usic games have come a long way, and leading the charge is Harmonix.  Whether you're remixing with Frequency or Amplitude, singing to your hearts content with Karaoke Revolution,  or defying gravity in EyeToy: AntiGrav, Harmonix has most likely forced you to turn up the volume.  Now they're back at it again, this time teaming up with RedOctane for Guitar Hero.  We catch up with Harmonix Producer Daniel Sussman to get the story about the company, the games, and the future of music games. 

GI:  When was Harmonix founded and was Frequency the first game?

Sussman:  There was a title before Frequency that was a PC application that wasn’t really a game that was called The Axe.  Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy were in the MIT Media Lab together, and they had this kind of flash in the pan idea to start a company where you could make music software for non-musicians.  The Axe was this program that you could run that would play songs, and you’d be able to solo over these songs with a joystick.  They made that program, and it didn’t do particularly well, but it was an interesting idea, and it set the groundwork for Frequency, which was basically the same kind of idea where you’re taking music and you’re flipping it to a controller and manipulating the music with the controller.  That idea got shopped to Sony who gave it the green light.  It’s been non-stop from there.

GI:  Were you there from day one?  How’d you get brought into the mix?

Sussman:  No.  I came in kind of late during Frequency as a tester.  I kind of got there and two weeks later, and it was like, “Okay guys we’ve got two months to finish this game."  I’ve worked harder than I’ve ever worked at any company in my entire life.  I was pretty fresh with the game industry.  I didn’t really know what it took to get a title out the door, but on Frequency we worked our asses off.  We were there seven days a week.  It was interesting, because it was totally draining and nobody really liked working the hours that we were putting in.  But everyone was really committed to it because the title was so innovative, and people were really behind it.

That came out and I worked on the Network Adapter project which was a bear there in itself.  It’s definitely one of the first five online PS2 games, ever.  We really didn’t have any infrastructure to port it.  There were not banks of Sony servers.  We were basically on our own with that.  I was an AP on Amplitude, and I helped produce Karaoke Revolution, and I was producer on AntiGrav, and I produced Guitar Hero.

Frequency may be a little old, but it still one of the best

GI:  How big is the company and do you have multiple teams?

Sussman:  We do.  For this summer, we had a team doing Karaoke Revolution Party and we had a Guitar Hero team.   We kind of fluctuate with the size – we usually explode to 80-85 people over the summer, and then we slim down to our core 60-65 like around now after our Christmas titles come out.  We’re a full two team company right now, although anything can change at any moment.  We take up 1 ½ floors of a building, and it’s small enough and everybody knows each other and gets along.  Harmonix is an amazing place to work.

GI:  Is it all musicians or is it a mixture of musicians, technical guys….

Sussman:  Everybody who goes here realizes that music is a huge part of the games.  Even in a game like AntiGrav where music was not the core focus.  We were like crazy about every little target occurred on the beat, and everything was synched up to the music in this subtle way, so that even though you’re not playing the game musically it has nothing to do with making music or being musical in any way.  Music is still this limb of the game that we take very seriously.  Everybody that comes in appreciates that, and understands that regardless of whether or not they are a musician themselves.

That said we have a huge amount of people who play in bands.  I think on Guitar Hero we had 18 unlocks – 15 of which were Harmonix bands or close friends of Harmonix’s bands.   We really opened up the door and it was this freaky thing where me and Greg LoPiccolo (Vice President of Product Development)  - the project lead – were like, “Should we do it?”  On Frequency and Amplitude there were guys who would get their music into games.  Kasson Crooker – who’s our Audio Director now – the guy behind Freeze Pop – they’ve been in a couple of games.  It was this thing where, why not?  We have this huge resource at our fingertips.  As long as it’s good, why not add some content, and we did, and it makes the game better.

Game Informer:  How’d Harmonix get involved with RedOctane for Guitar Hero?

Daniel Sussman:  They actually contacted us.  They had an idea for a game with a guitar peripheral that wasn’t designed at the time.  They are a big time peripheral manufacturer, and they’re just breaking into gaming and their first game was a DDR style game, and they were looking for something else that they could build a peripheral that would go specifically for a game.  They wanted to do a music game so they called us because we’ve got our act together when it comes to music games.

