happen to that track-- the crossfader that splits the track, the different kinds of scratch portions, the sample-playing sections, the dial-tuning bits and the peaks...
If you hadn't played or seen the tutorials, you'd have NO IDEA what's going on!
Guitar Hero you could easily play without a tutorial, but I can't imagine anyone playing most of the songs in DJ Hero without having seen the tutorials, especially the higher the difficulty modes. Really hurts the game as far as being pick-up-and-play at a party -- which is what made Guitar Hero explode in popularity.
And, furthermore, the problem with all those things that clutter up the track is that all that all of those things are entirely different actions you have to perform!
Here, let's go back and look at something...
Frequency had quite a few actions possible:
-hit beats
-switch tracks
-deploy powerups
-scratch/play samples (when available)
-play with the axe (when available)
Guitar Hero?
-hit notes, sometimes chords
-strum (basically always done at the same time as the hitting of notes, so it's almost only really one action, and not two)
-deploy star power.
5 vs 3.
And... which one of those two was the more accessible, hugely selling game again?
DJ Hero's list...
-hit beats, sometimes 'chords' of them at the same time
-crossfading to the left or the right with the crossfader
-scratching, sometimes freestyle, sometimes in more specific discrete directions
-tuning the audio with the effects dial knob
-deploying 'euphoria' (read: star power) with a button on the mixer for that
-spinning back the platter to rewind the track (when available)
-hitting peak spikes with the crossfader
7. Woah.
(Isn't the limit to how many things a person can even juggle in their head... 7 things? HMM...)
Note also that the game often has you doing some completely ridiculous juggling of things that are on completely different controls!
Sometimes I swear it seems like there's more things available for you to do at a time than is physically possible with only two hands.
Again, feeling like a rock star, I did not. I just felt incompetent.
Admittedly, the difficulty level you're on does determine how many of those features you'll see or have to use (thank god). So, put Grandma on beginner mode and all she'll have to do is hit one button and freestyle scratch -- not bad. Easy mode, best as I could tell (didn't play too many songs on it) adds all three buttons. So in some ways it still does beat Frequency's list, if you're playing on a low enough difficulty mode.
But I can't see myself ever 5-starring more than the first 4 tracks on expert mode. Thanks for making me feel like a loser, game.
And since even on medium, I find most songs too difficult to show-boat so I can feel like a rock star... the game just doesn't make as good of a party game as even Guitar Hero, let alone the new "band" games out these days...
At least DJ Hero provides a 2 player mode -- a nice attempt. But I don't think it's enough to make it work as a party game, and so it'll never be the success that Guitar Hero was.
But after all that criticism of DJ Hero -- the game certainly isn't awful. If I had worked on it, I'd be pretty damn proud. The game design may not be as polished as it should be -- but the game as a whole certainly is! Some of the mashups are really awesome, and there's not too many song/levels I straight up dislike -- the overall quality of the tunes available are pretty good. I totally love the spinback-rewind powerup -- time rewinding in a Guitar Hero style game is really interesting and actually leads to at least some strategy (something the rhythm game genre generally sorely lacks). The game has certainly kept me playing it, and nothing BUT it (due to the fact I AM in crunch right now so not really much free time for gaming...) for a week now. So kudos, Activision.
But yes-- that said, I can't lie to you either-- the game's got some real issues too.
But hey, nobody's perfect. I can tell you a million things wrong with my games...
Labels: design, DJ games, Frequency, game design, music
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 10:30 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - More on Frequency
Monday, December 29, 2008Inspired by yesterday's entry, today I'll write a little bit more on Frequency.
I had played it back when it was first out, but never properly owned a copy of it myself until recently. This summer I found a copy in a bargain bin at a Walmart, and eagerly snatched it up.
By the end of this last quarter I was playing it pretty heavily and nearly beat everything in the game (can't manage to beat the final bonus song...)
Playing the game post-Guitar Hero and Rock Band is a very strange thing. You can see the ways in which Harmonix saw the strengths and failures of their earlier titles when developing their later ones.
Frequency is a great game, but I can see why it never took off as hugely as Guitar Hero did.
First of all, I'm sure more people are into rock music than electronic music, and more than that, almost everyone has a "I want to be a rock star!" fantasy while far fewer have a fantasy of "I want to be a DJ!"
And to that effect, Guitar Hero actually makes you feel like a rock star much more so than Frequency and Amplitude, which are so abstracted that they don't really feel anything like being a DJ.
