The wandering minstrels from the far-off realms of Harmonix and MTV Games have announced next week’s Rock Band DLC, and it’s “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Originally promised last month, Destructoid shared the news today that the band’s iconic album would be making its interactive debut next week, at a cost of $19.99 (1600 MS Points or, well, $19.99 on PSN). Including the 16 additional tracks on this album, this will make 20 total RHCP songs that are playable in Rock Band games — Dani California having appeared in RB1, Give it Away included in RB2, and Snow ((Hey Oh)) and Tell Me Baby already available as DLC. Needless to say, if you’re a Chili Peppers fan, your game of choice should be obvious, though perhaps someday the band will appear in the Guitar Hero franchise — perhaps if, as per Bobby Kotick’s tongue-in-cheek(?) suggestion, the band were to pay Activision for the privilege.
Spotted at Kotaku, Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has been trading jabs with Warner Music Group’s Edgar Bronfman, Jr., and in an interview yesterday with the Wall Street Journal, Kotick delivered this retort:
When you look at the impact [Guitar Hero] can have on an Aerosmith, Van Halen or Metallica, it’s really significant… so much so that you sort of question whether or not, in the case of those kinds of products, you should be paying any money at all and whether it should be the reverse.
The point is often made that appearing in a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game can really drive music sales, especially for lesser-known artists, so Kotick’s point about the value his games are bringing to the artists is well-taken. Of course, then he goes one step too far:
The bulk of our consumers will tell you they’re not purchasing the products based on the songs that are included. They’re purchasing based on how fun the songs are to play when they’re playing them.
Yyyyyyeah, that’s not true. If that were the case, Bobby, we’d all be playing Guitar Freaks right now, which beat both Guitar Hero and Rock Band to the punch by years. The basic mechanical experience of Guitar Freaks (number of buttons and UI choices aside) is identical to its successors, but we all started playing Guitar Hero because it used familiar, classic, American music. Let’s set aside the hypothetical argument about whether a Guitar Hero game that contained only unknown, unlicensed music would sell well (pro tip: it wouldn’t). We can point, instead, to this simple fact: Every Guitar Hero or Rock Band title, in its on-disc library, contains at least one song that one particular gamer does not care for. The rest of the tracklist usually more than makes up for it, but you know it’s in there. How many times, after beating the song once in order to progress through the game, did you go back and play it? Zero? But wasn’t it fun to play? Oh, you didn’t have fun because you couldn’t get into the music?
It’s like this, Mr. Kotick: Songs in these games are fun to play, because we are playing along to music that we like. You can test this for yourself when World Tour comes out, and users are allowed to create and submit their own songs. The ones that people are going to bother to play will be the ones that sound good; you’re not going to get any comments to the effect of “Wow, this song sounds like an epileptic baboon is mashing notes at random, but man, the finger patterns are awesome.”
You need the labels’ artists just as badly as they crave the increased fame that appearing in your games will bring. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Be careful not to over-posture.
September 28th, 2008 at 4:04 am
I play some songs because they are fun to play, and also to get better.
I find more songs I wouldn’t listen to daily in the GH games than I find songs that I would listen to daily, but I still enoy playing them. Because it’s fun.
Jordan by Buckethead in GH2 is far from my favourite song, but it’s really educational in a GH way.
Then, you have the opposite - Metal Heavy Mady by The Lions in GH3. Almost boring song to play, but the song in it self is really good.
In my case Kotic is right on the spot in both quotes.