GI:  Did you guys already have in your mind before they even contacted you some sort of guitar rhythm game?

Sussman:  Well, it took us about a half hour to come up with a really good idea.  It wasn’t really in the pipe.  Most of the way we go about the next game is – everyone sort of has this seed of a game they want to make – but then a lot of it comes down to what gets thrown to us.  What is the best project that we can actually get made and get published.  So RedOctane coming to us with that game is kind of the best of both worlds, because we knew we could do it and we had tons of ideas on how to do it well.

GI:  You’ve made games that have used peripherals before with EyeToy and Karaoke Revolution.   Do you think it makes it more difficult to create a game around a peripheral or do you feel it’s easier?

Sussman:  Peripherals present a challenge.  I think the big thing you really have to think about is the peripheral is an inherent part of the gameplay.  I don’t think it’s necessarily easier or harder to do a non-peripheral game but I do think it is easy to f*ck the whole thing up.  If you don’t have the peripheral in the center of the game design you’re going to be in trouble.  For AntiGrav for sure it was a constant design struggle.  That game was all about the EyeToy.  The same thing with Karaoke Revolution, although that game was very straight forward – we’re going to use the microphone to make a karaoke game.  That’s a no brainer.  But with Guitar Hero, that’s a difficult question to answer.  I think what we do well at Harmonix is we’re really big time innovators and we can think about creative, fun ways to use peripherals which makes us an ideal peripheral developer.  It’s kind of our bread and butter.  I’m inclined to say we do it well but it’s not easy for sure.

GI:  Can you play Guitar Hero without the guitar?

Sussman:  You can.  It’s interesting.  It’s one of those things where we had to do it out of necessity because we didn’t have enough guitars to go around while we were making the game.  So it started off as a developer cheat.  But in the end we decided to lump it in with the whole package.  It’s not as fun.  The game was really designed to play with the guitar controller.  If you have one guitar and you want to play multiplayer that’s why we put in the dual shock mode.  You don’t actually have to strum – you just hit the buttons.  You can use the whammy bar and the tilt thing so you can trigger star power.  One of the things the peripheral brings to the table is a very clear analog way of visualizing what you’re supposed to do.  It’s still guitary, but that didn’t transfer well to the dual shock at all. 

Throw up the horns for Guitar Hero!

GI:  Multiple people here actually play guitar, but one person here who played the game who actually knows how to play the guitar seemed to have more difficulty in learning how to play Guitar Hero than someone that had never picked up a guitar before.  Have you heard that from anyone before?

Sussman:  It’s funny.  A bunch of us at Harmonix are accomplished guitar players.  We have a lot of guys that have been in bands.  We focus tested with musicians and non-musicians and the most fascinating thing that I saw was with guitar players they had a hard time playing on easy and normal setting.  They tended to play by ear as opposed to by sight.  When you get up into the hard or expert songs, when there is basically a button for every note that you hear it was easier for them because they could just think about how they would play it on guitar and it’s mapped pretty well on the guitar.  I think it’s one of those things where musicians and guitarists try to play it by ear and when there’s not a direct note connection that breaks a bit, because you try to play notes that aren’t on screen.

GI:  There was a contest for bands to submit songs to be a part of Guitar Hero.  How did that work out?

Sussman:  It was a lot of fun.  We got a lot of very interesting music to listen to.  It ended up that a band from the Boston area won the contest named Graveyard Barbeque.  Their song is just an amazing song.  I listened to it the first time and had this big grin on my face.  It’s not the kind of Guitar Hero song you’d expect.  It’s not a Steve Vai – Joe Satriani like prog rock kind of thing.  It’s this hillbilly rock n’ roll thing that’s just amazing.  We couldn’t have dreamt up a better winner.  That was actually an idea that Red Octane had to get the word out there, and we got a great song out of it.

GI:  What are the team’s favorite songs that made it into the game?

