CoWmAn’s Profile

I did it. I finally did it. I launched my second Harmonix orientated website! But this one is different, take a read:

http://www.harmonixfans.com

As we all know, Harmonix has "grown" alot in the past 5 years, and with each new video game, comes a great new fansite devoted to a Harmonix game; as of this writing, there's easily 10 with 3 main ones (KaraokeRevolution.Net, ScoreHero.com, FreqRemixes.net). HarmonixFans.Com isn't what you call a "fansite" but rather it's something we at Add Buddy Inc. call a "User-to-Webmaster interactive experiment." We at HarmonixFans.Com have no enemies, rather we have friends. We don't report on Harmonix news, we report on the fansites reporting Harmonix news. We also get in contact with the webmasters and give them some time to express themselves and let their readers know what's up with their site and such.

Features that we plan to heavily use is the "Podcast" and "Interview" features. If you navigate to HarmonixFans.Com you can find two examples of each one. The Podcast is going to split into two (and possibly more) things: One, is the HarmonixFans.Com Artist Spotlight. Each month we traverse our favorite Harmonix games, pick a band, and then see if there's enough freely provided material off of the bands website to produce a 20 minute smorgesborg of music. This allows the user to experience more from bands of the past and present, and also to allow fans to see what's up with the bands. The second thing is part of the "Harmonix Fan Network".

The "Harmonix Fan Network" is something that we envision to be big, and granted we can get the okay from everyone, will be big. Each month we'll do an audio podcast with the owner of a Harmonix Fan site and allow the users to get to know this person. Along with that we occampony it with a 5 question "Getting to know you" interview (This is the example up on the website) to preface the audio interview.

The key goal of the "Harmonix Fan Network" is to at one point have all the fansites say "What's up" and allow us to use our message board to link to their respective message boards, to drive in new users to both sites. This will be a feature that we work on in the future.

The key thing we want our friends to know is that we don't want to steal your hits. Some of the sites are dieing, or lacking activity, and our plan is to get people interested in these hidden gems and to get full-fledged communities back up. If you, or someone you know, has a fansite and they're interested in working with us, give me a shout at tc2001@adelphia.net . I will do my best to get back to you right away.

I hope you enjoy HarmonixFans.Com, as this is a site made for you and has been an idea I have kicked around since ties were severed between FreqRemixes.Net and KaraokeRevolution.Net. I felt that both communities where missing out on potential fans just because of a silly dispute.

So if you have any thoughts, or ideas, let me know! Thanks for reading!

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So I expect you all to visit me and check us out. Believe me it'll be worth it, and who knows? We plan on doing a Podcast on the fans themselves and talking to notable fans from all the websites!!

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

I always see posts that say "Oh, they're going to fail incorporating vocals because they don't know how to do it!" and, I feel that I am one of the more qualified persons to talk about this who doesn't work for Harmonix, as I spent roughly ~3 years on a major website dedicated to another game by Harmonix called "Karaoke Revolution" (we're the first thing on google that comes up when you search for "Karaoke Revolution").  While I don't own the site anymore (http://www.karaokerevolution.net) I do retain some major Karaoke Revolution knowledge. So let's run down the reasons why the "singing" portion of Rock Band will be A-OK:

A: They know how to do this. Remember one key thing, Karaoke Revolution came before Singstar. Singstar, in a way, is a take on Karaoke Revolution, and a easy "slap it together" take on it. When Karaoke Revolution came out, it was easily, EASILY, one of the most technically impressive things we in the "game media" witnessed. Sure it was no VR helmet, but the idea that the game could somehow decipher pitch modulation and give you a score on it, man, it was a great time to be a fan. I'm guessing - and this is pure speculation - that the vocal aspect of Rock Band would take a HUGE ...whats the word...influnce (!) from Karaoke Revolution.

B: A Harmonix member can correct me if I'm wrong, but Karaoke Revolution is the only, THE ONLY, reason you got to see Guitar Hero. This is a blind guess, but after the dissapointing sales of Frequency + Amplitude (BUY THOSE GAMES DAMNIT!) Harmonix had one shot left before going into a full-fledged movie liscenced shovelware house (I kid.), and that shot was Karaoke Revolution, so they damn well poured there hearts into it, and that's why it came out so good. Now obviously, Harmonix are rolling in the dough, and they could probobly buy enough copies of Frequency + Amplitude to convince Sony to make a new one, but there's one thing about Harmonix that you have to realize, and that's that I've yet to see one game that didn't shine with their love and passion that they pack into each one. I can guarantee you that Rock Band won't be anything short of amazing. And that's why you can have the most trust in them.

So, to conclude this, let me show off my Harmonix Historian side and list every Harmonix game so far, in chronological order from newest to oldest:

Guitar Hero 2 (360)

Guitar Hero 2 (PS2)

Guitar Hero (PS2)

Karaoke Revolution: Country (PS2)

Karaoke Revolution: Party (Xbox)

Karaoke Revolution: Party (GameCube)

Karaoke Revolution: Party (PS2)

EyeToy: AntiGrav (PS2)

Karaoke Revolution Volume 3 (PS2)

Karaoke Revolution Volume 2 (PS2)

Karaoke Revolution (PS2)

Amplitude: POD Special Edition (PS2)

Amplitude (PS2)

Frequency (PS2)

The Axe (PC)

EPCOT Games

Thursday, April 5, 2007

My thoughts this morning: "HOWY SHIT". Yes, Harmonix had officially announced (although us at Freq.Com fell onto some information early ;) ) about Rock Band. Initially our hearts sank knowing that it isn't Frequency 3 or something, but as soon as we read it, we loosened up to the idea and now look forward to it.

I think one of the main reasons is that this game lends itself to be a spiritual succesor to Frequency/Amplitude then Guitar Hero led itself to be. We don't know what the game looks like right now, but what says it isn't in a typical isometric camera view like Frequency with beat blasters representing what you press? That'd be pretty tight.

Well, until we get screenshots we can only hope!

Monday, April 2, 2007