I cant tell you everything but Ill write a few things now and some more later. The talk was 2 hours. I have my notes in the car I can upload his name later.
At the end of the talk he revealed that Harmonix is looking for help from Game Artists. The first thing he talked about was what they look for in a new employee. He went over the Art time for this week's release
Dance Central. Each member had a profile, pic and he gave their educational background, their role in the game and what they did to get the job or what different jobs in Harmonix each person had.
The biggest surprise for me is that he said the look for individual artists, with preferably a fine art background. They like if the team has outside art interests and current shows, exhibits, bands, singing, sculpture etc.
He was an approachable guy. He gave his own background and how he had been art director, concept artists, animator etc. He gave the roles of the team and showed the dual roles. He surprised me with the fact that
Harmonix is a Max studio. He said that the game they worked with not was a total change from the past titles with Rock Band and Guitar Hero. He told about how Harmonix has a music based happy party company. He gave history of the different games that came before Guitar hero break through, how they had to record their own titles at first and that now days the company is happy to pay the artists on the musicians for the use of thier songs. He said they work hard, the company pays high but the artists like to be included now. At first they didnt cooperate and they studeo had a hard time. There were over 100 people at the talk. He asked for raised hands on how many artists had 3DS Max focus and there were only 2 and I was one of them. They said that they just like Max and the game ways about Max. This game because of the dance moves they used MotionBuilder too. He said it worked out great.
One feature that I found amazing is that this game uses the Kinect and the game engine they use their proprietary engine is for a rhythm based work they were capturing video during the gameplay from the whole game and at the end (here is a spoiler) the game engine actually renders the video during the opening for the final level. Its crazy. Im going to write this up for everyone but I can only do the stream of consiousness style from the event because I dont have my notes and I dont want to wait and not share it with all of you.
One other thing that I wanted to share is that the team even though they were disappointed somewhat about not doing a hard rock game was so happy to have a new interface function that was based on the player's action figure instead of the RockBand meters that take up to 75 percent of the screen with very little for creative backgrounds or graphics that they can now utilize the screen design to enhance the activities.
OK Im done for now. At the end he put up that the company was looking for about 6 new employees. I love Harmonix they are very classy company in the Boston area. Great talk! I won some Dance Central Sunglasses too. Ha Ha
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