Most tellingly, though, was the fact that I was playing the game for one long session one day as my roommate had a bunch of friends over. Everyone who passed by the television would usually stop and watch me play for a period of time, and, as they'd leave would say something akin to: "I have no idea what is going on in that game," and leave, regardless of how long they had been watching me.
Even if I tried to explain how the game worked, and even if they were fans of Guitar Hero, they still didn't fully "get" Frequency.
Admittedly it does have a much more intimidating interface than Guitar Hero does and the seizure-inducing background art didn't help things I'm sure.
I find this a bit of a shame though because I really love the game.
First of all, perhaps its a bit of a bias on my part as I'm more into electronic music genres than rock. More than that, though, through playing it again post-Guitar Hero I find that it's a more interesting game to play than Guitar Hero is in some ways.
If you take the 'classic' Meier game definition of "A series of interesting decisions," then Guitar Hero you'll note does not really have any real decisions at all.
Chris Bateman wrote an interesting rant about it that I would encourage reading. In any case, he points out that Guitar Hero doesn't have any real decisions to be made but is still and absolutely fantastic and successful game, so games need not have any decisions at all.
That said, Frequency intrigues me as a musical, rhythm-based game that actually did have a degree of strategic choices involved. The only real choice you have in Guitar Hero is "When should I deploy my star power, where it will be most effective?", which indeed originates in Frequency, where the choice of when to most effectively use your power-ups sometimes even becomes a question of whether it's a good idea to use them at all (in some ocassions, using a powerup in the wrong situation would actually cause you to earn less points than you otherwise would have.)
More than that, though, is that unlike in Guitar Hero where you are only playing one instrument throughout the song, and thus have to merely anticipate and play the notes played by that instrument, the play of Frequency is actually more about switching instruments many times mid-song. In order to maximize your score (which becomes increasingly life-or-death as the game grows more difficult) you have to think on your feet incredibly quickly as to which instrument you should switch to next.
This makes the game a far more intense game than Guitar Hero, which may explain another reason it never achieved the successes of it's offspring games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band as it was limited to a much more hardcore audience.
For example, one decision that comes up in the game at times is trying to deduce if you have enough time after completing one track to jump over to, say, the next track to the right, deploy the track-completing power-up you have on that track and jump again to the next track to the right after before the start of the next measure so you can play it. It's a tricky decision to make as that gap in time might be less than a second long, and given the fast paced tempo of the songs in the game, one didn't have long to decide. It's also a high risk but high reward move: to misjudge the time and come in late on the next measure you risked losing an entire measure, which on later difficulty levels is something that is difficult to afford... but pull it off and the payout of points would be very substantial.
Needless to say, that's... pretty hardcore. So in effect, the element of strategy in Frequency and Amplitude most likely limited it's appeal to a broader audience, and you'll notice such features were removed to make Guitar Hero, which was a massive success in comparison.
Labels: Frequency, game design, music
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 1:24 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Musical Play
Saturday, December 27, 2008My mom rented Wii Music and it has me thinking about games with musical play.
While discussing the topic with Dan, a friend and fellow game design student, I came up with a few parameters by which I was ranking musical gameplay features:
1.) Complexity
2.) Musical Quality
3.) Creative Control
4.) Dynamic Quality
Complexity:
Guitar Hero is a fantastic game because its goal was to make you feel like a rock god even if you have no musical talent. That's what this parameter is all about.
Complexity is the degree to which you can create something as complex as music very very easily, and potentially with very little in the way of controls. Also, how much musical talent does it require of the player?
Musical Quality:
How good does the resulting 'music' sound?
Creative Control:
How much input does the player have over the music? How easily could they recreate any song they wanted, or play whatever music they imagine?
Dynamic Quality:
To what degree does the act of the music creation happen smoothly and on-the-fly, as though playing an instrument live?
Now, Guitar Hero for example... did a great job as I said of simplifying the process of playing a guitar into something your average person could do. It's still moderately complex though with multiple buttons, the strumming at the same time and at least on the right notes... if that's not technically musical talent then the game at least requires something akin to it. However, the game also provided such a range of complexity with the difficulty modes and song selection that I think it nails the complexity score pretty solidly. And because it's prerecorded music, the musical quality is great, but that's the problem... it's all prerecorded music, so the musical control is almost nonexistent. You can miss a note, or hold certain notes differently, or mess with notes with the whammy bar, but largely you're playing someone else's music, rather than your own. Finally, dynamically, it at least feels like your jamming live, so Guitar Hero does fine in that category.
