This was conducted at PAX 2009 with Chris Foster, the lead designer for Beatles: Rock Band who was kind enough to give us an interview a few days prior to the game’s release.

DC [Alex Shaw]: Since we’re in the UK, peripherals have been an issue for us. From the other side, what are the particular pitfalls and logistics of trying to distribute peripherals for a game like Rock Band or Beatles: Rock Band on a worldwide scale?

CF: Well, the best thing about the Beatles’ game is that we are bringing Beatles instruments with it and those are based on Rock Band 2 hardware. So Europe will finally be getting the upgrade. These are more polished even than the Rock Band 2 instruments, and especially the guitars; for the first time in Europe you now get the auto calibration. You just hold it up to the screen and the speaker, and it automatically calibrates the lag. But the logistics of it overall are that we have to get the game done six times; America and Europe for each of three platforms. That means you have to get one done really early, then localization has to be done for different languages, and then changes have to be made to fit the Wii platform. So you basically just have to start early. And with Rock Band and Rock Band 2, that was okay, but with the Beatles, because it’s the Beatles, because they have such appeal, we made a point of getting it done very early so that we could get the game just right.

DC: Consider Australia. Are they going to be getting Beatles: Rock Band?

CF: I believe they are getting bundles and hardware on September 9^th.

DC: Obviously you’re reaching a completely different demographic with this than with the previous two Rock Band games, and a lot of these people might already own a Playstation 2 – why no PS2 release?

CF: I think because we’re trying to advance the game, and the dreamscapes would really have been a technical challenge. With all the vocal harmonies and all the things happening on screen, that would have been too much of a challenge. Honestly we didn’t want to do the game half-assed. To get the game to fit on the PS2 we would have had to make compromises.

DC: How’s the Wii version holding up?

CF: The Wii version holds up great, and that was a big challenge for us, and a big priority for us. So all the features are in there, all the dreamscapes, and all the art assets look as good, even though it’s at a lower resolution.

DC [Old Cowboy Paul Shotton]: Vocal harmonizing – you have to have three microphones, how does that actually work?

CF: In terms of the connections, it’s fairly simple – you have three USB ports, more if you use a hub, so we wanted to make it that simple for the user; just plug in your microphone and go. We made it so you can sing the way you want to. Everyone can sing karaoke style – sing the same thing – or choose to harmonize. But you don’t have to harmonize to get through the game, it just becomes something you’re rewarded for. The main challenge was finding the best way to represent three parts in the same track without being visually confusing, and having three sets of microphone arrows without being visually confusing. And having rules that aren’t punishing and make you want to learn how to play.

DC: How does that basically work, because I’m thinking if I want to play solo, can I turn off the harmonies?

CF: Absolutely. You can play solo with one line, where up to three people with mikes can sing that one track, but there’s also harmonies mode, where you have each of the three lines pulled out, so you can see what you’re supposed to be singing. And we made each of the arrows visually distinctive. So when you start singing you can follow your part. As you’re playing, if you tap on your microphone, you’ll be able to see which one of those arrows you’re playing.

DC: How do you practice that? What exactly is the vocal practice mode?

CF: We added a vocal practice mode, which is like a vocal trainer but it’s in the section with the practice modes for the other instruments. We upgraded it so that you can practice each section vocally, and cycle through all the parts. It’ll ghost out all the parts but one. It will make a flute noise, a guidance point that will actually superimpose over a single part, so it’ll cause that to lift out.

DC: I think it’s always been hard for me to distinguish the melody and the harmony.

CF: What I found was that the melody you know, the high harmony is sort of audible, but that middle line was always a mystery. It’s nice to finally hear what George was singing.

DC: Is this technology something that you’ll be carrying on with in future games? And even that practice mode would be handy.

CF: Absolutely. It works so much better than we could have expected. We knew the Beatles would support harmony, that’s what their music is about, but it’s been so well received, and we’re not fools in that particular way!

DC [Alex]: I know you won’t be able to tell me anything from Harmonix’s point of view about future titles, but what would you like to see in Rock Band 3?

