Rock Band 3: Songs on the Move
We talk to MTV Games about 2000-song setlists, Pro Mode pricing, and fights about Amy Winehouse.
September 27, 2010

Next week, Rock Band will achieve a special milestone as its library reaches 2000 songs between DLC and each Rock Band titles exportable setlist. We had a long chat with MTV Games' Paul DeGooyer last week about Rock Band 3 DLC, moving from Rock Band 2 to Rock Band 3, Harmonix employees threatening to set themselves on fire, and how much that Pro Mode DLC is going to cost you. Read on for all the juicy details, and take our poll to guess which artist's track will be song number 2000 - or come back here next Monday, when IGN will have the exclusive reveal.

IGN: To start off, I think Rock Band fans are obviously extremely curious about the import process between Rock Band 2 and Rock Band 3. Previously you guys had the five-dollar one-time fee to import most of the songs in the game, so now those Rock Band songs are sitting on their hard drives. Will they just be able to pull those off their hard drives and into Rock Band 3, or is there a new process?

Paul DeGooyer: Songs you already imported, if you will, will work automatically in Rock Band 3 - if you purchased a key for Rock Band or AC/DC or any of the other games, you're set for Rock Band 3. That's generally how our platform strategy works. Once you've used your key, you can access that content across the games.

IGN: How will Rock Band 2 work?
DeGooyer: Rock Band 2 into Rock Band 3 will be very similar to the export function for Rock Band into Rock Band 2. There are more songs in Rock Band 2, so the key will be a little bit more expensive.

IGN: Do you have a final price set for that yet?

DeGooyer: We're able to go right down to the wire (with discussions with content owners. We're still working on getting them all, but we've got most of them locked up, and we may be able to get all of them. With Rock Band, we weren't able to get all of them because of some licensing issues that arose.

IGN: When the first Rock Band was in development, was there ever any consideration about how agreements would have to be worded to enable things like exporting tracks from one game to the next?

DeGooyer: We anticipated the possibility that Rock Band might become what it's become on the digital distribution side, but it became a reality much faster than we expected. So we were able to have our licensing strategy account for it.

IGN: Do you see a point in the future where songs that couldn't be moved from Rock Band to Rock Band 2 due to licensing difficulties may come back to the platform, either based on the export fee people already paid or as new DLC?

DeGooyer: There's two ways we could go. We could continually try to make it part of the "key", and there may even be a way that we could supply people who purchased keys in the past with those songs. We also foresee a time when, for example, the original Rock Band is difficult to find in a new disc form. We want to make sure that people can still get access to those songs. You can't pick up Rock Band or a Rock Band 2 used and transfer that content if that disc has already been used to export – each disc is serialized. If we were sell the entire Rock Band setlist as DLC once the disc goes away, we may be able to include those songs that were supposedly lost, and hopefully make people that purchased the key whole with those songs as well. It can actually get pretty complex, but we don't want those songs to be lost. A lot of the songs in Rock Band 1 were songs that people liked to play online, and it becomes very difficult for them to do that if they're not available to everybody.

IGN: With Pro Mode and keyboard, what's your policy going forward on DLC once Rock Band 3 releases? In the past Harmonix has said that Pro Mode DLC will likely be more expensive than normal DLC because of the workload involved in transcribing it and getting it into the game.

DeGooyer: Going forward, all DLC released for Rock Band 3 will be fully Rock Band 3-compatible, which means it'll come with Pro Mode for keyboard and drums, harmony mode, etc. The only thing that's more difficult for us in terms of authoring time is the guitar stuff, so we've decided to sell Pro Mode for guitar separately. If you're not interested in Pro Mode for guitar, you can still get the DLC that should conform to our current DLC pricing, and you get Pro Mode for all your other instruments.

IGN: So let's say you were to buy a new song that's coming out, and you wanted Pro Mode guitar too. What would the price be?

