On Music

Two of the staff at Harmonix, COO Mike Dornbrook and producer Daniel Sussman, were recently interview by Gamasutra. Being the developers behind Guitar Hero, the two had much to say on their prize game, their acquisition by MTV, and of course, music. One particular response from Dornbrook was really quite relevatory of the theory behind their game, and perhaps more so, 21st century society.

How big do you think this kind of casual/hardcore market that you have tapped into [with Guitar Hero] really is? It seems to be pretty widely accessible - people are very into it, and are playing on traditional consoles?

MD: Honestly, I think that the market for what we are doing is a lot bigger than what we have seen so far. When I first talked to Harmonix staff nine years ago before I started here, and heard their vision for allowing the non-user to get thrill of musical performance - about how music is really a instinct, a basic instinct, something that is really deep down in our genes, going back to tribes who hundreds of thousands of years ago sat around fires made music in the evening - it's a deeply rooted part of humanity.

We have lost that in the last century, that music-making, we have become mostly music listeners because of reproduced music. We listen to CDs. We listen to the radio. But many fewer people than a century or two ago are actually making music.

And we've lost something, I think, in that. We're trying to get that back. I think that's a much, much bigger goal than simply making games. I mean the market is much, much bigger potentially than the games market is currently.

Sometimes, people have the most profound things to say.