Harmonix founders Eran Egozy (left) and Alex Rigopulos at their offices in
Cambridge, Mass. Photo by John Huet for Newsweek.
In this week's magazine, NEWSWEEK's Keith Naughton talks to the creative team behind Rock Band:
It's a warm Tuesday night at the Olde Fort Pub in Ft. Thomas, Ky.,
just across the river from Cincinnati, and the regulars are rolling in
with the early spring breeze. The Reds game is on the big screen, but
no one is watching. Kid Rock wails from the jukebox, but no one is
listening. The pool table is lit, but no one is playing. Instead, the
crowd is cheering on Casey Niehues, 23, as she rips off a blazing
guitar solo on Guns N' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle." But Niehues
isn't really playing guitar; she's playing Guitar Hero, the wildly popular videogame.
As
a virtual GNR plays on the flat screen behind the bar, the petite
blonde supplants Slash by pounding colored buttons on the fretboard and
strumming the plastic "string" on her ax, a game controller more akin
to Fisher-Price than Les Paul. But don't try telling these revved-up
rockers they're playing a game. "It's just totally different," insists
Clem Fennell. Barmaid Rachel Wallingford hollers over the din: "It
makes you feel like a rock star."
But as the band
Boston (a Guitar Hero act) might say, it's more than a feeling. It's a
cultural high-tech phenomenon that is changing the way we interact with
music.
Listening and watching aren't enough anymore. Now we want to play
along. Millions of us are doing it, including gray-haired gaming
newbies who still think Grand Theft Auto is a felony. Since Guitar Hero
debuted in late 2005, nearly 15 million copies have rolled out
retailers' doors, according to market researcher NPD Group. An
additional 1.83 million copies of Rock Band,
a new game involving guitar, bass, drums and vocals, have sold since it
launched last Thanksgiving. In each game, you play along by pressing
color-coded buttons on your instrument in time to colored dots coming
at you on the screen. The more dots you hit, the better the song sounds
and the more points you earn to get deeper into the 58-song set list.
Together, the two multiplatinum hits represent a $2 billion market,
analysts say.
Behind
this rock-and-roll fantasy is Harmonix, a Cambridge, Mass., game
developer staffed by rock-star wanna-bes and game geeks. The creator of
Guitar Hero, and now Rock Band, was founded in 1995 by two quirky
artists, who turned their musings as MIT Media Lab partners into a
booming business. Today, these old college chums, Alex Rigopulos, 38,
and Eran Egozy,
36, oversee a staff of more than 200 in the former offices of Harvard's
Russian Studies department, where spike-haired and tattooed employees
zip around on Razors among the detritus of musical instruments, both
real and simulated. "It looks like we're having band practice," says
online community manager Sean Baptiste as he strolls past a giant gong
used to call staff meetings to order.
Harmonix's
history is the classic "Behind the Music" story of the 10-year
"overnight" sensation, complete with career setbacks and band breakups.
In fact, Harmonix lost the Guitar Hero franchise when game giant Activision bought it, along with the game's plastic guitar maker, two years ago. So Guitar Hero III, the latest version, is now playing for a different company. But Rigopulos and Egozy hooked up with MTV,
which acquired Harmonix in November 2006 for $175 million and
bankrolled Rock Band. MTV, part of media giant Viacom, gave Rock Band
the star treatment, with promotions at the Video Music Awards and even
its own "Behind the Music" episode.
Having created a
monster market in musical pantomime, the challenge for the gaming
glimmer twins is topping themselves. But Rigopulos and Egozy don't seem
daunted. Lounging on couches inside the "Star Chamber," a soundproof
room where Rock Band plays on a continuous loop on a massive TV, CEO
Rigopulos (a rock drummer) looks goth in his black hoodie, while chief
technical officer Egozy (a classical clarinetist) looks preppy in his
chinos and button-down shirt.
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