At this point, I think it's safe to say that "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" are two completely distinct franchises. "Rock Band," which continues to push players to create their own experience with custom characters and additional expert modes as well as a new keyboard controller, simulates the experience of being in a rock band. "Guitar Hero" is now all about rock, punk, and heavy metal -- playing finger-melting solos devised by maestros of impossible solos -- while taking pre-made characters on an epic journey through rock-dom. Oh yea, it's also a game.
Brian Bright, Project Director on "Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock" wants to make sure that people realize that. "It's important that people understand we are not a music simulator. We are a music rhythm game." He stresses that last word quite clearly, and if "Warriors of Rock" is any indication of that, I'd say he's right on the money.
The latest entry in the "Guitar Hero" franchise, with a Quest Mode and character transformations and super powers, is the gamiest yet. And Bright isn't all too certain that a simulator is what players are really looking for.
When asked about including more realistic instruments -- instruments that mimic real-life guitar and drum playing -- Bright is quick to point out that they've tried it before. "If you come into our office, you can see a guitar from three and a half years ago that has six long buttons and you can press them across the neck. We've had guitars with 10 buttons, with slider buttons… We haven't done anything with strings but we looked into it."
And for Bright, it's all about keeping the players engaged the game. The higher difficulty of playing realistic instruments that force players to actually play the music has a risk of alienating players. "It's about feeling like a cool guitar player, but not actually going through all the complications of learning to play the guitar."
A few weeks ago when we conducted this interview, the addition of the keyboard controller for "Rock Band 3" was not common knowledge (though we knew). So we asked Bright how he felt about possibly adding another instrument into the fray.
"As you start to break it down -- like with ['Warriors of Rock'] -- very few songs in this game have a keyboard track in it," he explains. "And now we have some 500-600 songs in the library. Some of those have keyboard, but not all of them." Which would complicate things if Neversoft had to go update their back catalog of songs that featured keyboards.
Bright however, does not dismiss the idea entirely. "I think if you were going to do something like that, you'd need to base it on songs that [heavily feature the keyboard]. Something New Wave like crazy Trans X 'Living On Video'. You don't want to have a mixture of metal and rock [with keyboard]."