Compilation of questions answered by HMX (indexed)

[Sayburr]

OK, now that some time has passed, is HMX suffering from the Viacom breakup?

HMXHenry said, Not at all. Since the split we've released content as varied and successful as Nirvana, Yes, Def Leppard, Lady Gaga, Pantera, Poison, Ozzy, Avenged Sevenfold, Kiss, Roy Orbison, etc. We've got plenty of great bands coming up, and plenty of content that was licensed while HMX was an independent company.

[Sayburr]

Has the amount of songs being released be affected by adding keys/harmonies?

HMXHenry said, The songs… from last September required 16 charts, 4 difficulty levels for 4 instruments, Guitar, Bass, Drums and Vocals.

The songs released this September required between 28 and 40 charts depending on the Pro breakdown. That's 4 difficulty levels for Guitar, Bass, Drums and Vocals but also adding Keys, Pro Keys, 2 part Harmonies, 3 part Harmonies, and Pro Guitar and Pro Bass when upgrades are available.

That is, fairly consistently, 100% more charts than were required last year and those Pro charts take substantially longer to put together than the standard 5 button charts.

Some people are quick to forget the days when we would only have 3 songs from a single band in a given week. No keys, no harmonies, no Pro guitar, no RBN and no back catalog to draw from. We've come a long, long way in 4 years, and we've amassed over 3,000 songs in an unbroken streak of 200 weeks of weekly content. Some of those weeks will have 20 tracks from multiple artists and some of those weeks will have 3-4 songs from one artist. There's quite a few 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 packs coming up in the next few months, so there's no shortage of substance on the schedule.

Even if there was a shortage, even if we were only getting 16 pieces of DLC this month, that's still more a lot more DLC than most games will ever see in their entire life span, let alone on a month 4 years into the franchise on top of a back catalog that's unrivaled in console gaming.

HMXHenry went on to say, Of the last 10 weeks of core RB releases, 5 of them have been packs plus singles or just singles. Of the 10 weeks before that, only 1 week featured a single artist. In fact, of all the releases so far this year, there are only 13 weeks of a single artist without at least a single to back it up. We know people like variety and we'll continue to mix it up, just as we have for the last 4 years. Sometimes there will be weeks with single artists, but more often than not, the DLC will be multiple artists, and the DLC in the near future looks to be an almost perfect balance of single artist packs and packs with singles.

And again, because it bears repeating, RBN will continue to add tons of singles to every week, offering more variety in genre and difficulty than any music game out there.

[Sayburr]

So, with no RB4 and all of the focus HMX is giving to other HMX titles, has the focus shifted away from Rock Band for good?

HMXHenry said, With the upcoming release of Dance Central 2, Dance Central DLC and the recent release of VidRhythm we've obviously had other projects on our radar, but that doesn't mean we're not as interested in supporting Rock Band. Our other titles need support too, and with a growing franchise in DC and our first foray into the iOS world, we need to give some additional TLC to the titles that haven't been getting 4 years of consistent weekly DLC.

We've also been supporting RB in other ways, with giveaways almost every other week, additional web content, live Q&As on Twitter, in depth discussions on the podcast, etc.

HMXHenry also said, All I'm saying is that we do a lot to support the RB franchise. Title to title and the franchise as a whole. We're releasing more content than anyone, more regularly than anyone and we've been doing it longer than anyone… It's disheartening to see our dedication criticized when we're supporting RB in ways that no other dev is supporting their franchises.

[Sayburr]

”RBN”, “RBN”, “RBN” is all I hear about, but I have a Wii, where is my RBN?

HMXHenry said, RBN isn't supported on the Wii because the Wii didn't support RBN.

We haven't forgotten that the Wii exists and we're not rubbing it in Wii owners faces any more than we're rubbing DLC in the faces of those without internet connections.

While forum vitriol sometimes makes it seem like Wii users are clamoring for RBN tracks, they weren't buying it when it was available. Given the lack of community support, the limited UGC components and the much more restrictive DLC pipeline, we simply couldn't continue to release RBN content. It's not because we're mean, or because we're spiteful, it's because it literally would not work.

Even without RBN, we're doing things with DLC that absolutely no one else on the Wii is doing. It's hard to think that the Wii has been slighted in some way when they have over 2,000 songs available and the community wasn't buying the songs when we were releasing more.

