 |
 |
|
If you enjoy reading this site, you might also want to check out these Think Services sites:
 Game Career Guide (for student game developers.)
 Indie Games (for independent game players/developers.)
 Finger Gaming (news, reviews, and analysis on iPhone and iPod Touch games.)
 GamerBytes (for the latest console digital download news.)
 Worlds In Motion (discussing the business of online worlds.)
 Game Set Watch (the Group's alt.game weblog.) |
|
|
|
| |
Opinion: Why DJ Hero Can't Save Music Games
by Leigh Alexander
|
|
| |
|
November 4, 2009
|
| |
[Industry watchers say DJ Hero should give the declining music genre, dominated by band game sequels, a much-needed refresh -- but Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander suggests it can't possibly have the same appeal.]
Fatigued of the music genre yet? Some people must be -- sales of The Beatles: Rock Band and Guitar Hero 5 didn't measure up to predictions, and some analysts think consumers are getting tired of plastic instruments. Industry-watchers have suggested that what the genre needs is a refresh -- something other than rock music.
Activision and FreeStyle Games' DJ Hero promises that refreshment, taking the peripheral-equipped music game out of the bandland and onto the turntable. The game's been well-received critically, although it's too soon to tell whether that high praise will translate to sales -- another issue hampering the genre right now is its high cost relative to other software titles.
But assuming consumers are willing to spend more than $100 on a single video game, could DJ Hero revolutionize rhythm games?
Obvious Appeal
On the surface it offers an intriguing proposition. The art of sampling and mixing is far more specific than the broad genre of "rock music;" its associated culture is narrower and therefore easier to draw strongly, and its current incarnation owes credit to a smaller pool of individual scions, many of whom make notable appearances in DJ Hero.
As some game critics have pointed out, that nearly all the playable avatars in the game are living, currently active artists adds tangibility. It may feel much more relevant to DJ culture fans of all levels to play as DJ Shadow or Daft Punk than to resurrect the grim spectre of grunge pioneer Kurt Cobain for corporate rock; the work of contemporary artists is immediately more relatable than, say, the nostalgia value of Van Halen.
And yet, there's a reason rock is broader and more storied than mixing culture. In fact, there are several reasons, but rather than launch into a history of rock and roll's relationship to the humanities, let's look instead at what it is about rock that helped Guitar Hero and Rock Band launch the music game boom -- and, arguably, reshape the face of video games for a new audience.
Aspirational Fantasy
Certainly rhythm games existed prior to plastic guitars, most notably with the work of Parappa progenitor Masaya Matsuura. But the peripheral craze hit at just the right time -- game design had learned that those intimidated by traditional button-mashing could have an entirely new experience with gesture simulation on the Wii, paving the way for the explosion of approximated instrument-playing with controllers that resembled real-life objects.
The advent of Guitar Hero let entirely new audiences tap into a near-universal fantasy. Whether video game fan or not, how many people have never once rocked out on air guitar, fingers twiddling in time to a fierce electric solo?
It's that fantasy of rock stardom, of guitar-god status, that charmed audiences and popularized music games. Rock Band expanded it further, adding the social element of group play and addressing another near-universal fantasy: Who hasn't thought fleetingly of starting a band with friends, wished for instrumental skill with which to own the stage?
That both games incorporated a progression from backwater to stadium also played a role in imbuing audiences with a sense of power -- one could even argue that it's the peripheral effects, like radiant star power and fans that scream just as the playing gets good, that truly make the experience.
Rock Band and Guitar Hero took a culturally universal experience -- seeing live music -- and let players try on transcending the audience role to take the stage, an empowerment that played a greater role in the games' success than song lists and celeb rockers.
Alone In The Booth
By contrast, being a DJ is something of a lonely art. At a DJ show, the mix master is quite often sequestered mostly out-of-sight in a booth, or elevated above the crowd, concealed behind the high walls that house his equipment. Crucially, nobody goes to a DJ show primarily to see the artist. They go to dance to his music. The spectacle is often laser lights or synchronized visual algorithms, not people. And if the DJ is doing his job and spinning a great party, his audiences are likely to forget he's even there.
Even hugely popular rock and indie bands that rely primarily on equipment effects rather than instruments -- take Animal Collective, for example -- have more subdued concerts than traditional bands. Who wants to spend a lot of money on a show ticket to watch guys stand still, bent over knobs and dials, heads down and twiddling away?
Mixing music is an art of technical craft and intellect, not of performance -- yet it's the desire to perform and the energy associated with it that's driven the success of music games in the past. In the case of DJ Hero, "empowering the audience" means taking them out of the high-octane party space of the dance floor and putting them into an environment of quiet concentration, alone with the beats.
