Interviews// DJ Hero

SPOnG: You say this is a party game, to include loads of people like Guitar Hero does, but surely you’ll target individuals more easily with DJ Hero? There are plenty of bedroom Eminems and Timbalands out there that will bring their copy to a party.

Kevin McSherry: You’re right, what we’ve found is that generally with these sorts of things you’ve got one consumer that’s buying the whole product, then they’ll take it and reveal it to their friends and play as a social group. There’s always one person who has to jump over the hurdle and buy it but it’s about how that opens up and how easy it is for people to come up and enjoy the game at parties.


SPOnG: I guess the difference though would be that with Guitar Hero, everyone plays at once whereas although you can plug in a guitar or mic to DJ Hero, it’s more one-person-at-a-time showing off to everyone else. So rather than Guitar Hero where one person would buy a copy for loads of people, in DJ Hero’s case one person would buy a copy for, essentially, themselves. Would you say that’s accurate?

Kevin McSherry: I think that’s quite accurate, I mean even in our studio everyone’s fighting each other to get our hands on it (laughs). I think there are different ways to create social gameplay, and we’ve created such a visual feast within DJ Hero that it’s quite easy just to sit and watch someone else play it, then when they’re finished take over and play it yourself. It’s definitely a pass-around kind of game.


SPOnG: What are the plans for DLC? Guitar Hero now has a schedule of adding new tracks every week – is that something we’re going to see from DJ Hero on day one, or are you going to focus on the game first and then worry about that?

Kevin McSherry: We’ve been heavily involved with Neversoft, working on their DLC so we’ve been creating Guitar Hero DLC for them for quite some time. We also have a plan for day one DLC for this game, it’s really important to support it from launch. I guess the most exciting thing for me is that I get to see which mixes people will want to buy, and then we can line up more of that kind of content for them.

I guess it’ll be slightly different from Guitar Hero, where the DLC is tracks from bands and you buy into the band that you like. With us, we’ll have two underlying tracks and you have the DJ that mixes those two tracks. So there are lots of points at which a consumer would purchase a DJ Hero DLC pack.


SPOnG: Guitar Hero is now big business, and it’s quite a big social game for parties. How would you like to see DJ Hero evolving over time? Would you want to see DJ Hero parties, maybe have the game played at underground clubs or even a TV series?

Kevin McSherry: These things all sound great (smile). You know, how I’d like to progress is to get through the next six months (laughs), get our product out there and actually start to hear from consumers how they’re interacting with it and what they like about it. I’d love to get feedback on what to do next or how to approach a second game, perhaps. We’re quite a research-focused company, we really want to hear what consumers want and deliver it to them.


SPOnG: One of the features in Guitar Hero World Tour is the ability to create your own tracks online and share them with friends. And there’s certainly scope for that in this game – do you think you’d do something like that?

Kevin McSherry: I think that’d be a great thing to do, but first we’d like to focus on this version of the game and create fantastic mixes for you to play – I’d like to get the game out there to show you what the pinnacle of good mixing can be, and to help you aspire towards that by allowing you to accurately recreate the mix yourself.

Where we go from there, I don’t know (smiles).


SPOnG: Thanks for your time!