[Sayburr]

Is there some magical machine that calculates how many people have voted for what at the office? A room full of digital monkey tallying the numbers from the internet?

HMXHenry said, “It's more like an Excel spreadsheet, which is much less exciting than a room full of digital monkeys, but also much more effective for tracking requests (and also less poo).

The Song Request tool at RockBand.com/request is the most effective way for members of the community to suggest songs for Rock Band. Forums are great because they have a sense of scale so we can say "this thread for [INSERT BAND NAME HERE] is like [INSERT LARGE NUMBER HERE] pages long!" but that doesn't ping which songs come up most frequently. Twitter and Facebook are much less specific, so we can say "there's a lot of chatter about [INSERT BAND NAME HERE] this week because of their [PICK: NEW ALBUM, TOUR, ANNIVERSARY, WARDROBE MALFUNCTION]" but it gives us no hard data to work with.

The Request Tool, WHEN USED CORRECTLY, will give us a great snapshot of which bands people are requesting, and most specifically which songs they are requesting. Essentially, each field in the Request form generates a new request. So if you enter a suggestion for Dickie Do & The Don'ts, if there has already been a request for that artist the number in the field on our end will go up by one, but if that's the first time that artist has ever been requested it will generate a new field on our end. The biggest problem with the tool is when people enter multiple artists at once, so If someone requests Dickie Do & The Don'ts, Jerry & The Pace Makers and Abnormality all at once, it won't register as a request for each of them, but it will create a new field assuming that it's just one long band name.

So we have to do a lot of house cleaning on the back end. Example: there are currently over 25 different spellings / entries for Led Zeppelin. It's a lot of work reorganizing the hundreds of thousands of entries we receive, but it's still the most effective way for you to show your support for an artist you want to see in Rock Band.

[Sayburr]

Where are the rest of the Jimi Hendrix albums? [and rumors in general]

HMXHenry said,

While yes, it was never officially announced, it was certainly implied with the Axis announcement that we'd be seeing 3 Hendrix albums and that ELL would be on of them. This is the first time, nearly 2 years later that it's looking like not only is ELL not coming, but it was never planned. Harmonix could of cleared this up right from the start.

They actually comment on rumours a surprising amount now, but not so much when they were owned by Viacom when the original discussion was going on.

The latter may help answer the former, especially considering that none of the quotes in that article come from an HMX rep.

We are freed up to be a lot more open about DLC plans, rumors and speculation now than we were a year, two years, three years ago. We're trying to be more proactive in addressing things as they come up and also set the record straight on lingering issues we weren't able to comment on in the past. If the options are 1) to have us push to be more open and honest in commenting on community issues or 2) never comment on them and just let you wait and wonder forever which would you prefer? We can't change the past (though we're working on that technology) but we can try to change the way some things were handled / not handled previously.

Regarding Hendrix: Yes, we'd love to have more of his stuff in Rock Band, of course. Yes, we continue to have a positive relationship and regular discussions with their camp. Yes, we could potentially see more stuff from him in the future.

Electric Ladyland is not currently on the schedule, but that doesn't mean it won't ever show up, or that some combination or other Hendrix songs won't end up on the schedule at some point. I've already said that we're still in touch about releasing more Hendrix DLC and we maintain a positive relationship.

But we got single off Electric Ladyland so obviously somebody thought about releasing material from EL, shortly after we got Are You Experienced and few singles - that only added fuel to the anticipation of album coming.

Getting one song off an album doesn't mean that the masters for the whole album are available, that the masters are all usable, that the rights holders are willing to license every song from the album, that everyone knows who owns the licensing rights to the rest of the album, that the label wants all the songs in a music game, etc. The answer isn't always "HMX is lazy / stupid".

We're doing our best to avoid any further implications, or suggestions, and squash assumptions and misleading speculation, and I think the press stories, announcements and discussion we've released in the last 6 months have been much more declarative and left less room for misinterpretation. From this point on, if something isn't clear, people should feel free to ask and if it's something I'm able to answer I will, and if it's something I can't answer I'll do my best to explain why.

[Sayburr]

What exactly does, “Not on schedule” mean?

HMXHenry said, The easiest answer is that "not on the schedule" usually means "not any time in the next 6 months". We have a pretty solid DLC schedule for the next 3 months, a more flexible schedule for the next 6 and miscellaneous works in progress, stems or half completed licensing arrangements floating around beyond that.

