Interview with Kai Huang, President and Co-Founder, Red Octane

I sat down with Kai Huang, President and Co-Founder of Red Octane, earlier this week to discuss the upcoming release of Guitar Hero III, how they planned on bringing the title back to the 'mainstream', the increased artist support they've been enjoying, and how Rock Band has altered the landscape...or not.   Enjoy!

Joe Markert, GH: One thing that got lost a bit from Guitar Hero I to II were those ‘gotcha’ songs – the ones everyone knew – that made even non-gamers want to pick up the controller and join in.  What are you doing with Guitar Hero III to address this?

Kai Huang, RO: It has definitely been a conscious thing for us.  We listen to feedback all the time from our fans. What we’ve really done with Guitar Hero III is work on balancing issues – making sure we have those recognizable songs that people are immediately going to pick up and say, “Oh God, I know this song I gotta play it!” to the balance between the difficulty levels – not just from easy to expert, but progression from beginning to end of the game. 

JM: It definitely seems like there are a lot more songs that will connect with general audience out there this time out.

KH: For sure, this mix we’ve got a lot more broadly appealing songs that people are going to recognize.

JM: Do you feel like you’re getting more support from artists now than you did in the beginning?

KH: No question that we’re getting a lot more support.  If you roll this back to just less than two years ago when we rolled out Guitar Hero – going to the artists and saying, “We’d love to have your music in our game?” they were like, “What’s Guitar Hero?” and at the time – we didn’t even have a game to show them.  It was very difficult to get their participation.  Now that they’ve seen what Guitar Hero has become, I mean, we’ve sold between GH1 and GH2 over 4 million units – it’s become a phenomenon.  Artists recognize that – they want to be a part of it.  So now, when we approach them, many have heard of it, played it, played it and liked it, so now they want to be part of the game.

As an example of some of the things that have happened, Slash and Tom Morello, when we brought them in and got them to be part of the game as boss characters, they both have their kids who have played the game already – so when we approached them it was something that had already touched them.

With bands like The Beastie Boys and Living Color they had already heard about it – a lot of these bands have it on their tour buses now - it’s almost like the thing to have..

JM:  No more groupies now – just Guitar Hero

KH:  Yeah, that’s right? It’s all about Guitar Hero [laughs]   So, many have played it, know it, and some of them have come back and said actually, we’ll come back together and rerecord some of this music for you.

JM:  So that’s where you guys got several of the master recordings to work with now?

KH:  Yeah, and actually in this case with Living Color, The Beastie Boys and The Sex Pistols – we’ve got them to come back in the studio and re-record their original songs – so you’ll actually see in the game – rather than 1989 for Living Color – you’ll see 2007, when they actually came back in the studio and even added a couple solos to make the song play a little better.

JM:  Right, because even if they were hit songs – maybe they didn’t play as well?

KH:  Exactly, and so that’s the kind of artist participation we’re getting now and we’re really excited about that.

And then, going forward, we want to continue on that and expand on that.  Something we did this time that was really cool is original music – when Tom Morello and Slash came in we got them to record some original music and this will be the first time fans get to hear that.  So that’s something we think will be a lot of fun and something we want to continue to do.

JM:  And fans of those musicians will want to have the game to hear those new tracks.

KH: Exactly!

JM:  How does having access to the master recordings change development for you guys?  Obviously there’s some time and money saved in not having to rerecord the songs – but does that make your job a little smoother – or is it just a different type of difficulty?

KH:  It’s a different type of difficulty – you know – depending on the type of song and which song it is – with rerecords you have to get the licensing approval, then get it in and rerecord the whole thing and that’s something that takes time – particularly with the quality level that we did in Guitar Hero I and II – and that took a lot of time.

As we move away from that and get the master tracks – we still have to tweak a little bit to get it into a format that can be used in the game.  Clearances can take a little bit longer sometimes as well. So it still takes a lot of time, you’re just spending it in a different “place.”

JM:  How do you get the master recordings?  What format do they give you?

KH:  It really depends – sometimes it’s a 2” multitrack or sometimes they might do all the mixing for us and send us the Pro Tools files.  Just depends on how they want to do it – whether they want to give us the actual music or not.

JM:  One of the biggest questions we’ve been fielding is downloadable support for Guitar Hero III.  We saw a little bit of that in the X360 version but not as much as maybe the fans would have liked.  What are you guys doing to address that with Guitar Hero III?

KH: We’ve got a lot of things planned in terms of downloadable music in Guitar Hero III.  We’re putting a lot of energy behind the downloads for the X360 and the PS3.  Whereas GH II on the X360 was a  bit more measured and paced – with Guitar Hero III I think you’re going to see that songs will be available faster and a lot more [of it.] 

JM:  Do you think some of the difficulty in getting the downloads out has to do with the online platforms and their limitations in terms of “packaging?”  On Xbox LIVE for example – it seems too difficult to release individual songs – whereas on the Playstation Network, granted SingStar is a Sony franchise – but the game will have the SingStore built-in offering individual downloads.  Do you think we’ll get to a point in the franchise where you could grab individual songs or do you think the networks have to get there first?

KH:  I think it’s a really interesting method that Sony has done [with the Singstore].  There are a lot of issues with that - from many angles – which isn’t to say it’s not possible since obviously Sony is doing that with the Singstore but the key issues we’d have to work with are the licensing, and the licensing rights of being able to use a song on one store across multiple games – or – right now for example, we have to license a song for each game.  So even if we use the same song in Guitar Hero II and III – we have to license that twice. 

