Exclusive Artist Deals In Rhythm Games Not Good?Exclusive Artist Deals In Rhythm Games Not Good?
Rhythm games are the new FPS for a lot of gamers, a broader audience of gamers, and the market is thriving and demanding new titles. Harmonix and Activision are at the front of the battle with Konami following a bit behind but still contending (we think) very soon.
Each company plans to up each other with cooler instruments, tighter controls and new in-game options and multi-player fancies. It’s a business and each competitor tries to gain a lead by whatever means needed to win… or do they?
Harmonix stops short when it comes to purchasing exclusive rights to music artists, for now at least. Harmonix’s Eric Brosious went on blogger record saying, “We prefer not to sign exclusive deals with artists because while it seems like the competitive “business” thing to do, in the long run, it’s really not good for anyone. We think we should be working to get more music out to more people.” (kotaku)
As Marky Mark once said, we need “Music for the people” not for in-game exclusives making us choose between Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles. We’ve seen what EA has done to the football franchise by taking control of the NFL roster, money talks and the best game doesn’t always win.
If Activision decides to buy up a ton of great exclusive content and you’re a rock band gamer, you’ll lose out in a ton of great content. For some gamers, that might mean losing out in some artists you’ve never heard before which also means the artist loses out in new fans. We’ve seen younger gamers fall in love with the sounds of Boston and The Police, bands famous way before the birth of many of the Rock Band fan base.
You can tell Harmonix is a development group with roots in music while Activision is a development group with their roots in business. While exclusive access brings you an advantage, in terms of broadening the culture of music, it does very little. Harmonix may be in the right but will that matter in the end when business deals hit the table?
p.s. sorry about the Marky Mark reference, but it had to be done. Bringing out a bit of my own childhood there…
Diablo 3 Lead Designer Jay Wilson sat down with 
Gating the users ability to heal is a classic RPG/Adventure game mechanism for changing the playing field in terms of difficulty. You can make a game with weaker enemies in abundance and still cause you harm, take a look back at Gauntlet in the arcade for an example of this method. You can build challenging enemy styles and dungeon traps to cause the player to mind their step, look at the classic Zelda series and some of their crazy enemies. A great example is the Darknuts from The Legend of Zelda, it was a small knight that could only be attacked from behind but had a sharp little dagger if you bumped them from the front. You had to use tactics to wipe out a full room of Darknuts.
Imagine that, the USD $139 Gears of War 2 bundle includes a life-sized plastic gun that goes “zoom zoom bang.” It comes with a removable handle clip and an adjustable side-handle but… in the end… it’s a plastic toy gun manufactured for adults.
It was April of 2008 when we saw Assassin’s Creed show up on the PC, however in early February the game appeared on Internet pirate sites causing an estimated 700,000 downloads of the pirated copy of the game. The disc-copy manufacturer has assumed responsibility of the issue after finding an employee in possession of one of their copies of Assassin’s Creed at their home.
There has been many debates on the graphic level of Diablo 3 and how it should be different. Finally a developer comes out and says “um, no.” Their reasoning is fairly simple, it’s one thing to photoshop up a screenshot with some filters but it’s another to get the texture and lighting to run at that detail on a standard computer.
Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have great visions for their consoles, they all strive to stand out from their competitors. Nintendo’s key initiative is to get non-gamers on board and provide the world with something a little different while Microsoft’s concept is to get a 360 into the hands of all gamers and build a huge community. Sony’s selling point? Graphics.
UK developer David Braben from 
As Bob Dylan once wrote, “The times they are a-changin'” and id Software may be ready to change with these times. They’re talking at Quake Con about both DOOM 4 and their next title Rage (a first person shooter car driving game) both utilizing the same engine, the Tech 5 engine, and being developed simultaneously.
Now here is another interesting video game for the Atari 2600, the game Dragon Fire consisted of two game screens, one which you ran across a bridge while fireballs were shot at you, you had to duck or jump over the fireball. This screen was a side-scroller style screen (although it doesn’t actually scroll), at the other end of the bridge was a castle door which you’d enter to get to the next screen.
When you finished collecting all the treasure an exit would pop up in the corner and you had to run to it without being burned by the fireballs, that dragon would turn from left to right nearly instantly too! Then, you’d jump into the exit and be back on the bridge again, but this time it was harder. You could die up to 7 times before the game was over (just to show you how hard it is, they gave you a bunch of lives).
There is room to grow in the world of massive multiplayer online gaming. A large online community should not have to subscribe to a monthly charge to play great MMORPG’s because there are other known models that work, including the micro-transaction based MMO.