Sussman:  Without playing spoiler, I know the whole song list hasn’t been released.  But there’s some Blue Oyster Cult that people fought long and hard to get.  I think developmentally the songs that people liked are the hardest ones.  They’re the ones that you can play over and over again without totally getting sick of them.  That said, the Boston song, “More Than a Feeling” was written for this game.  It’s actually got five notes in the whole song so you can play the whole thing on the guitar controller and it feels like you’re playing the song.  For me, that’s the song that carries over the best and you play the song and you’re hitting the buttons and making the noises, and you feel like you’re playing for 50,000 people.

GI:  You’ve worked with licensed music with Frequency and Amplitude, and you’ve worked with sound-a-likes.  Is there more of a challenge to work with sound-a-likes?

Sussman:  For Frequency and Amplitude getting the master tracks was very expensive and very difficult.  A lot of bands are not that willing to have people muck around with their tracks.  Working with sound-a-likes is much easier from that perspective.  You can pay money to bands and they’ll let you use their songs, but you’re not going in and intruding on their artistic vision.  The company that records out sound-a-likes is a company called Wave Group in the L.A. area., and they are amazing.  The big fear when you’re using sound-a-likes is that people are going to notice.  I don’t think we had to worry about that so much.  There are a couple songs where vocals poke out a bit but they’re all full blown rock renditions of these songs.  They went out and got players to play the parts, and I don’t think we take a hit there.

GI:  Frequency and Amplitude put Harmonix on the map as being the big music game innovators.  Are we going to see more from that franchise in the future on the PS2 or is this something that we’ll see next generation-wise?

Sussman:  It’s safe to say that Harmonix is going to keep making music titles.  There is nothing really in the works for a continuation of the Frequency series.  That’s something that I’d be thrilled to work on another game in that vein.

Even better than Frequency, Amplitude raised the bar

GI:  The PSP has been billed as the “Walkman of the 21st Century.”  With the memory stick you can have music files on it.  Do you think the platform is well suited for music rhythm games?

Sussman:  It’s definitely a powerful little device, and I think it’s the perfect platform for a music based experience. 

GI:  What do you think of the next generation?  Do you think it’s going to be more difficult or easier to make a music based game?

Sussman:  I don’t really think that it affects the possibility or ease of making a music game.  Every new generation of consoles is going to represent its own little challenges.  At this point as a developer I’m kind of exited to get bigger and better tools and more power at out disposal.  We can just do more, and that’s exciting.  We’re pretty good at the PS2 at this point.  We know that console in and out.  We’ll have to learn a little bit about how PS3 and Xbox 360 work.  Should be easy.  I think we’re all psyched.  I think it’s time to take that next step.

GI:  With the technology of the Xbox 360 and DVD9s and PS3 with a Blu-Ray drive, will that effect streaming of music in any way that you know of?

Sussman:  I don’t know.  A couple of years ago when online gaming broke as a actual feasible thing for developers to mold into their software everyone was tripping out on, “Oh you’ll be able to do this and that, and an online band, and do all this stuff.”  It’s actually hard to design for all the different ways that people play games, and have their stuff hooked up.  It’s really hard to predict how the new technology is going to affect game design.  Right now in these early stages, we can draw more polys and have more realistic sound effects, and do the same kind of game bigger and better.  At some point someone is going to innovate and come up with a brand new way to use the technology.

GI:  You’ve got instrument games for everything.  You can dance to it.  You can sing to it.  You can play guitars, drums, keyboards – everything.  Do you think we’re moving towards something where we are going to be able to have a full band game?

Sussman:  I hope so.  I mean, how amazing would that be?  It would just be fun.  I think that’s an obvious next step for the industry.  Having some kind of package that ties everything together.  That would be a huge project.

