Thanks to NoD for compiling and arranging this Q&A!
The community team has culled together a number of questions asked by Harmonix fans on the RockBand.com/forums. We were able to nail down a number of HMX employees (despite their busy schedules working on Rock Band 2!) for answers to some of those questions.
Q: In regards to the team that makes the DLC, how many hours a week do you work? I mean it seems that sometimes you guys may forget what sunlight is based on how many songs we get.
A1: Heather Wilson: The team has a grown a lot since we started putting out weekly DLC. For the most part we work really hard to give everyone a normal week. When we are working on a project as well as DLC we have to crunch sometimes, which means a few 11 hour days and possibly a Saturday or two. Thankfully this is kept to a minimum. The main goal is to keep the team happy so that the tracks stay fun.
A2: Jeremy Bridge: Unless we have a crazy deadline, just a basic 40 hour week, we’ve got a pretty big department these days.
A3: Jeff Allen: Sound engineers hate sunlight by default. Most workweeks work out to be borderline normal, unless we’re working on an especially big project. But if we feel like keeping out of the sun, we prefer to stay at work anyways to get schnockered and discuss our favorite Rock Band note colors.
A4: Izzy Maxwell: Yes, we put a lot of work into each week's DLC, but have almost tripled the size of the audio team so most of us only have to work regular 40 hour weeks, though. For the Rock Band Disc, all the guitar and bass were authored by Devon or me. Now we have a team of 9 working on guitar and bass every day. We also moved to a nicer office where we have huge windows... which helps with the sunlight =)
Q: Out of all the aspects of song creation for the game, including licensing, charting, in-game graphics, and character movements (among others), what part of the process is the most frustrating, and what part takes the longest?
A1: Heather: Licensing is definitely the longest part of the process. There are multiple groups that have to approve the use of each track including the band, the band’s management, and their label. The character movements are built into the system now because we are developing for an already released platform, Rock Band. So it’s a matter of the person working on the authoring deciding on the intensity of the song, or part of song, and selecting the correct animations. The most frustrating part is working on a song that is a challenge musically, then again those tracks are also the most rewarding when they’re finished because when they turn out to be fun and people tell us they like them it’s like, “wow, that was totally worth it!”
A2: Jeremy Bridge: The Grateful Dead [was a nightmare to author].
A3: Jeff Allen: Licensing is a nightmare! That’s why I’m glad to be on the drum team. Authoring the drummer animations can be painstaking but watching the little drum goblin perform them never ceases to fill me with awe and fear.
A4: Izzy Maxwell: Authoring the guitar is the most time consuming part of the process. Depending on the song (and the authorer’s musical taste) this can either be the most fun and rewarding, or difficult and frustrating experience. I, for example, stayed late working on the NIN pack, ‘cause I love those songs so much - I wanted every little thing to be perfect. There was one pack in particular (I won't mention which one, but let's just say it rhymes with Hateful Shed), that made me want to quit my job...
Q: How about some info on how the success of DLC has changed the process? Is it mostly the same? Has licensing become easy enough where you can’t code the available songs as fast as they are licensed? When there’s a band that you’ve had success with in the past, is it pretty easy to get another song?
A1: Heather: The process of making a track has become a bit more streamlined because we are working on them so frequently. We’ve also divided up into mini-teams based on track parts. We used to have everyone work on everything but now team members can specialize. Bands will often send us more than one track when they send stems. It’s really cool to be able to choose which tracks we want to use when. In those situations we will license more than one track at the time we’re ready to use them.
A2: Jeremy Bridge: The biggest difference is that we don’t have to chase artists too much anymore. We’ve made something special and musicians want to be involved in it. We get a wider variety, bigger names, hipper names, and more masters than we know what to do with! The only other difference is the quick turnaround time on everything, but we’ve got a pretty tight audio team and killer DLC QA to make that happen.
A3: Jeff Allen: The need for constant DLC has created the need for a much bigger team. On previous titles our audio team was maybe two people. We now have entire guitar/drum/vocal teams! This also ensures fresh ideas and keeps the 2 or 3 audio peeps from strangling each other.
Major label bands that approach us with pre-prepared tracks are much more likely to get in the game, since securing masters is often a big hurdle. And yet we are also careful to not slack by publishing the same band over and over again.
A4: Izzy Maxwell: I don't know much about how DLC has affected licensing, but it does now give us the chance to do things we wouldn't do on disc, like release an entire album (which I think is very cool), or spotlight a band that isn't that big but is a favorite of ours. It also means that we're constantly working. We had to come up with a lot of new systems for finalizing songs. For the Rock Band disc we had months to play and listen to songs, deciding if we like how it was authored and mixed. Now we have about a week to mix, author, and finalize each song. A few little mistakes have slipped through, but we try to take time to examine every song each week.
Q: Which DLC song or pack was the team most excited about?
A1: Heather: The team loves working on full albums. It’s really satisfying to be able to take a completed work and turn into something else that adds to it. Besides that different people get excited about different bands and tracks. Favorite bands or tracks are always fun to work on. I was most excited about the “Still Alive” release because it’s a fun song, we got to work with another developer, and I am huge fan of Jonathan Coulton. Not only that but getting to offer the track for free was a great way to say thank you to all of our players.
A2: Jeremy Bridge: Boston was definitively killer! Aside from how exciting it was to be able to work on such a huge band, the tracks were pristine. There were no flubbed notes, no vocal cracks, nothing but brilliant, unadulterated musicianship. Aside from that, NIN and the Pixies are at the top of my list, just because they’re two of my favorite bands and it’s always cool to hear your heroes raw.
