DJ Hero 2 Interview
with Associate Producer Doug Grutzmacher
Activision is going for the less-is-more approach with their music games this year, with only two major titles: the just-released Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and FreeStyle Games' DJ Hero 2. While the first game didn't sell like hotcakes immediately, it did eventually do pretty well, and now we're seeing new features, better accessibility, and more contemporary music in the mix. We got the chance to ask Activision Associate Producer Doug Grutzmacher about the game.
AtomicGamer: One complaint about the previous DJ Hero was that it wasn't quite the party game it was meant to be and was more of a tricky spectator sport. How will DJ Hero 2 change that?
Doug Grutzmacher: Well, there are three big pillars to DJ Hero: the music, the freestyle element—a lot more customization to it—and the social element, which we're pushing a lot more. And one of the ways we do that is through a lot more multiplayer modes. And DJ 2, the one we're showing off upstairs is Party Play Mode. You first saw it in Guitar Hero 5, it's very easy, very casual, very easy to jump in and jump out. You can do one player, two players, somebody singing, any combination of the three. Basically, the game will boot up and everything's going except the note highway—the music's going and the dancers are dancing and the venue's going, light shows and everything and you can watch it and listen.
It's like a visual playlist and you can jump in and start playing. So a mode like that is definitely designed to get more people together playing the music, experiencing the music. That's one multiplayer mode. We also have gameplay metrics that players are rated on so we have a Street Challenge for example which scores people on their highest note streak as opposed to the overall score. Or we have a different mode that takes your three highest note streaks and combines them together. We also have a Checkpoint mode that breaks the mix up into different checkpoints and it scores you based on those individual checkpoints. We also have a DJ Battle which is pretty cool. It's exclusive to DJ Hero 2; you don't see it in any other music rhythm game. It's kind of a back and forth, call and response kind of gameplay designed to emulate the kind of battle you'd see in a club. You're not playing the same thing at the same time like you would see in Guitar Hero. So yeah, just a lot of different multiplayer modes that are designed to bring the party out of any living room.
We also have a very deep level of microphone integration. In DJ 1, we had a very limited microphone implementation. It was basically just MC-ing over the top of any song. It wasn't scored, you didn't see on screen lyrics or anything like that. Now we have—almost all the songs can be scored if you plug in a microphone. You can sing along with the songs which is—any time you get lyrics involved in a game, it's just a different way for somebody—maybe they don't want to get up on the turntable but they can get up and start singing. Obviously, since the songs are mashups, you're gonna be singing something a little bit different than you heard on the radio which definitely makes it a unique experience as well.
AG: Has the controller been modified to address issues with the DJ Hero original controller? If so, how?
DG: Yeah, there were some concerns that came out of it. For the most part we found that the reviews of the hardware were pretty positive. Most people thought it was accessible and it really brought out the gameplay in a way that made it easy for people who didn't know anything about DJ-ing to understand. And because the franchise is so new and we're trying to grow our consumer base, we decided functionality-wise, we didn't want to change hardware so we left is as it is. So if you have hardware from DJ 1 it's gonna work for DJ 2. We're selling stand alone software to obviously accommodate that approach. And if you buy our party bundle which is the “two turntables and a microphone” and the game, we actually have decks that have a little bit different color finish on it but it's the same core functionality which will be the only noticeable hardware change. We read all the reviews exhaustively and tried to figure out, when we make the new run of hardware even though it's the same functionality, trying to improve on anything that we can. So if we find that certain parts were maybe a little loose here or there, we can obviously tighten those up.
AG: Has that been done? Say, if the responsiveness was a little bit sluggish?
DG: Oh yeah, absolutely. We always look at ways to improve the production of the hardware process and also to see if there's anything we can do on the software side to support that as well. Kind of minor tweaks and polish. But overall, the functionality is the same. A big part of it for us was that we wanted people who had the first game not to have to go out and buy a whole new hardware setup.
AG: So does that mean the gameplay is also fundamentally the same?
DG: Fundamentally, yeah. We have some things in there that are different, that kind of build on the core gameplay—the button tapping, the beat matching, the scratching, the crossfading—the core of it is still there.
AG: Can we expect the same kind of steep learning curve as we saw in DJ Hero?
DG: We're hoping since people aren't as brand new to it anymore that the learning curve won't be as steep. We still have a very wide range of difficulty levels to support that. We have Beginner, which is very, very simple and a lot slower and easier to see, all the way up to Expert which can be very, very difficult. We're hoping since it's the second iteration, people are a little more familiar with the fundamentals and the gameplay and the franchise.
AG: How do vocals fit into a two-track mashup, sound and score-wise?
DG: I can talk a little bit about the score. The score is separate than the turntable score so it's kind of its own element in that regard. So you don't have to play with vocals. It's there if you want it. Singing to the mashups, you'll be singing something you've never sung before and we like to think of that as kind of a unique thrill.
AG: If you're getting scored, are you getting ranked too?
DG: It's not ranked online but between you and your friends it's a different way to compete.
AG: How has the track listing changed for DJ Hero 2 – do you feel you made a conscious attempt to broaden the scope of the music in terms of genre, the better to please your audience?
DG: Absolutely. We always like to say the music is the foundation of the game. Especially with DJ 1, the nature of the music is so different and so unique but we did a lot of research and testing to figure out which songs people played the most and talked to people and pulled online data and we found that the songs people play the most or like the most are the most current, contemporary music, the stuff you're gonna hear on the radio so we took that to heart in crafting the soundtrack for DJ 2. It's much more current, it's much more contemporary and we hope it has a much farther reach. One fun fact we like to throw out there—we took all the individual tracks from DJ 1 and tallied up their YouTube hits all together and the DJ 1 soundtrack came out to about 300 million which is a pretty good number. We did the exact same thing on DJ 2 and it came out to about 1.4 billion. So you're gonna hear a lot more stuff that you'd hear on the radio. Lady Gaga, Snoop, Dre, The Chemical Brothers, Kanye West—there's something in there for everybody.
