Science, Pleasure and Rock Band

Now this is interesting. Since I got my Master’s Degree in Consumer Behavior and had to study the concept of Flow, I am really glad to have found this little article in the news. Apparently researchers studying the Flow phenomenon used Rock Band in their experiments and found some interesting results.

For those interested in what the Flow concept means, the article itself provides a wonderful definition:

Flow is a state of mind that occurs when people become totally immersed in what they are doing and lose all sense of time. It’s an intrinsically motivating state, which means that people are engaged in the task for the pure enjoyment of performing the task and not for some extrinsic reward.

The article is cool in itself, but it also provides some food for thought regarding the difficulty of music simulation games. Remember that old talk about button mashing we had in this blog a long time ago? Well, here’s what the scientists say about challenge and pleasure with the experience:

“For those students who have a moderate level of skill at Rock Band, the song has to be moderately challenging and match his or her skill level for optimal enjoyment to occur,” Fullagar said. “That has broad implications for teaching. It means that if we want students to enjoy or get a lot of satisfaction out of classes, we need to assign them challenging tasks but make sure that they have the skills necessary to meet the challenges of those tasks.”

According to Clive Fullagar, “most people achieve flow with work that is neither too easy nor too hard but just right.”

Conclusion: I’m glad the hardest song that Rock Band 2 requires you to play to complete the game and the Impossible Challenges is Painkiller and not Visions. Right on the spot. Yeah, include those insane songs so people can FC them and post them on Youtube, but a music game centered on the challenge alone is a BAD IDEA.

And by the way… one of the researchers asks himself in the end what is the effect of a failing band member on the flow of the other bandmates. You know, I actually LIKE when that happens. It is fun to have to try and help your bandmate with star power as quickly as possible, specially if you’re out of power.

DJ Hero reviewed by actual DJs

Normally I wouldn’t even care about posting this interview here. But what really caught my attention was that at some point the interviewer asks the DJs about their IDEAS for the game. And the responses are really interesting, since they focus on SECONDARY aspects of the game… the ones I always insist are the most important ones to create an immersive experience.

For example:

Tina: You could have a bonus girl, maybe a drunk girl at the club come up to you and hand you a request and if you decide to take the request and you pull it off right, then you get a thousand bonus points. You know what I mean? So you can have little people coming and bothering you to make a request and if you’re able to when you’re playing the game and you want to take that request, you get bonus points.

R.O.B.: Or the go-go girls will come up behind the booth and give you shots, and you start messing up and then you lose all the points.

Ikon: It gets all slow motion, you get belligerent and your vision gets blurry or something like that.

R.O.B.: And then all the crowd would leave the floor and the game would shut down.

Toast: They start throwing glow sticks at you … It would be really funny if you’d stink, if you mess up really bad, you lose your hotel room and you have to sleep on the promoter’s couch.

So it’s a good interview. As I always say: developers should invest more time in secondary, storytelling aspects of music simulation games. They’re the bits that add flavour and colour to the games.

UPDATE: Lego Rock Band and Band Hero: Compatibility

Well, it seems there’s still a LOT of people out there worried about the compatibility between the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games, specially the new Lego Rock Band and Band Hero ones. I’ve written a short post about it a while ago, but I guess I’ll throw you guys another bone here.

A friend of mine sent me a link to a very good post over at Guri de Apê, that contains an awesome chart comparing… well… almost every plastic instrument released to date with each and every one of the music simulation games. Unfortunately for most of you, Guri de Apê is a brazilian blog, which means the post is written in Portuguese.

But fear not! I’m going to teach you all you need to know about the Portuguese language to understand their HUGE compatibility table. Here goes:

SIM = YES
NÃO = NO
N/A = N/A
CONSOLE = CONSOLE

See? I guess that’s pretty easy, eh? So without further ado, here’s the link to their HUGE compatibility chart:

HUGE COMPATIBILITY CHART

Good luck buying the peripheral of your choice and, in case of questions, please comment below.