Rock of Ages: We talk with Neversoft’s Alan Flores about Guitar Hero: World Tour

“We wanted to incorporate the drums into Guitar Hero, and try to put it all together and create our take on what a full band game is like.”

Even though the series is only a few years old, the Guitar Hero franchise has quickly asserted itself as one of the most successful series around, offering gamers the chance to live out their own rock star dreams from their living room. Now, the series is undergoing a transition, bringing not only mic and drum support, a huge tracklist, and improved guitar elements, but adding a great new music suite for players to create and distribute their own songs to the Guitar Hero community. Guitar Hero: World Tour is shaping up to be a huge leap for the series, if not the music genre as a whole.

At a recent event held for Guitar Hero: World Tour, GameZone had the opportunity to sit down with Neversoft’s Alan Flores, Lead Designer on the game, and ask him some questions about what promises to be the biggest and most ambitious entry to the Guitar Hero franchise yet.

Guitar Hero 3 opted not to have full-on band instruments, as opposed to Rock Band. Why provide more instruments now?

Alan Flores: Part of the reason for that was that Activision was previously working on a drum game. There were the “Drum Villain” rumors floating around for a while, so they had this drum prototype that they were already working on, planning on making that a separate game. We figured that since we did the guitar thing, then we could add this element to it. If we really wanted to do the whole band thing the first time out, I don’t think we could have, since we were under the gun and had to work quickly if we wanted to get Guitar Hero III up and running. Instead of having Activision make another game, we wanted to incorporate the drums into Guitar Hero, and try to put it all together and create our take on what a full band game is like.

Has the recent Activison/Vivendi merger (a move which gives Activision access to Universal’s huge music catalog) had any effect on song choices for this entry to the franchise? Has it been helpful in securing songs?

AF: It’s kind of hard to say if that really played into it. When we pick songs, we don’t do it on the basis that they are from this company or that one; we pick what the best songs are. Maybe it helped, but I think that more than anything else it’s the success of the franchise and the genre in general. With Guitar Hero, people know the name now and everybody wants to be involved with it. They see how having a song in the game really helps boost your record sales and public exposure. Like what it did for Dragonforce; their record sales went up 140 percent or something a week after they were in the game.

The whole music game genre in general is proving to be this viable thing and a whole new way for the record industry to make money, use their content and help them thrive. I think that probably helped more than anything, because a lot of bands and artists that weren’t really interested in being in the game before want to come and be in it now.

The recently released Metallica album Death Magnetic was available as DLC for Guitar Hero III (and World Tour) day and date with the album. Are there any plans for more releases like this?

AF: Yeah, we want to try stuff like that, but I can’t really announce anything yet. We want to focus on having new music coming out of Guitar Hero, having old classics, focusing on artists and having singles, albums, packs, the whole deal.

What can you tell us about GHTunes and user generated content for the game?

AF: We built this music studio in the game, and it’s really pretty cool. At the surface level, you can just get in there and start jamming out, put different noises on you guitar, play on the drums and make something cool. But, if you want to go deeper, then you can go into the advanced recording features, where you can lay down tracks in a multi-track sequencing studio and make just about anything you want. Once you do that, you can then take your tracks and post them on GHTunes, where people all over the world can download them and play them, and rate them whether they liked them or not. You can be a Guitar Hero/GHTunes superstar if you make something that’s really cool that people like.

Since it’s been nearing completion, we’ve had all the people in our office just playing it, putting stuff up. Every morning you’d come in and look to see what people had added on GHTunes yesterday and you would go and check it out and try to make something better, like a competition. We competed amongst ourselves with this, and we think that once the public gets their hands on this, we’ll find a lot of solid composure in there.

We had a producer in our building who had never written any music, doesn’t play an instrument, doesn’t mess around with [music programs like] ACID or Fruity Loops, and he really took to the music studio and he’s putting stuff up on GHTunes, and it’s just amazing.

As far as online features, what will be new this year?

AF: We’re doing a full band online mode, and an online career where you can get together with some friends at home and carry on the career with other players online. We’re also doing a Band vs. Band mode, where you can go head-to-head (4v4). All the original modes are returning as well, plus the GHTunes features.

You have recently announced that World Tour’s instruments will be compatible with the original Rock Band. Why did the cross-compatibility take so long to get implemented?

AF: I don’t really know where it came from. We wanted to do it, so when we were making our drums, we wanted to make sure that we could make it work. It is extra work for us to get their drums to work, since we have a five-pad configuration, and with the Rock Band kit you have to scrunch it down to four. It’s not really a no-brainer, where all you have to do is just plug it in and everybody’s happy. We had to do a lot of extra work and there’s a lot of extra Quality Assurance time and you have to test it. It was a lot of work, but we felt it was worth it, because people wanted it.

Guitar Hero: World Tour features the likenesses of artists like Ozzy, Sting, Ted Nugent, as well as Tool concert venue. Where there any rock stars that you wanted for the game but couldn’t get?

AF: There are always people on your wishlist that you’d love to have, and some are particularly elusive. I can’t really name who we can’t get because we might in the future, but there’s a lot of crazy, cool rockstars out there that you think would be a cool character in the game. We haven’t gotten them all yet, so there’s plenty to go out there.

After guitars, drums, and mic support, what do you feel is the next logical step for the series?

AF: It’s hard to say, I think the biggest leap we did this time around is the whole GHTunes user generated content and the community aspect there. But there are a lot of ways that you can build the game. It’s a rock and roll game, so there are many aspects of rock and roll that you can touch upon. I think there’s a lot of legs left in the series.