GI:  You’d need a lot of input devices.  (laughs)

Sussman:  You’d need a USB hub.  (laughs) Peripheral games are funny that way.  We’ve had this whole thing while making guitar hero where it’s like, how cool is it actually to be playing – whatever it is, Pantera – with this funky little guitar.  Is it cool?  Or is it incredibly not cool.  This running debate about peripheral games, especially coming from a company that’s chock full of legitimate musicians.  Do we want to support people to go out there and play Guitar Hero, or do we want to support people to go out and play guitar?  The mission statement of Harmonix is,”We bring music to people that wouldn’t necessarily stumble across music.”  We’ve gotten a lot of e-mail from people explaining to us that the reason they bought a PS2 was to play Karaoke Revolution.  We actually are selling PS2s to people that are not into normal shoot-em-up games.  They’re looking for something to play with a bunch of people that they can play in a creative way.

GI:  Speaking of Karaoke Revolution, you just added the dance pad and the EyeToy to the mix.  Where else can you take Karaoke Revolution outside of making sequels and adding more licensed music?

Sussman:  There’s tons of stuff you can do from a design standpoint but really when you get down to it, that whole series is about people singing songs.  There are only so many bells and whistles you can put on a good karaoke game.  I feel that that whole franchise has done a pretty good job of really staying true to the core.  Which is, you want fun songs to sing, and you want a framework that can allow you to sing those songs in a fun way.  That’s really what that needs.  I think what you’re looking at is these games are going to get bigger and better and more songs and more character parts, and whatever else – mini games.  I don’t think that that franchise calls for a tremendous amount of innovation. 

Sing as loud as you want!  Karaoke Revolution is a neighbor favorite!

GI:  What about the digital delivery of music for that type of game?  Kind of like an iTunes sort of delivery experience where for 99 cents I can add this track. 

Sussman:  That is huge.  That way people can go out and really customize their experience.  With 50 songs or 35 songs – however many songs – you’re always just kind of pigeonholing your games, and it’s very undesirable.  Let people play whatever music they want.  Allowing people to go online and pick the music they want from a playlist that’s a huge thing.

GI:  EyeToy: AntiGrav is a departure from the traditional music game you guys normally make.  Are we going to see more diverse projects from Harmonix in the future?

Sussman:  I hope so!  EyeToy: AntiGrav was a very fun project to work on just because it was different, and we got into things like physics which isn’t something we normally deal with.  I think we were really drawn to that title because it was something that wasn’t really done before and it was using a peripheral that had huge potential for gaming.  25 years into the future – who knows what will be happening?  We felt that using the EyeToy just build that connection between you and the game was very exciting.  As a company we’re totally open to working on innovative design.  So who knows what the future will bring.

GI:  What do you think of the Revolution controller, and would you like to work with something like that.

Sussman:  That is totally exciting.  I have no idea how we’d use it or what we’d do with it but it would be awesome.  I just love the fact that we’re getting something new.

GI:  How do you choose musical tracks?  Is it a brainstorming session?  In the case of Frequency and Amplitude, does Sony say, “Hey we’ve got Sony Music.  Here’s our library.”

Sussman:  Everybody has got opinions on what is going to play well.  Frequency a lot of that music was chosen when I got there.  But even still it was very much a homegrown project, and I know Josh Randall and Kasson had a lot to do with the songs that got in. That game was a full-on electronica title.  So they knew that leg of the music industry quite well.

For Guitar Hero, working with Red Octane was kind of a dream.  It was very much a collaborative process where I was worried they’d come in and they’d have these hard and fast opinions on what would work and what wouldn’t.  They didn’t.  Not that they didn’t have opinions – they did, but they didn’t try to force their opinions over on us.  We spent a good two months coming up with a list of 900 songs that we wanted to go after, and we whittled that down.  There were things that we wanted to get that we didn’t.  Our game is sorely missing the Van Halen, AC/DC, Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin.  You know, big time rock Guitar Hero bands.  Those were at the top of our list.   Licensing music is really random.  Sometimes you don’t get the things that you want, and I know Van Halen and Zeppelin don’t like to give their music out.  That’s their call, but it hurts our game.

GI:  Now do you approach labels on this or do you work with record reps?