That's not necessarily unappealing, but it's certainly going to be relevant to far fewer people than band games are. Think about how many people have wished they were career rock stars, and contrast that with how many people have wished they were up close and personal with a turntable -- not just for a few minutes of experimental wicka-wicka-wicka, but as a lifestyle.
Beat Generation
Of course, it's somewhat narrow-minded to say "everyone wants to be a rock star." The words we're overlooking here -- "urban youth" -- are a little bit tacky, and companies don't generally like to admit it as a target market, nor risk looking un-PC by generalizing about that segment's tastes.
But in general, for young ethnic males living in cities, the aspirational culture revolves around rap and hip-hop, not wailing guitars. The music of their cultural history owes far more of its roots to funk and house, less to big hair and flannel.
For this market -- who also tend to be big consumers of video games -- it's hard to argue that DJ Hero isn't more relatable than Guitar Hero, or at the very least, that a soundtrack featuring 50 Cent and Rihanna is preferable to Sonic Youth and Muse.
But even then -- even if that market would much rather be Grandmaster Flash than Tom Morello, and would rather hear 50 Cent samples than Aerosmith tunes -- the appeal of playing a music game, again, owes more to the fantasy experience of performing than it does to its music and its artists.
Players who'd like to be closer to 50 Cent want to live out Fitty's rise from the tough streets to champagne fame, beefing with haters and impressing impresarios along the way. They want to start off freestyling in an underground club full of close-knit admirers and end up blowing up the charts, dominating a stadium where all hands are in the air.
They probably don't want to end up head-down in the DJ booth when all the partying's going on outside it. Who would?
DJ Hero may offer rhythm games to an entirely new swath of music fans, including historically underserved markets. And it may broaden the genre with an entirely new kind of offering, refreshing after years packed with Guitar Hero sequels and spinoffs.
But it can't match the success of past band games -- and if it's true the music genre is declining, it definitely can't save it.
|
| |
|
|
How do we know that the digital crowd cheering when you do well or watching your avatar perform in front of a packed house are important factors at all? Maybe it's not the fantasy of being a rock star that gets people to play these games, but just the fun of attempting to play an instrument.
Anyone who goes to a guitar store - whether they're musically-inclined or not, will generally take an instrument off the wall and give it a spin, and not because there's a crowd of adoring fans to watch them.
So maybe it's not so important that the player has aspirations of being a member of sonic youth or being 50 cent. Assuming that a broad demographic likes hip hop music, which billboard charts attest to, then I think they would be just as likely to pick up DJ Hero as Guitar Hero.
But I think DJ Hero will fail for a different reason. I think the controller appears too complicated. With the 3 buttons and the 2 toggles, it's more of a machine than an instrument. Furthermore a DJ turntable is a foreign concept to most people, while a guitar is commonplace. I think the controller's complexity will repel the same people repelled by traditional x360 and ps3 gamepads.
I may be wrong, but these new Guitar Hero spinoff games need to be marketed to highlight their unique features so we can decide if they're worth buying.
If the author played DJ Hero and has something to say about it in relation to its playability or enjoyability, or cost, then go for it. I'll read that one. But on its own this article and comes off as some kind of lame critical pot-shot at the industry. I'd like to see something written on this game with a lot more specificity and care, especially if Activision was willing to back it with a large budget.
DJ Hero is merely a knock-off of the arcade game Crackin' DJ/2. As for the music genre, I wonder why the genre continue to have legs in the arcades compared to consoles...must have something to do with the unique experiences arcades offer when it come to gameplay.
Guitar Hero's success had a number of factors at hand - it was the cumulation of Harmonix's progression to make increasingly marketable music products, it avoided traditional music game emphasis on difficulty progression and perfectionism, it had a much, much stronger songlist than anything that had come out in North America previously. "Being a rock star" is just the concept, and in theory, Konami's GuitarFreaks already did that. But - without even taking into consideration that GF never got an official release here - if you look at the execution of the two, Guitar Hero is hands-down more appealing to a casual, English-speaking audience.
DJ Hero doesn't capture the same appeal - it's a more technical, perfectionistic game again, with a really complex basic controller: three buttons linked to a spinnable turntable, and a fader used in left, right, and center positions(but with no "snapping" behavior, which is extremely annoying). In play it does feel more like "being a DJ" than Beatmania's 5/7 keys and turntable, but if you're going down that route, the gameplay could have been perfectly adequate with no buttons at all. And the level design, at least from the demo I played, seems to lack "groove." While some rhythm is being followed, I couldn't find anything to lock into and repeat in the way that GH songs would have you repeat a note pattern multiple times. I played two sessions, each one spanning at least 15 minutes, and while I did get better at the game, the moment where I felt "freed" from the controls never occurred - it was awkward, start to finish.
