Rock Band Creators Discuss Rocky Road to Success
Harmonix employs 320 people, and is responsible for the creation of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, two of the videogame industry’s most successful game franchises. Yet, as founding members Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy reveal, the musical duo had a very rough start, along with numerous failures that ultimately showed them the road to success.
The two met as graduate students at MIT’s Media Lab, Eran an Electrical Engineering/Computer Science major at MIT, and Alex a Music Composition major. The two first built an application where people could use a flight simulator joystick to compose and output music on the fly. In order to continue doing what they loved, they created Harmonix using funds from their friends and family totaling $100,000.
For five years, the group operated without generating any revenue, and a failed attempt at making a karaoke game also made them realize that they didn’t really understand the draw of karaoke games (or music games for that matter). Alex explains how this came about:
“I was watching people interact with our product, and the realization came crashing down on me — we had spent 18 months on a music system that was fundamentally flawed. Karaoke isn’t about personal expression. It’s about people reproducing the songs they know as accurately as they can.”
This realization gave them the drive to make Frequency and Amplitude, two “electronic rhythm-action games” that were built very well but also failed to become big wins for the company. The incredibly addictive music titles became underground hits, but nothing more. And the reason really was that people didn’t understand what the games were about at face value.
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11 Responses to “Rock Band Creators Discuss Rocky Road to Success”
I tired poping into harmonix’s cambridge studios the other day to gather some exclusive tidbits for our psls readers. Unfortunatly they are invite/appointment only and don’t allow drop ins (I’m on my honneymoon by the way visitng boston). I was shocked to see how small their office is for such a famous gaming studio, they actually share a building with harvard (can’t remeber what college of harvard its shared with).
Rockband > Guitar Hero. And there is a reason for it. No rehashes of the same games, refreshing gameplay, overall better looks and feel, etc.
and here i am thinking, they just saw Taiko no Tatsujin *which is HUGE in japan, and i still believe to be better than both series*, and thought… People love Guitars why not rip off this game… and that was how Guitar hero started, then someone said… “people love playing the drums like an idiot too!” and Rockband was made =P
Honeymoon in Boston? Sweetness!
I remember playing Amplitude demo on the ps2 Network Adapter disc….good times
Now if only I cared about the beatles… O_o
Typo “$100,00″
@makai I love the beatles. But I think it’s too expensive. It’ll be a great gift for my dad too. Now, if only he has a PS3. o_O
Good to see they have humble beginings to reflect on while they are currently wiping their asses with 100 dolla bills now.
interesting read.
RB ALL THE WAY…FTW!!!! c me son… PS ID – SpeCtR …. i loved amplitude and frequency…gimme an old ps2 controller and pop that bad boy in!! someone drum me down!