DeGooyer: Right now, a typical stand-alone song for us is a buck ninety-nine. If you wanted to buy Pro Mode for guitar on top of that dollar ninety-nine, it would cost a buck. So it's not going to be five bucks or anything. We think it's a really fair price. The alternative would be of course to include it (in the regular download) and up the price for everybody, which I don't think is really fair.

I should note that not all tracks will have pro guitar mode. (Many bands') guitar parts wouldn't rise to the level that they would need to have pro mode authoring associated with them.

IGN: What are you guys planning as far as updating the back catalog of DLC with pro mode and keyboard support?

DeGooyer: I don't think we're announcing anything specific yet, but we're gonna have one major band that we're working with that has already got some DLC out there, and we're going to add to that DLC, and retrofit their DLC with pro mode. Then there's a selection of other tracks in the catalog that we've gone back and identified, and we have suggestions as well from our community, and we've gone and identified those tracks. So our first announcement will actually be a pretty good cross-section. And I think that track list will help people understand the stuff that we would actually go back and retroactively put pro mode into.

IGN: So at this point you're not prepared to discuss the cost for Pro Mode and Keyboard updates to existing DLC that someone already owns?

DeGooyer: Right. To be honest, we haven't completely worked out exactly how we would be able to get it to market, in a way that recognizes people who have already purchased it, and thus be able to supply the updated file at a discount, which would be our preference.

IGN: You're about to have 2,000 songs playable in Rock Band 3, which is pretty amazing, and leaps and bounds ahead of your competitors. So where do you go from here, other than the Rock Band Network? What do you guys want to do as a studio with DLC?

DeGooyer: Some of Rock Band 3's coolest features aren't the most sexy ones. In Rock Band 2, the store isn't super efficient getting from place to place. Rock Band 3 has a very gestural way for people to see and access the DLC that they own and also suggest DLC that they might want, which puts their entire library in a format that's easy to navigate. It takes it into the realm of music software that people already use on their computers or mobile devices.

New releases get the most attention, which is partly a function of the promotion that we bring to that - if you're watching MTV or VH1 this week you can't miss that we just released Bob Marley for example - but it's also because our library just isn't readily browsable. Rock Band 3 will update that by a quantum factor. Coming out of that we expect to see our catalog selling more, which will help us to determine the DLC we want. Going forward, it would be great to be able to supply our users content other than just the music. We feel like we're really just scratching the surface of what the download stuff could mean for us. It's been a pretty powerful engine. This summer, we had tremendous sales success with things like Nickelback, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lady Gaga earlier this year. We're talking hundreds of thousands of songs in just a few short weeks.

IGN: With the addition of another peripheral, do you feel that you have more responsibility to sort of indicate the kind of experience that a DLC download would offer? Like, this song relies heavily on keyboards so you should make sure you have that peripheral, or something to that effect?

DeGooyer: We absolutely do, and we're able to implement new messaging in the store of Rock Band, so we'll be very clear that this is great for keyboards. That said, any part can be played with any instrument, so you can actually play the keyboard parts on a guitar. We have a feeling that some core users will start with the keyboard parts on guitar, learn them, master them on expert, and then turn around and come back and want to play it on keys again. But yeah, especially when we're getting into some of the more ultra-keyboard-oriented stuff, we're going to be pretty clear that it's a keyboard-oriented song. But we also think we're going to be able to deliver an experience that's great whether you have a keyboard or not.

IGN: Are you guys going to go gung-ho right away with keyboard-oriented DLC, or are going to to try to gauge the response to Rock Band 3 before you start tailoring your releases to that?

DeGooyer: I don't think we're going to go gung-ho in that respect. One of the benefits of having this many songs in our library is it really frees us up to make musical statements, as opposed to statements about one particular peripheral or another. You will see some songs and some artists that are keyboard-oriented, but we intend to keep a flow of other stuff. Raw meat for the metal community, raw meat for hard rock, guitar-based stuff.