Wii Music on the other hand...
In one sense the game is very simple. You don't even need to press buttons, merely strumming to the beat. Interestingly, that beat is whatever you feel like or want it to be. So, on the one hand, that's more creative control than Guitar Hero gives you. But it loses creative control when it comes to melody. Wii Music makes the melody for you. If there is a way to influence what pitch your strum will make, then I wasn't able to figure it out. This made my own music unpredictable and often sounding like a mess, so I'd rank it fairly low in musical quality. At least once again, you're doing the playing live (besides the pre-constructed melodies).
If you'd consider tools in games that let you 'compose' music, like the track editing tools of the latest Guitar Hero game, or Frequency's Remix mode, then they obviously score poorly in the dynamic quality category, and usually rely on a very complex interface adding complexity as well.
I clarify all of the above to express my love for a small feature included in Frequency: the "Axe".
At certain points in the game if you were doing well you might get access to special bonus 'instruments', one of which was like a simulated turntable scratching effect, and the other being the Axe.
The Axe has always been my favorite implementation of player controlled music in a video game, and with my above parameters I can back up my claim:
The controls for the Axe are very simple. All you did was hold down a button and use your joystick to move a slider back and forth. Depending on your position of the slider, it would play different synthesized melodies, which all were very well written to always seem to fit the rest of the music. The genius, however, lay in the fact that unlike Wii Music where it is difficult to determine what your input is doing and accordingly to influence the music being played, It was apparent within seconds of using the instrument that your joystick position caused the melody being played to switch to ones of higher or lower pitch ranges. Given that you could also shift your position around as fast as you could move the joystick, this meant you actually were given quite a lot of control over the melodies the instrument produced. This is because on any given note of the song, you could slide your joystick left or right to make the pitch of the next note be lower or higher. And because it was a whole slider-bar sort of display for the instrument, you could easily gauge from where you were on the slider approximately how deep or high that next note would be when it hit.
Whereas Wii Music takes control of the melody and gives you free reign over the rhythm, the Axe of Frequency takes the opposite approach.
You have great control of the melody, but the notes are always timed to the rhythm of the song you were playing.
This is a far better system in my opinion.
With Wii Music's approach the resulting 'music' players produce often doesn't sound very musical at all as a cacophonous, unsteady jumble of seemingly random notes.
Because the Axe's synthesized blips were always set to fit the tempo of the music but you had a simple but surprisingly graceful control over which notes were playing (and those notes possible all seemed to always fit nicely with the rest of the music) meant that the Axe did well in all categories.
It was simple, required no musical talent at all, and despite having the tempo done for you and the notes you could select from were from pre-written loops, you still had a surprising degree of control over the music that came out it. Best yet, the music that came out of it always sounded amazing and fit the rest of the song like a glove. Finally, you played with it live like a real (if bizarre and abstract) instrument.
Of course, there's no way to score something like it (but then again, there's no way to score the jam sessions of Wii Music either) so, figuring out a way to incorporate a similar feature in a game may prove tricky.
But still it seems like a useful feature to look at if you're making a game that requires some kind of musical gameplay.
Labels: game design, music
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 4:47 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - On Gamer Identity and Culture
Monday, March 17, 2008This at first might not seem to have anything to do with games, but bear with me for a bit:
Always in search of extremely eclectic music I've become somewhat of a fan of some indie rap music that's far from the mainstream.
The Canadian rap scene (particularly from Halifax) is my favorite, and features many rappers who are, well, a bit on the geeky side. As such, their rhymes often feature video game, comic book and other 'nerdy' references.
However, I wouldn't say that's what their rap music is about.
Their music just happens to sometimes reflect this nerdiness that is a part of their identity, but is never advertised as the whole of it. They're real, serious rappers, who just happen to inject witty lines now and then about pop culture, and they happen to be fans of some fairly dorky pop culture. It's a part of their soul, but they're more than paper-plate deep.
On the other hand, though, Nerdcore rap (Yes, that's a real rap genre), seems to always be about nerdy things.
Songs where the sole topic is Star Wars, or a certain video game, etc. are found in that rap genre.
I notice a similar phenomenon occurring in gamer culture, particularly in the area of webcomics.
Why, exactly, are there so many webcomics about video games?