Then you’ve got platform technology issues to deal with between Xbox Live or PS3 Online.  And lastly there are some things to consider from a business perspective that we have to think about as well - one song versus three song packs – what’s going to work better.

JM:  Will there be downloadable songs on the Wii?

KH:  We won’t.  So on the Wii we have online play but the platform doesn’t support [downloadable content] yet so as soon as Nintendo sets those standards and we have them we’ll make it available.

JM: You hear that Nintendo?  You’ve been challenged!

KH: [laughs] I would also add that we’ve seen a tremendous amount of success so far.  We’ve hit multiplatinum with Guitar Hero II downloads – so in five months we’ve sold over two millions songs – that’s over 650,000 song packs at three songs each and with the My Chemical Romance song pack that came out  last week – we’ve sold over 50,000 song packs for that.  So, another reason we want to push this even further with Guitar Hero III.

JM: So the demand is definitely there.

KH: Definitely. It’s there!

JM:  With Harmonix having gone on and putting Rock Band out into the market – how do you see Guitar Hero III fitting into the scene with RockBand and do you feel it opens more doors for the genre or do you see it as somewhat of a competitor?

KH:  The great thing about this space is it’s still very new – there’s plenty of opportunity for a lot of different players and products.  I don’t really see Rock Band as competition per say – but I feel we’re targeting slightly different consumers.  With Guitar Hero we’ve made a real focus on making it as broadly appealing, as mass market a product as possible – not just for the hardcore gamers but for people who’ve never played games before who will go out and buy Guitar Hero and a Playstation or an Xbox just to play [the game.]  The Rock band experience is a different experience.

JM:  So there’s still the standard PS2 version as well right?

KH:  Oh definitely – we’re certainly not going to abandon that audience and I want to point out that there’s going to be a PC and Mac version available as well.

JM:  So for the PC gamers – what kind of controller will they be using?  Can they just use their existing Xbox 360 Explorer or…?

KH:  We haven’t made any announcements about that yet – but it will be a USB controller that plugs in for now.  As for the X360 wireless – you’ll have to ‘stay tuned’ for that [laughs]

JM:  Online play for PC?  PC to PC or cross-platform?

KH:  [laughs] We’re working out all ‘those issues’ now so again – you’ll have to stay tuned.

JM:  So there’s a chance - a sliver of a possibility that we might see some cross-platform – Games for Windows – play between PC and Xbox 360?

KH: Um, ultimately in the future that’s something we’ll explore. [gives a knowing wink]

JM:  For Mac – it seems we’re seeing a lot of ramped up support for the platform – what drove the decision behind you guys moving in that direction?

KH:  You know, the Mac is really an interesting platform - one of the key reasons why we wanted to support the Mac in this case is Apple is so big with music with their iPod and iTunes store.   And for us this really a potentially a natural fit with that – music and entertainment on that platform so we really wanted to explore the opportunity.

JM: From a development standpoint – is it easier now that the Mac platform has gone Intel – was it easier to get there?

KH: Absolutely?

JM: So I wanted to ask about the in-game ad system on the X360 platform – where do those fit into the game?  And who’s handling the ad delivery?

KH: There are various points in the game – in the venues actually – you’ll notice in the background there are ads in some of the venues.  [For the delivery] we’re working with Massive.

JM: It’s such a big topic of discussion right now – ads in games – I was just curious how that is working out.  It makes sense in the Guitar Hero setting however.  And you guys have already had some licensing going on with the instruments and so on.

KH:  That’s right, and you’ll probably hear this a lot from the development side – but we don’t want to do anything that makes you feel like that shouldn’t be there.  We want to keep it as realistic as possible.

JM: So what’s next for the franchise?

KH:  Well, a couple key things that we’re always focusing on is the music – looking to develop great relationships with the labels and the artists to make sure we get access to the best music – which I feel we’ve started here with Guitar Hero III. 

Something else is accessibility – Guitar Hero as someone said is the new Karaoke – and in order to live up to that we have to make sure Guitar Hero is even easier to pick up and get into  - and it’s already a pretty accessible game.  So it’s  - how can we keep iterating on that to make sure it caters to new gamers as well as the hardcore fans.

Easy to pick up – difficult to master.

JM:  What about up and coming bands – Harmonix brought in a lot of their favorite local groups and gave them a chance to be seen – will we see more of this as the franchise moves forward?

KH:  I think definitely – it’s a lot of fun when you discover new music and that happened a lot with Guitar Hero I and II.  In the future we’d like to make sure we get that iconic music and then kind of mix that up in a fun way with music people haven’t heard before. 

JM:  Dude, so – the Holy Grail – we haven’t seen any Zeppelin yet – what are they holding out for – you got any ideas?

KH: [laughs] We’re doing our best

JM:  Lastly, in looking at NeverSoft – do you feel there was any pressure on their part in taking this franchise over from Harmonix?

KH:  The truth is – we never had any concerns about working with Neversoft.  They have couple things that really work well for them.  First, if you’ve played any of the Tony Hawk games you know they really get music.  And they just get lifestyle – they know how to create games that bring in lifestyle and let you feel a part of that.   And this is key to Guitar Hero.

Looking at this game now - with the new modes, online play and Boss Battles – this game is the best Guitar Hero yet – it’s beyond anything we’ve done before.