IGN: Are there particular bands that you guys feel you can revisit now with pro mode, and the keyboard peripheral in particular? A band that comes to mind, as far as something you've done successfully in the past with Rock Band games would be Nine Inch Nails. Obviously they depend very heavily on synths and keyboards, but with a strong rock sensibility, and you guys have had success with songs like "The Perfect Drug." Have you guys gotten excited about the prospect of revisiting certain bands now that you have that option?

DeGooyer: Yeah, that's a perfect band to cite as an example, because those parts are composed and programmed in many cases on keyboards, but they play tremendously well on any of the peripherals. And so it really is an ideal type of band to build a bridge from our core fanbase, who are used to the guitar mechanic primarily but of course also drums and vocals, and give them something that's great fun to play on the guitar, in that mechanic, but also really cool on keyboards. So yes, there's a couple of different ways we could go with that. There's stuff we could work on going forward, new stuff that hasn't been out there before, that features all of the feature set, and my guess is you'll see the community and our team suggesting Nine Inch Nails pretty quickly to be available for upgrade, from the catalog that's out there.

IGN: What's an album that you guys have wanted for Rock Band, but haven't had the opportunity to put in yet?

DeGooyer: [chuckles] Well, there's a bunch. What's interesting is now with keys, there's stuff that we would love to have in Rock Band that we feel like we can revisit. We think one of the things that got the Beatles interested in doing a deal with us was the approach that we take around the music and the authenticity, the fact that we were able to introduce vocal harmonies there. If you're a guitar player in a major band, and your life is playing guitar, and this game that might have seemed like a novelty before now actually allows you to drive it using a real guitar, there are opportunities opening up. It's the usual suspects. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, bands like that...

IGN: Before The Beatles: Rock Band happened, I would have said that the Led Zeppelin thing would never happen.

DeGooyer: Well, you know, we don't ever say never, in part because Rock Band is our most successful brand to this point but we're kind of about interactivity around music. It sounds kind of corny, but Harmonix is the absolute best at what they do, and we're connected with MTV, which is suddenly one of the most relevant music brands again. Our awards show just drove a ten-fold increase in sales of stuff. We want to take Rock Band to its absolute, ideal point, and with Rock Band 3 we're either there or we've come close, we think, and we've got Dance Central launching, which is a whole different kind of interaction with music. If we're able to keep going with this and keep making these major statements in the interactive space, I could see a time when we maybe supply tools to some of these artists, who might not be willing to come into just the Rock Band environment, but they can make their own interactive experience around it. That may be playable in Rock Band.

IGN: Were there ever any heated debates about including songs like "Rehab" in Rock Band 3?

DeGooyer: [laughs]

IGN: I'm not judging! Songs like that often end up being my favorite songs in Rock Band, and even Guitar Hero – last year Guitar Hero had "Superstition" in it and I thought it was one of the best songs in the game. But I've seen people on Twitter and elsewhere look at Amy Winehouse on the setlist and say "what the f*** are they thinking?"

DeGooyer: It's a really good question. There are a couple things that happen. "Heated" doesn't even begin to describe the conversations that we have about the track listing. Despite all of this people threatening to set themselves on fire, people slipping other people roofies and then covering their faces with magic marker, about song choices and things like that, we try to not to make the track list a compromise. So we want it to be relentlessly interesting. I can tell you that every song that's on there is on there for a reason, because we think it says something about Rock Band, and when you play it, it may be a little bit easier to understand. That doesn't mean there isn't a good portion of the team that wants to kill themselves because Amy Winehouse is in the game, you know what I mean? So ultimately it's about coming up with the best list that's the most interesting, that's the coolest and the most fun to play. As you said yourself, OK Go, the track that was in Rock Band, was a controversial choice, but then once it got out there in the world, it became kind of a go-to track for a lot of people and it became one of the most requested tracks. We got feedback from people saying, you know what, I never would have thought I'd like that band, but I love that song, and now I've gotten into that band. We love that. And of course what's happened with that band is, they kicked their label to the curb and they've done some incredible stuff independently. We love that too, that we were a part of that, we helped make that happen. We helped give them something that helped them move into that zone. It all hopefully fits together at the end of the day, but yeah, there's a lot of tears along the way.