Obviously, things can change at the drop of a hat, and something that wasn't on the schedule at all last month could now be coming out next month. Same goes for content currently on the schedule, since it could slip further out depending on licensing or label requests to sync with promotions. It's all pretty fluid.

[Sayburr]

How much of a effect DO these boards have on sales?

HMXHenry said, With no direct way to connect forum handles to gamer tags or profiles, there's no information (beyond the anecdotal) that will show us exactly how forum people download songs.

That said, even going off of general perception, it's clear that forum reaction does not correspond to sales, certainly not reliably. There are millions of people playing Rock Band, and even with 500,000 people registered to the forums, it's not often we see more than 1 or 2 thousand of them point in a DLC discussion thread. Meanwhile, there are 2 million people following us on Facebook. Sometimes the forums love something Facebook hates, sometimes Facebook loves something the forums hate.

In the end the forums represent the more hardcore end of the spectrum and the community is much larger than any one of their parts. We won't tailor all the DLC to the forums and more so than we would cater to the more casual Facebook community. We're trying to pull off a balancing act where there is enough content in the catalog to appeal to everyone in the community, not every week, but in the long run.

HMXHenry also said, The Facebook audience prefers packs over singles, and having six different singles doesn't mean that the content will sell more than one small pack. We've got a pretty good handle on what sells, and what resonates with the rest of the community outside of the forums.

[danielnault]

i think you're right by saying there a lot of metal on the RBN, but most of them are underground and not good to ear as big commercial metal bands.

i know big bands may cost a lot in songs rights, but still, i think there a lot of metal fan on rock band, and not enought metal download from rock band 3. i think it take too much time to have awesome metal dlc if you compare to rock.

exemple since rock band 1 like 5 years ago, we only get a best of iron maiden, judas priest, megadeth, disturbed, avenged sevenfold, that's it pretty much

it took a long time before having 2 small pack from roadrunner records which a lot of people probably dying for !!

i just hope we won't have to wait years to get more tracks from slipknot, slayer, children of bodom, killswitch engage, pantera, etc.

i think some of those bands had pack in guitar hero such as inflames & children of bodom, so im sure you guys will think seriously about re-release them.

i love rock as much as metal, but it seem that metal is being ignore a bit by harmonix, cause u can tell metal take a hudge place in the network and in dlc sales, but many underground bands from the network are average and can't be compare to classic metal commercial bands. metal is like the 1/3 of the song in RBN.

peoples definitly hope a lot more of big metal commercial band. i think slipknot, avenged, megadeth, judas priest, system of a down... are a hudge sucess online. when i play online, i can tell they are in the most downloads bands !!

i think there probably a lot more metal fan than country or reggae. i love reggae and country, but people don't own much online. i realize people buy mostly big band from; metal, rock, prog, & punk

we should have a lot more metal & punk

and specially jazz, blues, reggae, urbain and classic which are almost empty in the section

[Bront20]

exemple since rock band 1 like 5 years ago, we only get a best of iron maiden, judas priest, megadeth, disturbed, avenged sevenfold, that's it pretty much

Wow.

First of all, it's only 4 years.

Second, we've gotten 2 albums from Megadeath and Judas Priest (only 2 non-disc (Beatles and Green Day) artists to get 2 I believe), got a huge pack from Iron Maiden, 2 Ozzy packs, 2 Slipknot packs, a pack and an album from Pantara, heck, even a Metallica pack with pro upgrades. Not to mention multiple Disturbed packs, A7X stuff, Coheed and Cambria, and the Meyhem pack. And that's just the stuff I can name (I'm not a big metal head).

There's a good chance if you're judging by friends lists, you'll run into people with similar tastes to you. If not, there's a contingent of players online who love to play and spam only difficult songs to show how good they are at them (which means a lot of metal). Still, songs played online doesn't mean they're not out there. It only takes 1 person to not have a song for a group to not play it.

HMX has been playing it safe to a point with DLC, mostly throwing us big bands and big classic songs, or popular new artists. This means more mainstream stuff, which falls generally into the "Rock" category, or big name metal bands. You can hardly fault them for offering up what sells.

As most RBN authors can tell you, Punk bands seem particularly difficult to sign. There's possibly a good number of them who feel getting in a video game isn't good for their image (it is sort of selling out in the Punk culture, much like going with a big label).

Anyway, why is this in the compilation of answers from HMX section?