Rock Band

“Oh god, not Coheed and Cambria!”

Fran doesn’t look happy. We’re in the midst of a Mystery Setlist, scrambling for the crowd’s approval in our Rock Band rock band, and everyone’s musical Kryptonite just came up at random. Corey grimaces, dropping his gaze to his bass in concentration. I brace for the delicate but fast acoustic-guitar opening. Paul looks at both of us nervously from behind the drum kit; his eyes say “Be ready to save me.” And Fran, well, she’s saddled with whiny high notes and pretentious lyrics about scarring the Armada, whatever that means.

“Okay,” says Fran with steely resolve. “It’s on.” And as our band, Help My Friends Are Inside, pounds out the brutal opening of “Welcome Home,” Fran transforms from easy-going editor to shrieking banshee of vengeance. “You could have been all I wanted / But you weren’t honest / Now get in the ground…”

Surprise! Rock Band is the ultimate role-playing game — the only way to win is to completely commit as guitarist, bassist, drummer, or singer and do your part for the fellowship of meta-musicians sharing the virtual stage. And if you can lower your shield of shyness to let the game in, you’re richly rewarded as the collective joy of making music pours back out. Unlike other games, the Rock Band payoff isn’t visceral or technical; it’s emotional.

Emo? Hold it — there’s no need to comb your hair forward and put on guyliner. What you’ll experience is the unique thrill of making music without ever learning a note. Rock Band is a rare and beautiful blend of science, social interaction, and passion — and it’s no accident. Your job is to feel; developer Harmonix will take care of the thinking.

Better Rock Through Science

It’s hard to find Harmonix even when you know where to look. The game-development studio is nestled in a nondescript office building in downtown Cambridge, directly between the hallowed halls of MIT and Harvard. It’s an unlikely birthplace for a game that turns every man, woman, and Xbox 360 owner into musical Vikings, but that transformation is at the core of why Harmonix exists.

“When we started the company back in 1995, we weren’t thinking about videogames at all,” says CEO Alex Rigopulous. “My co-founder, Eran Egozy, and I were both very motivated by an important problem in the world that needed solving: Making music is one of the most genuinely profoundly blissful experiences that life has to offer, and almost no one ever really gets to have access to that experience. Just about everybody tries to learn to play an instrument at some point in their lives, and almost all those people quit after a few months or years because it’s just too hard. People don’t have the time or talent or patience to slug it out and have these frustrating, unpleasant experiences for years before they really get to have the reward. So we started Harmonix to invent new ways for people to have access to that very special pleasure that comes from music-making.”

Those ways included several unsuccessful consumer products, ranging from a joystick-driven music suite for the PC to the critically beloved but low-selling PlayStation 2 games Frequency and Amplitude. Harmonix worked with Konami to create the Karaoke Revolution series, but when hardware manufacturer RedOctane approached with the invitation to make Guitar Hero, the time was right and the rest is history.

Activision soon bought RedOctane and MTV Games snapped up Harmonix, meaning the studio had to say goodbye to the GH franchise. Rigopulous admits the parting was “bittersweet…it was very close to our hearts. But at the same time, there was such an intensity and passion for where we thought we could go next with that category. We really felt like Guitar Hero was just a glimmer of what the [genre] could become.”

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