IGN: In Rock Band 3's track list, there are bands that I think a lot of people have been waiting for. At The Drive-In is a good example of that, because they were never huge, but they were certainly well-regarded, especially in the underground, and they sort of almost made it before they dissolved. And you have a band like HIM for myself and all of the 14 year old girls. So why include, say, "One-Armed Scissor" instead of "Arcarsenal" for At The Drive-In? Or why "Killing Loneliness" instead of something off of Love Metal or Razorblade Romance?

DeGooyer: Nobody gets into this level of detail. I love this. A couple of things. First of all, At The Drive-In is exactly as you characterize it, it's a band that we love, the team loves, they're well-regarded, they might not have gotten their due. So we're really excited to put it on the disc, where millions of people are going to see it whether they like it or not and try it. The selection of the song really comes down to what the team felt was the most fun to play. Imagine the knock-down drag-outs over the artists that appear, we get into those over the songs as well. Those songs were selected for a reason, and the beauty, or at least what we hope the beauty of the Rock Band platform is, if it gets traction then we can release more songs via DLC, which may be more popular, may actually be cooler songs in a way, but what we put on the disc were the songs we think would get people excited because of not just the songs themselves, but the mechanic of playing it and interacting with it. So we really do try to pick what the best shot would be for that band, and then those bands play a role in the overall story mode of the game, tying it together. Hopefully that part will also have people, as they're playing through the game, go in and, without a lot of preconception about what the band is, they're just going along in the story, and suddenly they discover this music and realize who it is and get into it.

IGN: What are the politics of getting content from a band that's broken up?

DeGooyer: We get content for Rock Band in a variety of ways. We're dealing with management in some cases, and then labels in other cases, in some cases we're getting pitched by labels on bands that are currently working or bands that have broken up. Some bands end up being a one-stop shop, where we're able to talk to the label and say, look, we really like this track, we want it in, how difficult is it going to be? And the label might say, well, give us a day, and they will go out, talk to the publisher, talk to the managers, or in the case of a band that's broken up it might be multiple managers, and come back and say, we can get the approvals for this. In some instances, if it's a track that we really love and we know it's going to be difficult and there's no one party to go to, we'll go ourselves to each party and make the case individually for the track to be in the game. So it's not like there's one set approach, but I would say that we're really fortunate that our partnership with labels and publishers and management is such that we're able to really have good conversations around the content, and everybody understands what we're trying to accomplish. People really do go to great lengths to get this stuff right, so that the discs are great.

IGN: The competition has had difficulties in moving content from one release to the next, their online stores have had trouble getting off the ground, and just taking it into a more broad perspective you guys seem to have had the most success of literally any game I can think of, in a constant successful downloadable offering for your platform. What is it about Rock Band and Harmonix that has made it that sustainable?

DeGooyer: People who get involved with the Rock Band world come away feeling like our experience is more truly musical and more authentic. We come from a place of love for music. Everybody at Harmonix is in a band, everybody's got a point of view on music that's additive. They're all part of the discussion. We feel like we drive a really good conversation around the music supervision aspect of it that's ongoing. And you can't understate MTV. That's able to send a weekly message about our platform out there. We're able to stay relevant in that regard. We try each month or two to offer something for every one of our fans. You'll have Disturbed one week, and then two weeks later you've got Bob Marley. We try to keep it interesting. And I think as a result it's a stickier experience, if you will. We are, to this point, still the absolute, undisputed number one supplier of paid downloadable content through the first parties. Who knew it would be a music game that would do that? It's taken off in scale to a point where we can actually take some flyers on new bands. When we had a chance to place a bet on the download side or not, we didn't flinch. Our leading competitor didn't think it would be big business. They changed their strategy, but that was a year later. It really was a combination of those factors.

