Guitar Rising Interview

While it's extremely common and even natural for gamers who frequent RPG Vault to think of role-playing in terms of character attributes and advancement systems, the literal meaning is rather broader. It's about taking on a persona that isn't our own, and then behaving in an appropriate manner. Due to force of habit, we may find this easier to do when we envision ourselves as the familiar archetypes we may have reprised many times - the noble paladin, sneaky rogue, scholarly mage, brutish barbarian warrior, compassionate healer, bold spaceship pilot et al; when we factor in options like races, alignments and more classes, the overall selection may seem nearly infinite. In the wider sense, however, possibilities galore exist outside this scope. For instance, strategy games typically cast you as the commander of a military unit like a brigade or an army.

Looking beyond the realm of combat and warfare, sports games allow us to envision ourselves as star athletes or perhaps coaches. And who among us isn't familiar with music-based releases that let us imagine we're rock stars? In this category, Guitar Rising, which we saw for the first time during an industry event last month, stood apart right away because it makes use of an actual instrument. In development by a San Francisco Bay-area team, GameTank, it cues you to play notes and sequences that form rhythms and melodies, and is said to have difficulty settings that accommodate anyone, from complete newbies to those who possess substantial experience and skill. Currently targeted to ship this fall, the title already won the Developer's Choice Award at last year's Independent Game Conference. We recently picked CEO Jake Parks' mind to learn more.

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Jonric: Please introduce Guitar Rising to our readers. What major influences contributed to the concept? What's required in the way of a guitar and hardware?

Jake Parks: Guitar Rising is a rock video rhythm game that uses an actual electric guitar. Rhythm games date back almost 20 years, and titles like Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero were our main influences. It was inevitable that the category would evolve to allow players to play and acquire real-world skills simultaneously, which is what Guitar Rising does.

As the difficulty levels increase, the player is exposed to greater note density (you have to play more notes in a given time span), as well as higher frets, more jumps between strings, and more challenging solos.

Any electric guitar can be used to play Guitar Rising. It will come packaged with a hardware unit that allows players to connect their own instruments to their computer via USB. No particular kind of pickups or MIDI retrofitting is required.

Jonric: Given the inevitability of comparisons, how is your game different from Guitar Hero? And do you think it can appeal to people who don't already play the guitar?

Jake Parks: Guitar Hero brings the enjoyment of making music to the masses through the simplification of making music. Guitar Rising attempts to do the same thing, but with a real guitar. By breaking down the complexity of the guitar into a rhythm game, we want to appeal to guitar players and non-guitarists alike.

For the former, this could be possibly the fastest and most enjoyable way to learn a song that you don't already know. For the latter, it is simply playing a game, and by virtue of doing so, you are learning a little bit about how actually to play a guitar.

Jonric: Since it's also inevitable that your game will be seen as derivative, what are your feelings about this?

Jake Parks: Being seen as a derivative of Guitar Hero is a great thing, as it really brought the rhythm game genre to the masses. As for derivatives, Guitar Freaks was a derivative of Dance Dance Revolution (but with a guitar), Guitar Hero was a derivative of Guitar Freaks, and Guitar Rising is, in a sense, a derivative and evolution of these products and this whole genre.

Jonric: How do you actually play? What are the mechanics, and how does the scoring work? What changes as you advance through the difficulty levels?

Jake Parks: Guitar Rising cues the player as to what note to play by using a guitar tablature that moves across the screen. Each of the six individual rows tells him or her to play one of the six strings, and there is a number inside the note that tells which fret to press down. So, for example, if a note is traveling down the top row with a number '2' inside it, it is telling you to play the top guitar string with the second fret pressed down.

Scoring is similar to most other rhythm games. The player gets a certain number of points for hitting a particular note, multiplied by a combo factor.

As the difficulty levels increase, the player is exposed to greater note density (you have to play more notes in a given time span), as well as higher frets, more jumps between strings, and more challenging solos.

Jonric: What is the current state of development? When do you expect to have a playable demo ready, and to release the game?

Jake Parks: We introduced the Guitar Rising prototype last month at GDC in San Francisco, and a playable demo will be available within the next several weeks. We are slightly ahead of our development schedule, and we are fully expecting to have the completed game available this fall, in time for the 2008 holiday sales season.