Sussman:  We have a licensing guy that we hire to go through the publisher.  It’s all done through publishing.  The most frustrating thing about it, and there’s actually a funny guitar hero story there – a lot of times the band has no idea that were going use their song.  It’s all done by the publishing people and it’s a pure financial business. If you pay them enough money they’ll let you use their song.  It’s some random person making the call.  Eruption is too expensive and it’s going to cost us more than we’re willing to spend.  We had Zakk Wylde contact us after he found out about our game, kind of randomly.  He went to his management people and said, “Why am I not on this game?  This is perfect for me.”  And it is.  He’s one of the true legitimate guitar heroes out there.  He came to us, and said, “Hey I want in, and you can have the song for free, and you can use the license of my guitar,” which we would have had to license.  Speaking from history it was easier to license songs for Amplitude than it was for Frequency because we had Frequency to show people how things worked, and there was a mini-franchise there to build on.  I’m hoping that if we’re lucky enough to do Guitar Hero 2, people in the rock world will be aware of what we’re trying to do, and they’ll know, hey, it’s good for Aerosmith to get “Walk This Way” on the game.

EyeToy: AntiGrav will surely give your arms a workout

GI:  I know this is a pre-mature question considering the game hasn’t even shipped yet, but any thoughts on what you didn’t get to fit into Guitar Hero that you’d like to see in a sequel if the original does well.

Sussman:  It was a really short development period.  We had to make this game from start to finish in nine months, and we didn’t have the controller for most of it.  We were treading water for a while.  So there was a lot of stuff that got cut from this title that we’d love to be in the next one.  Stuff like a Practice mode, where you can go in and set a range of bars to practice.  We don’t have anything like that.  Better deeper multiplayer modes where you play cooperatively and two players can compete for one score.  Right now for multiplayer we split each track into chunks and players alternate.  It would have been fun for both players to cut the same song – the whole song the whole way through.  Obviously online play would be a huge feature that I’d love to see – letting players go head to head over the internet.  But that wasn’t even on the table for this one. 

GI:  Outside of Harmonix, most of the companies that make music based games are Japanese developers.  Do you have a lot of Japanese influence in your games?  Did anything from Guitar Freaks influence you?

Sussman:  We have our fair share of hardcore music gamers who work at Harmonix.  And just hardcore gamers.  People who play every single game that comes out, and are just obsessed.  I’m not necessarily one of those guys. But for Guitar Hero when we were kicking around the idea, we played Guitar Freaks.  We had the first one for the PlayStation one, and it looks rather archaic at this point.  It was interesting to see, and it’s always interesting to see how people approach the same kind of design issues that we’ve got to deal with.  There were things that Guitar Freaks did particularly well, and there were things that I thought they didn’t do as well.  Just like any project you take from what you can.  And for game developers it’s in our best interest to see what other people are doing.

GI:  Is there a music game that hasn’t been made yet, that you’d like to see?  And what kind of peripheral would you like to see made?

Sussman:  I don’t know.  I think personally, where I’m coming from, I want people out there to get turned on to music through video games.  More than any particular peripheral, I’d love for the music game to be commercially viable project.  I’m kind of waiting for DDR to happen on a much larger scale.  Where all of a sudden there’s beat matching games that really feature music as a central part of the game.  Peripherals are interesting and great but for me, it’s all about the music.  Everything else is an avenue to get there.  I don’t think clarinet hero would be the next big thing.  If that’s what it took, I’d be at the front of the line wanting to make the game.   Personally I’m psyched about Guitar Hero because I think it’s this totally accessible thing.  We have an instrument that people fanaticize about playing.  Everyone fanaticizes about being a full-on rock star.  I think this game hopefully will get out there and touch people and get them to realize music is fun and accessible.

GI:  I would agree with that.  With bongo drums you don’t look as cool as if you were rocking out on a guitar.

Sussman:  The whole Taiko Drum Master stuff is fun, and the Donkey Konga stuff is fun.  But it’s not like people have this fantasy about being the player of the bongos.  Hopefully we’re filling some void where people can get into it and get into it more on a cerebral level – that this is a total visceral experience where people can get in and play music.