IGN: Thank you, Paul, for taking the time today.

DeGooyer: A pleasure, thanks. Keep listening to HIM. [laughs]

IGN: To start off, I think Rock Band fans are obviously extremely curious about the import process between Rock Band 2 and Rock Band 3. Previously you guys had the five-dollar one-time fee to import most of the songs in the game, so now those Rock Band songs are sitting on their hard drives. Will they just be able to pull those off their hard drives and into Rock Band 3, or is there a new process?

Paul DeGooyer: Songs you already imported, if you will, will work automatically in Rock Band 3 - if you purchased a key for Rock Band or AC/DC or any of the other games, you're set for Rock Band 3. That's generally how our platform strategy works. Once you've used your key, you can access that content across the games.

IGN: How will Rock Band 2 work?

DeGooyer: Rock Band 2 into Rock Band 3 will be very similar to the export function for Rock Band into Rock Band 2. There are more songs in Rock Band 2, so the key will be a little bit more expensive.

IGN: Do you have a final price set for that yet?

DeGooyer: We're able to go right down to the wire (with discussions with content owners. We're still working on getting them all, but we've got most of them locked up, and we may be able to get all of them. With Rock Band, we weren't able to get all of them because of some licensing issues that arose.

IGN: When the first Rock Band was in development, was there ever any consideration about how agreements would have to be worded to enable things like exporting tracks from one game to the next?

DeGooyer: We anticipated the possibility that Rock Band might become what it's become on the digital distribution side, but it became a reality much faster than we expected. So we were able to have our licensing strategy account for it.

IGN: Do you see a point in the future where songs that couldn't be moved from Rock Band to Rock Band 2 due to licensing difficulties may come back to the platform, either based on the export fee people already paid or as new DLC?

DeGooyer: There's two ways we could go. We could continually try to make it part of the "key", and there may even be a way that we could supply people who purchased keys in the past with those songs. We also foresee a time when, for example, the original Rock Band is difficult to find in a new disc form. We want to make sure that people can still get access to those songs. You can't pick up Rock Band or a Rock Band 2 used and transfer that content if that disc has already been used to export – each disc is serialized. If we were sell the entire Rock Band setlist as DLC once the disc goes away, we may be able to include those songs that were supposedly lost, and hopefully make people that purchased the key whole with those songs as well. It can actually get pretty complex, but we don't want those songs to be lost. A lot of the songs in Rock Band 1 were songs that people liked to play online, and it becomes very difficult for them to do that if they're not available to everybody.

IGN: With Pro Mode and keyboard, what's your policy going forward on DLC once Rock Band 3 releases? In the past Harmonix has said that Pro Mode DLC will likely be more expensive than normal DLC because of the workload involved in transcribing it and getting it into the game.

DeGooyer: Going forward, all DLC released for Rock Band 3 will be fully Rock Band 3-compatible, which means it'll come with Pro Mode for keyboard and drums, harmony mode, etc. The only thing that's more difficult for us in terms of authoring time is the guitar stuff, so we've decided to sell Pro Mode for guitar separately. If you're not interested in Pro Mode for guitar, you can still get the DLC that should conform to our current DLC pricing, and you get Pro Mode for all your other instruments.

IGN: So let's say you were to buy a new song that's coming out, and you wanted Pro Mode guitar too. What would the price be?

DeGooyer: Right now, a typical stand-alone song for us is a buck ninety-nine. If you wanted to buy Pro Mode for guitar on top of that dollar ninety-nine, it would cost a buck. So it's not going to be five bucks or anything. We think it's a really fair price. The alternative would be of course to include it (in the regular download) and up the price for everybody, which I don't think is really fair.

