Producer Daniel Sussman from HarmonixMusic was kind enough to take time out of his day to answer a few of our questions on the newest game out of Harmonix, Guitar Hero. If you haven’t heard of Guitar Hero, pick your ears off the ground and listen up. WIP indicates a Way I Play question, and DKS indicates a Daniel Sussman answer. Duh. Enjoy!

WIP: Frequency and Amplitude both received critical acclaim but understated sales. Was there a long process in deciding to do Guitar Hero, or was there enough passion behind the idea to make it a game you couldn’t possibly leave on the drawing board?

DKS: We think long and hard about every project we commit to doing. That said, we had the perfect group of people to make Guitar Hero. I think we were all excited to really rock the genre in a way that hadn’t been done before.

WIP: Guitar Hero has a massive selection of licensed music in the game. Were there any songs you were really hoping to license, but unfortunately fell through?

DKS: I’m actually very happy with the songs we got. I kind of had this mindset that we were creating a mixed tape for people unfamiliar with rock. Guitar Hero is totally an introduction to rock. Of course there were some bands that we wanted and didn’t get, but we also want to leave things open for a GH2.

WIP: It was easier to license music for Amplitude than it was for Frequency, due to the fact that you have a finished product in Frequency to show prospective artists. Did your solid game play reputation assist you in your music license pursuit for Guitar Hero, or did you need to start from the beginning all over again?

DKS: In fact, it’s generally the publisher that takes control of licensing the music. We have a lot of input as the developer, but we’ve always been lucky to work with consummate licensing professionals (from SCEA with Freq/Amp to Konami on the KR games to RedOctane on Guitar Hero). I’d like to think that our reputation precedes us in most cases, though we still had to compile a fair amount of video footage and screenshots to get some of the bands on board. It is a lot of work to get 30 great songs for a game, regardless of how many times you’ve done it before.

WIP: Having only been officially released today, November 8th, players are already clamoring for more. Have plans already started for the next incarnation of Guitar Hero? If so, how do you keep an original idea fresh and exciting the second time through?

DKS: Sequels are really interesting. I think that, in a lot of cases, the sequel is an opportunity for you to make the game you really wanted to make the first time. There were things that didn’t make it into Guitar Hero for schedule reasons that I think we’d front load for GH2.

WIP: The game art really brings the game together, from the character and guitars to the rock show poster styles of the loading and selection menus. How hard was it to get the rock and roll feel to support the gameplay?

DKS: We worked very hard to make sure that anything that could be “ROCK” was. We were lucky to have a lot of people on the team that had first hand experience with the rock world. A bunch of us are in, or have been in, bands, been on tours, we all listen to this stuff, we can all quote spinal tap for hours, etc. We also spent a good couple of weeks at the start of the project putting together a strong library of resource material, and making sure that everybody on the team was bought in to the style. Our art director, Ryan Lesser, did a fantastic job of always asking the question: “Is this rock? Could this be more rock?”

WIP: Were there any gut sinking moments in the production process where things didn’t look like they were going to work out?

DKS: Not really. This project was a dream to work on. We were well supported by our publisher, we had an amazing development team and everybody was into the game and knew what the art style and vibe was supposed to be. It was kind of awesome; people played this game all through development. You’d walk into people’s offices to check in and make sure that people were getting their work done, and you’d find 3 people huddled around a ps2 playing GH. You can’t complain – we knew we had a fun game from the very beginning.

I always got nervous when songs I really wanted took a long time to come through. It’s tough because it is basically out of our hands. We have to cross our fingers and hope for the best. Waiting for Cowboys from Hell was one of the toughest moments for me.

WIP: Finally, Cowboys from Hell. The internet’s choice for the hardest, finger bleeding, bone cracking, brow sweating song in Guitar Hero. The song thats fans of Guitar Hero will be able to instantly bond over. Hard because you hate us or hard because you love us?

DKS: Come on!! Hard because we love you!!!! Tuning difficulty is a tough thing because there is such a giant range in skill in music gamers. We get emails from Amplitude players who are just finally beating the game now (3 years later). There were also people who hammered that game in a week. On Guitar Hero, we really tried to make sure that we covered both ends of the spectrum; we wanted to make sure the game was accessible to non-music gamers who were just getting their feet wet in the genre, and also to the hard core freqs out there. So yeah, Cowboys, Godzilla, Frankenstein, Bark at the Moon, Crossroads, No One Knows and Ace of Spades – we tried to make those as hard as we could and give the really skilled players a bit of a challenge.