CF: I’ll tell you what I would like to see in future Rock Band titles, I don’t want to see us resting on our laurels. We have a franchise; we want to nurture it, we don’t want to exploit it. So finding new ways to interact with your music, finding new ways to play with the campaign and challenges, new styles of gameplay – finding ways to do that so that it’s still familiar but not too familiar.

We said last week we’d have on the Gamer’s with Jobs to talk about gaming with your kids, but scheduling conflicts means we’re pushing them to the week after. Instead Commander Tim will be on talking about the preservation of vintage games and what we face when some titles may end up disappearing forever.

We’ll also have our full Halo 3: ODST review. You can hear more from Tim in his show The Widget and of course on Gamehounds; a proud member of Platform Nation.

Thanks to Sean, Julian and Tim for rearranging everything at short notice.

After months of planning and tireless work from Steve Jones and Tony Here are our brand new forum.  Come along and get a more hands-on experience with the DC community. There’s also a link on the right. I’m pleased to say that since Saturday we’re growing into a sizable posse already.

We’re joined this week by Sinan Kubba and Joe DeLia of Big Red Potion a particularly distinguished and intelligent gaming podcast associated with The Game Reviews and The Unified Gamers Network. We discuss with them genres that we have extreme difficulty getting into and which games might help us get into them, why AAA titles with fantastic review scores often leave us feeling annoyed at their minor shortcomings and how ridiculous that is. We also launch a streamlined quickfire version of our eight questions, now down to just five.

We have some great news about expanding and maintaining our community, and it’s something you can all take part in. We also announce the results of our part in the grand Platform Nation MAG beta code giveaway contest. Who will the ten lucky PSN ID’s be? All that plus details of how you could win a big old bag of our PAX swag; including T-Shirts, codes, rare promotional items and full games, plus for the next week we’re giving away even more shinies every day. We ask you, what other podcast treats you so well?

Finally we devote 45 minutes to a thorough review of Beatles Rock Band. Find out if we feel it’s worth the wait, the money and the hype.

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This is most of an impromptu interview we held with Lars Bakken, multiplayer designer for Bungie after play-testing the new Firefight (survival) mode on Halo 3: ODST at PAX. Lars was gracious and generous with his time; a thoroughly nice bloke.

LARS: So you’ve got six skulls that turn on progressively as the game goes further in, and then after three you get a bonus round where we just turn on all the skulls, including Iron (round restarts on death), and we pour grunts in. Pretty much the only way to survive is to go for head shots. It’s a way for you to basically get lives, because I don’t know how much you play, but as you get to the next round we refill the health, we refill the weapons, and it’s like “hey, you made it, go on to the next round”.

DC: Is there a limit to how many waves there’s going to be?

LARS: No, it never ends. It’s just as long as you can survive. I mean it does get to a point where all the skulls turn on, and it’s very hard.

DC: We had infinite lives when we played, but with only seven lives between four people, how long would a game last for the average player?

LARS: It’s hard to say, people of different skill levels will last different lengths of time. In the studio, we can go for like an hour and a half, two hours sometimes, but when the game comes out, we really don’t know how long people are going to last.

DC: How long is the single player campaign going to take?

LARS: There are so many different variables, the game is actually laid out pretty differently now, you’ve got this big city at night, you’re playing the flashback levels in a different sequence. It’s an open world map, you can go round and find these cool objects and when you do you can play the flashback level, and then you get more of the story. Because of that there’s other things going on in the city that we haven’t really talked about, so for people who are really into Bungie games, and the lore, there’s a lot of really cool stuff in there for them to look around and find, so they may spend hours and hours, but there are going to be people who want to go straight through to each thing, and just finish the game. And I would say playing the campaign is on a par with the original Halo 3, so the amount of time you put into that, it’s about the same.

DC: How does that interact with the story, because you’re meant to be a lone soldier, aren’t you?

LARS: Well you’re not in the city at night when you’re playing co-op, you have three other ODST buddies with you, and when you do a flashback, player one is always going to be the guy in the flashbacks, if it’s Dutch, or Mickey, or Buck, and then once again have the three ODSTs with him.