I should note that not all tracks will have pro guitar mode. (Many bands') guitar parts wouldn't rise to the level that they would need to have pro mode authoring associated with them.

IGN: What are you guys planning as far as updating the back catalog of DLC with pro mode and keyboard support?

DeGooyer: I don't think we're announcing anything specific yet, but we're gonna have one major band that we're working with that has already got some DLC out there, and we're going to add to that DLC, and retrofit their DLC with pro mode. Then there's a selection of other tracks in the catalog that we've gone back and identified, and we have suggestions as well from our community, and we've gone and identified those tracks. So our first announcement will actually be a pretty good cross-section. And I think that track list will help people understand the stuff that we would actually go back and retroactively put pro mode into.

IGN: So at this point you're not prepared to discuss the cost for Pro Mode and Keyboard updates to existing DLC that someone already owns?

DeGooyer: Right. To be honest, we haven't completely worked out exactly how we would be able to get it to market, in a way that recognizes people who have already purchased it, and thus be able to supply the updated file at a discount, which would be our preference.

IGN: You're about to have 2,000 songs playable in Rock Band 3, which is pretty amazing, and leaps and bounds ahead of your competitors. So where do you go from here, other than the Rock Band Network? What do you guys want to do as a studio with DLC?

DeGooyer: Some of Rock Band 3's coolest features aren't the most sexy ones. In Rock Band 2, the store isn't super efficient getting from place to place. Rock Band 3 has a very gestural way for people to see and access the DLC that they own and also suggest DLC that they might want, which puts their entire library in a format that's easy to navigate. It takes it into the realm of music software that people already use on their computers or mobile devices.

New releases get the most attention, which is partly a function of the promotion that we bring to that - if you're watching MTV or VH1 this week you can't miss that we just released Bob Marley for example - but it's also because our library just isn't readily browsable. Rock Band 3 will update that by a quantum factor. Coming out of that we expect to see our catalog selling more, which will help us to determine the DLC we want. Going forward, it would be great to be able to supply our users content other than just the music. We feel like we're really just scratching the surface of what the download stuff could mean for us. It's been a pretty powerful engine. This summer, we had tremendous sales success with things like Nickelback, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lady Gaga earlier this year. We're talking hundreds of thousands of songs in just a few short weeks.

IGN: With the addition of another peripheral, do you feel that you have more responsibility to sort of indicate the kind of experience that a DLC download would offer? Like, this song relies heavily on keyboards so you should make sure you have that peripheral, or something to that effect?

DeGooyer: We absolutely do, and we're able to implement new messaging in the store of Rock Band, so we'll be very clear that this is great for keyboards. That said, any part can be played with any instrument, so you can actually play the keyboard parts on a guitar. We have a feeling that some core users will start with the keyboard parts on guitar, learn them, master them on expert, and then turn around and come back and want to play it on keys again. But yeah, especially when we're getting into some of the more ultra-keyboard-oriented stuff, we're going to be pretty clear that it's a keyboard-oriented song. But we also think we're going to be able to deliver an experience that's great whether you have a keyboard or not.

IGN: Are you guys going to go gung-ho right away with keyboard-oriented DLC, or are going to to try to gauge the response to Rock Band 3 before you start tailoring your releases to that?

DeGooyer: I don't think we're going to go gung-ho in that respect. One of the benefits of having this many songs in our library is it really frees us up to make musical statements, as opposed to statements about one particular peripheral or another. You will see some songs and some artists that are keyboard-oriented, but we intend to keep a flow of other stuff. Raw meat for the metal community, raw meat for hard rock, guitar-based stuff.

IGN: Are there particular bands that you guys feel you can revisit now with pro mode, and the keyboard peripheral in particular? A band that comes to mind, as far as something you've done successfully in the past with Rock Band games would be Nine Inch Nails. Obviously they depend very heavily on synths and keyboards, but with a strong rock sensibility, and you guys have had success with songs like "The Perfect Drug." Have you guys gotten excited about the prospect of revisiting certain bands now that you have that option?