A3: Jeff Allen: I think the full album downloads tend to excite the team the most, not only b/c of the quality of music (Priest, Cars, Pixies), but b/c with the albums we’re finally seeing the Rock Band dream coming to fruition – letting the player experience the emotional ebb and flow of an entire album as it was meant to be heard, but with the added intensity of getting right inside the music…. Yeah!
A4: Izzy Maxwell: I was most excited about the NIN pack, because they are one of my favorite bands, but I think the Boston pack songs are the best for gameplay.
Q: What percentage of your “8 hour work day” is actually spent in the back room “QA testing” songs for release? Also, how can I get that job?
A: Matt Clement: Well, first of all, I don’t work in a back room, but more of a glorified hallway. Secondly, I’m a QA lead on DLC, which means I create test plans and make sure any issues with upcoming DLC songs are checked out and fixed. So, in the end, I spend 2-3 hours of my workday “QA testing” DLC tracks for release. Other testers, though, spend up to 6 hours on an average day testing. Note that there’s a significant difference between “testing” and “playing”. When testing DLC, we don’t pick and choose which songs to play, we test EVERY DLC track that gets released on EVERY instrument, EVERY difficulty and EVERY mode of play. That means that I often have the privilege of playing or singing the same track dozens of times. Having songs stuck in my head is merely an occupational hazard.
If you think you’re cut out for QA testing, ask yourself a few questions. Do you have excellent attention to detail? How about a good work ethic? Are you passionate about gaming and/or music? If you’ve ever managed to find bugs while playing your favorite video games, and answered yes to the above questions, QA testing might be your bag. If you’re interested in applying, head to http://www.harmonixmusic.com and click on the “Jobs” link. In the meantime, keep rocking your face off!
Q: Compromises are always made when deciding which features to include so that the product can get out in a timely manner. Can you tell us about any features that you would have liked to have included but couldn’t? If you can’t mention such features because you want to revisit them and keep it secret, were there any features orc concepts that you implemented, tested, and then realized that they sucked hard? If so, can you humor us with those?
A: Dan T: Oh man, where do I start!
My "changes" wish-list after Rock Band 1 was very similar to the feedback we saw on RockBand.com (characters can play any instrument, solo & online band world tour, bands don't have a character as a leader, solutions to Metallica and GGHT showing up in random setlists), but there's also a couple of other things I'd like to try. I want to find a way to have a Bass Tour, but without having to play through 40 simple songs to get to 20-30 awesome songs. I also want to find a way to integrate DLC into the game beyond Mystery Setlists and a single venue. I think people will be excited when they’re able to see the awesome ways we implemented changes into Rock Band 2 to address some of these concerns and ideas.
In terms of Rock Band 1 features that we implemented, then cut because they sucked: for a few weeks, we used to send pitch information for singers over the network. This way, if you were singing flat, the master vocalist would also sing flat on all of the remote consoles. It was absolutely hilarious to the point of tears, which probably wasn't a good sign when you're trying to make an authentic band experience. We played with it for a few weeks to try and make it more reasonable, but in the end it was too much like comedy hour and less like an authentic band experience, so we cut it. I'd love to see it come back as a cheat.
Q: How is the decision made as to what ‘tier’ of difficulty a song should fall into? Is it based on a set of playtester’s abilities at the Harmonix offices, or is there some sort of system that you have in place that, for instance, removes certain notes or beats from a chart?
A: Chris C: While it varies a little bit each project, the on-disk setlist order is 80% difficulty tuning and 20% making a good mix tape. First all of the songs are authored up, focusing on Expert. We make a rough difficulty order from these. Then we start swapping and moving nearby songs until we have something that we'd be happy to release as a standalone album outside of the context of the game. It has to click aesthetically and spread genres between as many tiers as possible. And, of course, it has to ramp the player up to be the best darned [Guitarist, Drummer, Vocalist] they can be, without throwing difficulty walls in their way.
We then playtest this, make more changes, and playtest it again.
Generally after Expert order is sorted we back-port the other difficulty levels to match. The exception to this is the first tier or two of Easy. There are just some songs which reduce really well for easy but are actually quite tricky on Expert. Because the first 15 minutes of the experience are the most important, Easy takes priority here. When this happens, two or three songs on Expert might have a few notes removed or intricate fingerings straightened to fit their first-tier status.
Vocals are a little different, in that the player's ability to sing a song is almost entirely dependent upon how well they know it. Thus for vocals we tend to front load the list with songs the player is likely to know, with memorable choruses and verses. It is very subjective, so we get our core team of Harmonix singers to do the first pass, with external playtesters taking up the slack on a second pass.
The difficulty rating for various combinations of two or more band members are derived from the solo difficulties. This uses a secret formula locked in a safe buried deep below MIT, only accessible to Harmonix founders, robotic superheroes, and the interns that actually do the work.
All of this is dependent upon extensive playtesting, of course. For a full pass, we generally get 10 playthroughs of every song in every difficulty level for every instrument. Then we make fixes, and do it again. Each full pass like this takes 400 hours or so of playtester time. The game wouldn't be anywhere near what it is now if it weren't for the people who were willing to come in and spend 4 - 6 hours playing through a campaign alone in a small room. From myself, Jon, Gordon, Matt, and Jyllian (the historical playtest team)... we salute you.
PS… DLC just goes where the authoring team thinks it should go. As it isn’t part of a progression, we don’t usually externally play test it.
