new blog post

[OldSchool Noob]

... The Music Industry tried to put Sean Fanning (creator of napster) in jail when they should have hired him...talk about fighting your demographic....they litigated and legislated themselves into a pathetic state of non relevance.

This is the truest thing I've read this week.

If AOL had cut a deal with Napster for say, $29 per month with unlimited uploads/downloads and $12.95 a month for Limited downloads, they would own the whole enchilada today instead of being a joke that's about to be divested from Time.

Some folks just don't learn.

[stretch80]

Interesting to talk here about how games can help people become musicians.

On the forum, I'm just another knucklehead bassist, but in my other life, I'm a game designer, and I founded a company that pioneered the guitar-game idea back in the 90s. It was a wild ride - I got to make games with Aerosmith and the Who, and spend a ton of time in Japan -- we were bought by a Japanese game co. in 2000. The Boston Globe wrote an article about us last year that's pretty fun:

The unsung story of Quest for Fame - The Boston Globe

Anyway - we didn't get super rich but we did OK, and I have seen so many people who "get" what it means to play music from playing a game -- because it puts you in the shoes, so you understand that there's a guitar part and a bass part and they are different.

One of the reasons it's cool to play a MM bass is that this is such an entrepreneurial company, and thanks Sterling for sharing your thoughts.

Bert Snow

[Big Poppa]

Bert I brought back a game from japan in the 90's by konami and all the kids (brian and Scotty and their friends) loved it but it never went anywhere...I tried to get involved back then

[stretch80]

Cool, it was probably Beatmania, or I forget what their guitar variation was called. You were thinking ahead. Like you are with the 25th now.

We invented a lot of the underlying tech, and at that time all these games were big in Japan, but didn't catch on here. In 2000 we got several patents issued to us in Japan, and both Konami and Namco came to us to license the patents, and we engineered a bidding war and Namco ended up buying the company. No one thought that 5 years later the idea would finally catch on in the US!

[Big Poppa]

I think it was called guitar freaks or something like that

[stretch80]

Yes! That's it. I did an arcade game (also starring Aerosmith) for Namco to compete with that (the Konami stuff all started out as arcade games.)

Wild days. Japan is a very weird / interesting place. I did a game with a GREAT Japanese rock star/guitarist named Tomoyasu Hotei. Wonderful guy. Still popular, and does a lot of producing.