DeGooyer: Yeah, that's a perfect band to cite as an example, because those parts are composed and programmed in many cases on keyboards, but they play tremendously well on any of the peripherals. And so it really is an ideal type of band to build a bridge from our core fanbase, who are used to the guitar mechanic primarily but of course also drums and vocals, and give them something that's great fun to play on the guitar, in that mechanic, but also really cool on keyboards. So yes, there's a couple of different ways we could go with that. There's stuff we could work on going forward, new stuff that hasn't been out there before, that features all of the feature set, and my guess is you'll see the community and our team suggesting Nine Inch Nails pretty quickly to be available for upgrade, from the catalog that's out there.

IGN: What's an album that you guys have wanted for Rock Band, but haven't had the opportunity to put in yet?

DeGooyer: [chuckles] Well, there's a bunch. What's interesting is now with keys, there's stuff that we would love to have in Rock Band that we feel like we can revisit. We think one of the things that got the Beatles interested in doing a deal with us was the approach that we take around the music and the authenticity, the fact that we were able to introduce vocal harmonies there. If you're a guitar player in a major band, and your life is playing guitar, and this game that might have seemed like a novelty before now actually allows you to drive it using a real guitar, there are opportunities opening up. It's the usual suspects. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, bands like that...

IGN: Before The Beatles: Rock Band happened, I would have said that the Led Zeppelin thing would never happen.

DeGooyer: Well, you know, we don't ever say never, in part because Rock Band is our most successful brand to this point but we're kind of about interactivity around music. It sounds kind of corny, but Harmonix is the absolute best at what they do, and we're connected with MTV, which is suddenly one of the most relevant music brands again. Our awards show just drove a ten-fold increase in sales of stuff. We want to take Rock Band to its absolute, ideal point, and with Rock Band 3 we're either there or we've come close, we think, and we've got Dance Central launching, which is a whole different kind of interaction with music. If we're able to keep going with this and keep making these major statements in the interactive space, I could see a time when we maybe supply tools to some of these artists, who might not be willing to come into just the Rock Band environment, but they can make their own interactive experience around it. That may be playable in Rock Band.

IGN: Were there ever any heated debates about including songs like "Rehab" in Rock Band 3?

DeGooyer: [laughs]

IGN: I'm not judging! Songs like that often end up being my favorite songs in Rock Band, and even Guitar Hero – last year Guitar Hero had "Superstition" in it and I thought it was one of the best songs in the game. But I've seen people on Twitter and elsewhere look at Amy Winehouse on the setlist and say "what the f*** are they thinking?"

DeGooyer: It's a really good question. There are a couple things that happen. "Heated" doesn't even begin to describe the conversations that we have about the track listing. Despite all of this people threatening to set themselves on fire, people slipping other people roofies and then covering their faces with magic marker, about song choices and things like that, we try to not to make the track list a compromise. So we want it to be relentlessly interesting. I can tell you that every song that's on there is on there for a reason, because we think it says something about Rock Band, and when you play it, it may be a little bit easier to understand. That doesn't mean there isn't a good portion of the team that wants to kill themselves because Amy Winehouse is in the game, you know what I mean? So ultimately it's about coming up with the best list that's the most interesting, that's the coolest and the most fun to play. As you said yourself, OK Go, the track that was in Rock Band, was a controversial choice, but then once it got out there in the world, it became kind of a go-to track for a lot of people and it became one of the most requested tracks. We got feedback from people saying, you know what, I never would have thought I'd like that band, but I love that song, and now I've gotten into that band. We love that. And of course what's happened with that band is, they kicked their label to the curb and they've done some incredible stuff independently. We love that too, that we were a part of that, we helped make that happen. We helped give them something that helped them move into that zone. It all hopefully fits together at the end of the day, but yeah, there's a lot of tears along the way.