AG: In your opinion, what's the most off-the-wall mashup in the game?
DG: I can talk about that now since they released the mix list! It's hard to pick one. We do a fun one which is Sean Paul, I think it's “Get Busy” versus “Axel F”, the theme song from Beverly Hills Cop. That's an awesome one. Rizza, who's one of our licensed DJ's and one of our in-game playable characters did a mix of Damien Marley “Welcome to Jamrock” with “A Fifth of Beethoven”. We have Salt and Pepa mixed with Afrika Bambatta...those ones stand out.
AG: When choosing tracks for mashups, do you consider things that you think will probably work well together, or things that at first glance people would think, “No way!”
DG: It's a little bit of everything. We try to have a good balance of stuff that sounds good and that slowly get people into the game; things that are simpler and easier to take in at first. Then it gets a little more complicated. It's about finding songs that not only sound good but translate well into fun gameplay and also fit within the whole scope of our progression. We want things to sound good and for there to be those mixes people will remember, like the Vanilla Ice/MC Hammer mix we had last year in DJ 1 is an example of that.
AG: Have the graphics received any kind of upgrade?
DG: Yeah, absolutely, on all ends. The visual fidelity overall is going to be much more improved. If you look at the two games side to side it's a noticeable difference. We have a much more robust mocap system with all the licensed DJ's. They've all been professionally mocapped and their models look great. You're gonna see a lot more detail in the crowds and the light shows and even in things that you wouldn't notice as much like the notes on the highway and the HUD and stuff like that. The front end menus have received a massive overhaul. It has a much more sleek, refined, modern feel to it.
AG: In creating DJ Hero 2, how concerned were you with creating a “real” DJ-ing experience? Or did you toss the idea of reality aside in the interest of fun?
DG: We try to find a good balance between authentic and accessible. We don't want to make it too authentic because nobody's gonna want to play it but if we make it too accessible and it doesn't pay any homage to DJ culture and the background where we come from then obviously, that's not going to be received well either. DJ Hero takes the fundamentals out of the DJ-ing process, slims it down and makes it much more accessible so anyone can experience it. The music is as authentic as it can get. We have professional DJ's in London making all these mixes and they're all outside the gaming space. The art style, the mashups are very authentic.
AG: So...Freestyle mode – it's non scoring, lets you be creative and...what exactly is it?
DG: I think you're conflating two things. So there's Party Play mode which is not scored, that's where you can just jump in, jump out, it'll play the venue and it's like our co-op. Freestyle gameplay is built into every song. There's three parts of it: scratching, sampling and crossfading. There are certain sections of the song where we allow players to basically take control so you'll see that represented on screen on the different streams they'll get a little bit wider. When the blue or the green stream get wider that indicates you can Freestyle scratch. Now you're not following along any cues, it's whatever movement you make on the platter, it's gonna be represented in the game. We have the same thing for sampling. In Freestyle sampling they have pre-recorded samples and when you see the red stream you can just tap the button and it'll execute one of those freestyle samples. We also have the same thing for crossfading.
AG: Is there any way to save your Freestyling creations and play them again?
DG: There's unfortunately not any way to do that but then again, every time you play it it's gonna be different. But who knows? Maybe down the road we'll push the creative envelope a little bit.
AG: How many downloadable mixes will be available at launch and down the line and at what price point?
DG: I don't think I'm allowed to specifically talk about the DLC plans yet. I can say we have a big DLC plan to support through the end of the year and in the next year and our plan is to build on what we did in DJ 1.
AG: What kind of online recognition are skilled players going to be rewarded with?
DG: I can talk a little bit about that. It's the same sort of thing—achievements, leader boards, the traditional kind of metrics.
AG: Are you going to know what difficulty other players were playing on when they achieved their rankings?
DG: Yeah, the leader boards will support and show what difficulty you're playing on and you can also kind of tell when you look at the score too. The higher difficulties are gonna support more score points.
AG: Can previously downloaded tracks from DJ Hero be imported into DJ Hero 2?
DG: The same thing along the lines of the DLC topic. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about the specifics of that yet.
AG: For the first time, you can use your Xbox Avatar in the game. Won't it look um...ridiculous?
DG: It does look a little bit out of place...
AG: Is there any way to customize it so it doesn't? Or would you have had to customized it through the Xbox avatar interface?
DG: Yeah, through the avatar creation tool so whatever your avatar is, that'll be what's represented in game. It does stand out a little bit at the same time, that's kind of the fun of it.
AG: Last question. Special editions—are there gonna be any connected to any specific musical artists or anything like that?
DG: Nothing like we did last year with the Renegade Edition. We just have a much more standard approach. We have three different options: you can buy the software by itself, you can buy the standard bundle which is one turntable and the game and then you can buy the party bundle which is the game and as everybody likes to say, “two turntables and a microphone”. Nothing linked to a specific artist like a Jay-Z or an Eminem like we had last year.
AG: Do you have prices for those three options?
DG: Yeah. Stand alone software is gonna be $59.99, the standard bundle with one turntable and the game is gonna be $99.99 which is a drop of $20 from last year which we think people will respond well to, and then the party bundle with two turntables and a microphone is $149.99.
AG: Well thanks! We look forward to jumping into DJ Hero 2.
DG: No problem.