I'm sure somewhere out there is a webcomic by some film buff who satirizes upcoming films in webcomic form, or a comic by someone that really reflects their love of good literature. The point is though that I can't actually think of any at the moment, but the gaming comics are all over the place, and popular. I know some people who aren't even gamers who read some of the more popular ones!
All this seems, in a way, a reflection of all of gamer culture.
We feel the need to advertise our status as a gamer - But why?
An interesting reason I just came up with just now is that, because of their interactive nature, gamers are encouraged to, or at least feel the need to, do things more about what they love. We're encouraged to act, and create, and whatever, because games let us act and create, in a way other media does not.
Interesting, but I don't know if that's really the answer, or how big a part it plays if true.
If not that, is it because we feel alienated because the general population are not hardcore gaming fans? That by being fans of this 'alien' medium, it makes us unique, and we like to shout that out to the world?
It seems to me that this just breeds more alienation. We probably sound like raving weirdos to anyone who doesn't understand the game medium.
The Nerdcore rap scene is kind of lame because (well, the large collection of terrible, wannabe rappers involved aside) the constrictions they set upon themselves unintentionally by limiting their topics to video games, computers, etc. means that their songs, although often clever and funny, miss out on a lot of the human experience. You don't get a sense of who they are outside of the geek stereotype the person has set out before you. It feels like they've reduced the art to just a gimmick, or a gag. Even with the Canadian rapper The WordBurglar, who's lyrics consist almost entirely of really gimmicky dumb puns, I at least get a bit more of a sense of that guy's inner soul than I do through most Nerdcore artists, like when he raps about his childhood. See, he raps about his childhood... just through the medium of terrible puns that make you groan. ;)
The fact that a 'gamer culture' even exists is kind of depressing to me, because that just seems to say that we're not yet taken seriously as a medium, that we have to advertise that we are, in fact, fans of the medium.
With, say, film, it's pretty much assumed you, as a human being, are to some degree a fan of film. The point when you feel the need to advertise that you love film is probably the point where you become a film snob, which is the point when people start to think you're a bit of a jackass.
It just makes me wish games were just as 'normal' as every other media, and we didn't have to announce that we enjoy it.
Labels: culture, gamer identity, music
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 5:09 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - the Korg DS-10
Sunday, March 16, 2008Well so much for posting every day this week. I was in the middle of writing an entry when the power went out. But it's back on this morning so here's what I was in the middle of writing:
A few people now have told me about Korg DS-10, synthesizer software for the DS based on Korg's MS-10 synthesizer.
This interests me for two reasons:
1.)
I am a synthesizer playing geek, and my main synth I use is a Korg.
(My MicroKORG, modified into a sort of homemade keytar thanks to my addition of a guitar strap mounted on the case.) I am also obviously a gaming geek.
So, combining Korg synthesizer tech with video game hardware is a magical combination in my book.
2.)
Through my electronic music production geekiness, and thanks to also being a gaming nut, I've been very curious for a long while now in the chiptune music scene, and dabble in it a bit myself. I already own synthesizer software cartridges for older gameboy models (Currently rocking Nanoloop (version 2.0.1), but I was told by one of the 8-Bit Peoples (specifically, Nullsleep) that they have been given permission to produce and sell new copies of LSDJ on their site, so I might snatch up a copy of that as well when it's available.)
I also own synthesizer cartridges for the Atari 2600, and for the original NES.
While we're on the topic of game hardware I use in my music, I also once programmed an interface to use a guitar controller as a MIDI instrument, with a DDR pad as the effects pedals.
In case you hadn't already thought of it, I had: I've indeed combined that setup with the above MIDI-controllable NES cartridge I own, and so, yes, I have in fact played music on an original NES using a Guitar Hero guitar and a DDR pad. In case you were wondering.
Game hardware has been utilized in music for quite a while now, and people have been making trackers and homebrew synthesizer solutions for them for years.
Although I'm not sure if the Korg DS-10 can be itself classified as chiptune, I have to wonder if its release was inspired by the chiptune gameboy music scene that's been enjoying a small underground popularity for quite a while now.
In any case, I think it's interesting that people are getting more serious about game hardware as a musical platform, because they are becoming extremely powerful for portable devices.
I remember seeing some pretty professional looking music software coming out for the PSP a while back. Now even a synthesizer giant like Korg is getting in on the act? I find it interesting indeed!
Of course, they lack the charm of 8-bit bleeps from the older chiptune tech. They also lack the severe 8-bit limitations that inspire many of the artists who use older gameboy models, etc, in their music.
