CES 2009: Alex Rigopulos on Harmonix Past and Future

Thu, Jan 8, 2009

When the visionaries of gaming speak, the world listens, and at CES, there are plenty of opportunities to hear from the industry's most influential designers, developers, and more. GameCyte had the opportunity to speak with Alex Rigopulos, CEO of Harmonix, about his company's many contributions to the worlds of games and music, and where he'd like to go next with "Rock Band" and future titles.

Rigopulos offered a number of remarks to CES attendees during his keynote interview at Billboard's Digital Music Live sessions, including the status of the "Rock Band" franchise, and his own personal playing preferences. Gamers shouldn't expect a threequel this year for Harmonix's signature title; the company will instead be focusing on the Beatles game they announced back in October. Of course, with the Beatles now secured, Rigopulos admitted there is still one holy grail of music left to obtain for gaming: Led Zeppelin. No plans or promises were made, but Rigopulos reiterated that, someday, he would like to license the artists in some form.

If any franchise can attain that goal, it may well be "Rock Band," which has not only redefined the music game genre, but has become symbolic of the recent social gaming movement, cited by industry leaders as one of the defining titles that bring players together in the living room. We asked Rigopulos if he had foreseen this level of success, and whether he had expected his game to become such an icon. "I would say, yeah," he replied; "A very big part of the core premise of what 'Rock Band' was supposed to be was our foray into collaboration. With 'Guitar Hero,' and a lot of our other games before that, it had been really more focused on competition, and beating other players, whereas, for the first time, we wanted 'Rock Band' to be about playing as a team, as if you were people, together. So, we very much envisioned it as a social experience, as a party game, with a big group of people in a room, playing music loud, playing together. So it's not surprising."

We asked Rigopulos about Harmonix's long road to "Rock Band," and how the company had come to develop its more immersive peripheral-based titles after having gotten its start with slightly more traditional standalone software like "FreQuency" and "Amplitude." Rigopulos explained that it had definitely been a progression -- with their first few music games published, the company had first dabbled in peripheral-bundled games with Konami's "Karaoke Revolution," and moved from there to adding in the large guitar controller with the original "Guitar Hero." "Doing a band game -- we would have been laughed out of the room by any publishers, prior to 'Guitar Hero.' But once the 'Guitar Hero' phenomenon started to snowball, it became clear that it was time -- the time was ripe to do the game that we'd been dreaming of making for years and years, which was throwing in everything... at that point, we had demonstrated [via 'Guitar Hero'] that if you create a music-making experience that people are psyched enough about, it doesn't matter that the box is big, or that the price point is high. The value is there for them."

That value, indeed, now includes a DLC library over 500 songs strong, and with new artists like Roy Orbison joining the lineup -- not to mention, of course, the upcoming Beatles game -- Harmonix shows no signs of slowing down in its ongoing support for the genre they have helped to define. Still, if "Rock Band" is the game that Rigopulos and his team had "dreamed of making," then what dreams are left for them to pursue? We asked Rigopulos what, beyond ongoing support and DLC for "Rock Band," he'd like to explore next.

"Certainly, for the short term -- for the foreseeable future, the next couple of years -- we feel that there's a lot of depth to still be explored in the core 'Rock Band' platform before branching out," Rigopulos answered. "Looking longer term, I would just say that there's a lot of music out there beyond rock that is of interest to us. That doesn't just mean adding non-rock DLC to the 'Rock Band' platform, but to do it right, whether you're going into hip-hop, R&B, dance music, or whatever. Those different genres of music have design needs which make them a completely different experience."

I, for one, look forward to the day when a washboard peripheral graces my living room.