IGN: In Rock Band 3's track list, there are bands that I think a lot of people have been waiting for. At The Drive-In is a good example of that, because they were never huge, but they were certainly well-regarded, especially in the underground, and they sort of almost made it before they dissolved. And you have a band like HIM for myself and all of the 14 year old girls. So why include, say, "One-Armed Scissor" instead of "Arcarsenal" for At The Drive-In? Or why "Killing Loneliness" instead of something off of Love Metal or Razorblade Romance?

DeGooyer: Nobody gets into this level of detail. I love this. A couple of things. First of all, At The Drive-In is exactly as you characterize it, it's a band that we love, the team loves, they're well-regarded, they might not have gotten their due. So we're really excited to put it on the disc, where millions of people are going to see it whether they like it or not and try it. The selection of the song really comes down to what the team felt was the most fun to play. Imagine the knock-down drag-outs over the artists that appear, we get into those over the songs as well. Those songs were selected for a reason, and the beauty, or at least what we hope the beauty of the Rock Band platform is, if it gets traction then we can release more songs via DLC, which may be more popular, may actually be cooler songs in a way, but what we put on the disc were the songs we think would get people excited because of not just the songs themselves, but the mechanic of playing it and interacting with it. So we really do try to pick what the best shot would be for that band, and then those bands play a role in the overall story mode of the game, tying it together. Hopefully that part will also have people, as they're playing through the game, go in and, without a lot of preconception about what the band is, they're just going along in the story, and suddenly they discover this music and realize who it is and get into it.

IGN: What are the politics of getting content from a band that's broken up?

DeGooyer: We get content for Rock Band in a variety of ways. We're dealing with management in some cases, and then labels in other cases, in some cases we're getting pitched by labels on bands that are currently working or bands that have broken up. Some bands end up being a one-stop shop, where we're able to talk to the label and say, look, we really like this track, we want it in, how difficult is it going to be? And the label might say, well, give us a day, and they will go out, talk to the publisher, talk to the managers, or in the case of a band that's broken up it might be multiple managers, and come back and say, we can get the approvals for this. In some instances, if it's a track that we really love and we know it's going to be difficult and there's no one party to go to, we'll go ourselves to each party and make the case individually for the track to be in the game. So it's not like there's one set approach, but I would say that we're really fortunate that our partnership with labels and publishers and management is such that we're able to really have good conversations around the content, and everybody understands what we're trying to accomplish. People really do go to great lengths to get this stuff right, so that the discs are great.

IGN: The competition has had difficulties in moving content from one release to the next, their online stores have had trouble getting off the ground, and just taking it into a more broad perspective you guys seem to have had the most success of literally any game I can think of, in a constant successful downloadable offering for your platform. What is it about Rock Band and Harmonix that has made it that sustainable?

DeGooyer: People who get involved with the Rock Band world come away feeling like our experience is more truly musical and more authentic. We come from a place of love for music. Everybody at Harmonix is in a band, everybody's got a point of view on music that's additive. They're all part of the discussion. We feel like we drive a really good conversation around the music supervision aspect of it that's ongoing. And you can't understate MTV. That's able to send a weekly message about our platform out there. We're able to stay relevant in that regard. We try each month or two to offer something for every one of our fans. You'll have Disturbed one week, and then two weeks later you've got Bob Marley. We try to keep it interesting. And I think as a result it's a stickier experience, if you will. We are, to this point, still the absolute, undisputed number one supplier of paid downloadable content through the first parties. Who knew it would be a music game that would do that? It's taken off in scale to a point where we can actually take some flyers on new bands. When we had a chance to place a bet on the download side or not, we didn't flinch. Our leading competitor didn't think it would be big business. They changed their strategy, but that was a year later. It really was a combination of those factors.

IGN: Thank you, Paul, for taking the time today.

DeGooyer: A pleasure, thanks. Keep listening to HIM. [laughs]