The real issue with DJ Hero, I think, is that we aren't innovating *enough* on the interface in this genre yet. The general idea of having the player play karaoke-style over a preplanned music track is as solid as ever, albeit a saturated one within the rock genre, but we're stuck with the interface mindset of "fake versions of real instruments that resemble the originals," which really isn't necessary - the fake instruments are a good marketing hook, sure, but it's the buttons, knobs, dials, sensors, etc. that actually engage the player with the game, and people still have tons of trouble even with the five-button-and-strum GH controller.
If we keep doing new music games, some breakthrough in this area is bound to occur, and I see games like DJ Hero as a transitional stage where finally, we're moving beyond button-only gameplay, adding things and trying them out and totally failing before finding the necessary refinements for a better experience.
Maybe I'm overreacting because I'm really immersed in DJ culture, but assertions like "Mixing music is an art of technical craft and intellect, not of performance" and "Crucially, nobody goes to a DJ show primarily to see the artist." really make me think that you've never seen a great DJ perform. The truth is, nobody, least of all people who would go to a show prominently featuring a DJ, "wants to spend a lot of money on a show ticket to watch guys stand still, bent over knobs and dials, heads down and twiddling away."
I also think you're overlooking the fact that hip-hop culture grew up around the DJ as much as it did the MC. Even with a lot of hip-hop artists like Jay-Z or "Fitty Cent", you may not know their DJ's name when you go to the show, but after you've been there for a bit there's no way you can deny their importance to the act and to the music.
The fact that DJ Hero is only a single-player game unless you play the abysmal "DJ vs Guitar" mode is what's going to kill most of the sales for the game, since there's no real method or incentive to get this game to play with friends. Single player rhythm games will always, always be inherently more niche than a game that's easy to play with your friends. That's where the real problem lies, not with your assertion that nobody really wants to be a DJ.
"And if the DJ is doing his job and spinning a great party, his audiences are likely to forget he's even there. "
Sure, I'll buy that's often the case -- there are a lot of fairly subtle psychological manipulations a DJ is doing if they're any good.
But if he's really on the top of his game, and picked just the right song, mixed in just right, at the right moment, oh boy, do people ever notice the DJ. In my admittedly brief career as a DJ I only experienced it a few times, but you masterfully mix in just the right song at the right moment and it's like you just gave everyone in that room an orgasm. They'll turn to face you with facial expressions of awe that say "You are a God." I'm not kidding-- I've seen almost the entire crowd on the dance floor do that to me. It's a rush.
You'll also get a fair amount of flirtatious attention from the opposite sex and free drinks, which is certainly fun.
Granted, rock stars get all of that and probably far more often-- but the DJ isn't without his moments of glory worthy of fantasy.
And as for the performance side of DJing, DJ Hero appears to be far more about it than I ever did as a real DJ-- I never worked with turntables and so certainly never scratched any records, and the only mixing I did was to mix song A to song B. To me, DJ Hero is far more fantastical and performance-based than my actual experiences with the subject matter. They made it far more of a musical performance game than I would have -- real DJing actually does feel like a game in my opinion, but more like some kind of turn based strategy game of carefully selecting your next move and calculating the system's reactions to your every decision, not as a more hectic, musical jam session sort of performance experience. Of course, they didn't go that direction to try and ride the music game trend wave-- fair enough.
Have yet to pick up and play DJ Hero yet to give it a more proper assessment-- hopefully will get to soon.
I missed that and passionately disagree. I've been professionally involved with electronic music/DJ culture since 1991, currently managing the main stage for the largest electronic music festival in the US (www.demf.com), getting over 80,000 paid attendees anually to celebrate DJ culture, and managing smaller events throughout the year. While DJ's don't get the fans that mainstream musicians (like Metallica) do, there are still droves of fans who will drive 15+ hours for the chance of seeing their favorite artist. ...and that's here in the US. In Europe, DJ's play larger venues than mainstream rock acts do, and much of the mainstream youth there may be more familiar with artists like Richie Hawtin or Dave Clarke than they are what we would consider mainstream pop music here. 100% bogus and unfounded comment for sure!
On a wider note - personally I love music games, I've been playing DJ Hero for about a week now, and while I really would never listen to any of this music away from the game, the game itself and the music it contains make for immensely enjoyable play sessions. It's just really fun, even without a predisposition towards dance music and electronica - go figure.
I've got to say, I think Leigh's missed a point here. Music games aren't JUST about strutting and performing centre stage (otherwise drumming in music games would be no fun, lets face it); they're about feeling like you're making music. The game is definitely performance-based, and like any music game, when the music sounds great it makes me feel great and as if I'm responsible for it. DJ Hero manages to do that very well, it makes you feel cool-as-**** when you're spinning your deck and switch-swooing your fader between the tracks. At no point did I think 'Yeah, but I'd rather be listening to this than playing it, because DJ's miss the party". DJ's feel the reward of music creation, and that's the core of what music games really try to emulate.