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Halo 3: ODST is released on Tuesday and here is my comprehensive list of predictions for some things that will happen in the game.

• About halfway through, the flood will turn up.

That is all.

Story and Narrative in Games / Batman: Arkham Asylum

We welcome back Daniel Floyd to the show. YouTube legend and animated lecturer Mr Floyd makes for a fantastic conversational guest, bringing his insight and clarity to the show, which this week is about the way story, script and narrative have progressed in the thirty year history of video games. We reach some surprising conclusions about the nature of interactivity and how far we’ve come when held against movies and literature.

The competition segment in the middle explains how you listeners can get your mitts on a MAG beta download code (this immediately afterwards expanded into a full ten available codes so get cracking PS3 owners), with the winners to be announced next week. A Digital Cowboys MAG game night will be on the cards. This is all part of a massive 128 code giveaway brought to you by Platform Nation.

After that there’s a full dedicated 40-minute review of Batman: Arkham Asylum. We leave no stone in Batman’s grim and gothic world unturned exploring this surprisingly high quality comic-book license. There’s a spoiler section at the very end with full warning so those playing know when to spin on.

At the close there’s more music from Jonathan Coulton, a song which as it so happens was on one of the very first podcasts Alex ever took part in. (It wasn’t Digital Cowboys, it was Joinee Radio episode #21 – 22/04/2007 DC completists may like to check that one out and thus pay their respects to the man who taught me how to podcast; Mr Matt Fowler.)

Daniel Floyd can be found at his blog: Talking About These. And definitely check out his series of YouTube lectures, especially the one that tonight’s subject is based on: Video Games and Storytelling.

Jonathan Coulton’s site also features a comprehensive MP3 store. As always, we heartily recommend you take a listen to a few of his songs.

There is a bit of poor sound quality at Tony’s end for the first half, our apologies, and it does get better for the Batman section. We’ll try to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Next week: The guys from Big Red Potion and we review Beatles Rock Band.

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We’ve decided to move Game Club back into the main show for now due to work hours and in the interests of staying focused. We may move it back into two shows at a later date but for now look for just one Digital Cowboys show a week. This weeks game that we will be talking about for a full 40 minutes is Batman: Arkham Asylum. Look for Episode 122 out Friday night.

The Final Word on PAX 09

This is a full look back on our PAX experience and we’ve brought in Chris and Kelly Brown The Married Gamers who were there with us. We talk about a boat-load of upcoming top titles that we got to play and then pick over our favorite memories.

As of next week we’ll return to normal with a Game Club episode focusing on Batman: Arkham Asylum. There will still be plenty of interviews and articles about what we saw at PAX on the website. Also a ton of swag needs to be given away to our lucky listeners starting with one particularly rare item we’re offering up on tonight’s show.

Many thanks to Chris, Kelly, Elaine, Edie, Kevin, both Dan’s Steve, Bobby, Mike, the Gamer’s Pub, Krop and the Superhappyfuntimeshow and everyone else we met out there and to Lizz and Paul for their unending patience with what was essentially two kids in their own personal candy store.

Roll on PAX 10.

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This is an audio-only version of the Jonathan Coulton Interview with some of his music woven in to whet the appetites of those new to him and make it more special for his fans. We wanted to ensure that our subscribers had something good to listen to and we’re very proud of this. We’ll be back soon with a multi-host podcast as soon as Tony isn’t dying from (in his words) “Bionic Plague”.

Seems somehow appropriate when interviewing a man so fixated on killer robots.

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Hey all. Steve Artlip of Platform Nation very recently put up the audio file of a podcast we recorded live on the Sunday. It was the last day of PAX and we were utterly exhausted but it was a thrilling experience to have a mic thrown in front of us and basically ad-lib a show while people walked past. Tons of special guests including Jamie Cheng of Klei talking about one of our games of show; SHANK!

Since we were unable to do a regular podcast last week, this should tide you guys over. In fact it’s probably better than a lot of our regular shows, due to the raw nature and group contributions. In fact it was actually the first time Tony and I have been sat next to each other for a podcast. Thanks to Steve for getting this together, it was great to meet you in person at last.

Here it is.

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