But hey, portable electronic music still sounds pretty great to me. Bring it on, Korg. posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 4:30 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Alternative Musical Instrument Heroes: Music Based Games
Tuesday, February 19, 2008As someone interested in both designing/playing video games and producing music, I have a love of music-based games.
So, yes, I'm a pretty big fan of the Guitar Hero franchise.
The problem is, I'm not that big into rock music, actually, and have little interest in the guitar as an instrument. The games are so exceptional, that I can easily overlook that.
So what am I into? Well, I did say in my bio that I produce electronic music.
(I also have been learning to rap...)
Now this has two recent applications of note:
1.) For my music creating purposes, as I tend to play with bizarre, experimental electronic instruments. That, coupled with the fact that I'm a tremendous dork, meant that when I discovered the existence of electric kazoos I had to buy one to try it out. That's right, you're reading the blog of a man who owns his very own electronic kazoo. I can just tell you're impressed.
Before I go on, I'll have to go back a bit:
Me and my roommate recently bought Rock Band, and I got to finally witness how microphone controllers work.
I had originally been interested in such controllers when they first started appearing, for use in a rap based game, as I was trying to learn to freestyle rap at the time. I thought if Guitar Hero could pull off making one feel like a rock star, then a game that made you feel like a battle rapper (which I already wanted to feel like) would be pretty awesome too, and appealing to a somewhat different crowd.
Of course, those controllers wouldn't really work for rap all that well, as they read pitch much better than they can determine what you're actually saying. So, I abandoned that idea for controlling a rap game.
Now, I recently was playing with my electric kazoo ("Kazooka") to test out an audio effect processor I was playing with, when I had a wacky idea. The Kazooka is basically just a mic mounted onto the buzzing part of the kazoo.
What if I just wired up that mic to the Rock Band mic?
You'd have Kazoo Hero.
Oh, sure, it wouldn't make you feel like a rock star. But it would be funny and fun as hell.
Unfortunately, I tried just kazoo-ing(?) into the Rock Band microphone and it didn't work well. A kazoo is just too all over the place to hit a note as perfectly as Rock Band requires on even the easiest difficulty mode. Even when you hit the root note, which you can do fairly well, you can't sustain it, it constantly flutters up and down enough that it just says your "singing" is "Messy" and you fail quickly.
So, if there's to be a Kazoo Hero, it'd have to have its own custom engine, tailored for interpreting the sounds of a kazoo rather than the human voice. Which would probably be better anyway, but unfortunately is above my programming ability.
2.) Long before this, or even my ideas for a freestyle rap battle game, I was a professional DJ. Admittedly, I was the lame kind that does wedding receptions and birthday parties, but I was a pro DJ nonetheless.
Because I was really into electronic music, though, I had been interested in club-style DJing, and wanted to get into doing that for a long time. As such, I studied this book that was essentially all about the "rules" of DJing, which I took to heart in my own work. Basically, it was a guide to how groups of people react to music in a setting where dancing is expected of them.
"Hey, if they're called rules," I thought, "then surely they can be adapted into a game system..."
And so floating around in my head for many years now has been a desire to do a game based on DJ theory, i.e. how to control a dance floor crowd with music. In other words, it would be a dance club sim, but only unlike a business sim as it wouldn't focus on running the club as a business or anything. It would just be figuring out exactly the right song to play that would make the largest amount of virtual club patrons go completely nuts and flood the dance floor.
It's hard to explain exactly how this would be fun if you've never been a DJ though and know the mind games involved, and the thrill of how awesome it is when people cheer when you've played just the right thing. I'm still going to insist it would be a pretty great game.
In any case, I know that in this biz, ideas themselves aren't worth much. That said, I sadly never did manage to make a prototype (which I'm sure might actually be within my programming ability to make) because dealing with how exactly I'd get enough music for that was a huge problem to tackle.
I wouldn't have the resources to acquire rights to any songs, and although I make electronic music, I don't think I could make nearly enough, and my music isn't particularly dance-y club fare anyhow. My best idea was to just troll around online music mixing communities and ask if anyone would donate free songs of theirs to the project, but I figured that'd be quite the crapshoot and would probably result in a lot of terrible, amateurish electronica.
Well, just now I found this: Activision Blizzard Trademarks 'DJ Hero'
Hmm. I'd like to see where they go with that... posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 6:01 PM 0 Comments Links to this post