| Why DJ Hero Failed |
[Dec. 27th, 2009|10:44 am] |
I spent about four hours yesterday playing DJ Hero, scratching and mixing, just enjoying the hell out of great mash-up songs and fun gameplay. And in playing it, I understood completely why DJ Hero tanked.
On the surface, DJ Hero has everything you'd want in a rhythm game: great songs, an iconic culture (everyone knows to scratch the records, man), entertaining game play backed by absolutely killer reviews. Yet it sold about half of what people thought it would, and it's largely considered a flop.
So what happened? A lot of things.
First off, there's the obvious point: as people dissecting the failure of DJ Hero have repeatedly mentioned, mash-ups of songs sound good on the surface, but you don't know what you're getting. Sure, Daft Punk remixing Queen sounds potentially awesome, but do you want to drop $120 on things that might be good? Whereas Rock Band and Guitar Hero may have less exciting tracks - certainly the repeto-stomp of "We Will Rock You" isn't going to be fun to play more than once or twice - but there's no question as to what song you'll be playing.
It didn't help that the two songs featured in the Best Buy kiosks were the weakest songs in the game. As it turns out, the Queen/Daft Punk is insanely good, and the Jackson Five/Jay-Z is even better. But what did they choose? Some easy, but really boring mid-tempo tracks lacking iconic sounds. If you want to sell it to the mainstream crowd, then when they see it you need to give them Rihanna, give them Queen, give them your biggest names - not the antiquated boredom of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" weakly mixed with Gorillaz.
That isn't the biggest problem, though. The biggest problem is that Activision's habit of catering to the hardcore gamers finally bit them in the ass.
See, for Rock Band, the instrument itself doesn't take too much for a newbie to understand. You know how guitarists play, and the mechanics are the similar: finger these buttons here where you'd play chords, and flick this plastic switch where you'd strum. Sure, there are other things you can do - whammy bars, star power, hammer-ons - but all of those are purely optional elements that merely enhance the game play. You aren't punished if you don't get it.
Furthermore, the two core mechanics are simple: fret and strum. That's instinctive.
DJ Hero, on the other hand? Well, what does the average Joe know about DJing aside from the fact that they wear headphones and scratch and do... something... with tracks? The mechanics of DJing are actually not nearly as well known, so you can't really imitate it.
So when you sit down, you have the three buttons on the turntable. And you have to press those buttons and scratch, sometimes in predetermined directions. And you have a crossfader, which has three positions (which are nearly impossible to see where it's seated upon first glance at the the screen) determines which track you're using, and if you don't then you fail terribly.
So when a novice sits down for DJ hero, they now have three separate and at-odds mechanics, none of which are instinctive. They know as a DJ that they're supposed to scratch, but the buttons? They're strange, and flip positions when you twirl the turntable. The crossfader switch? Sure, DJs use them, but how many of the unwashed masses are really aware of using them?
What you end up with is a huge disconnect between what's happening on-screen and what you're doing on the controller. I watched three people play it in Best Buy, and I still wasn't really sure how to play. It wasn't until I completed the tutorial that I really fathomed everything that was going on.
Guitar Hero has a guitar to be played. DJ Hero has an interface to be learned.
That's great... for die-hard gamers like me. I like mastering new control systems, and get satisfaction from accomplishing things that are moderately hard. But for a casual gamer, who is baffled by the two-control system of a plastic guitar? He's going to look at the buttons and the twirling and the crossfader and this twirly dial here and this flashing button and cry, "WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO?" And who wants to bother?
Activision wasn't thinking, "Wow, Guitar Hero really appeals to people who never play games. How can we do that for DJ Hero?" If they had, they would have found a way to simplify the interface, make it more apparent what control affected which part of the game. They would have watched Gramma and little kids as they scratched on experimental controllers, catalogued their reactions and really concentrated on feedback.
Instead, they said, "How can we make this a game with a lot of depth?" Which, to be fair, they did - but they paid for it in having too much of a learning curve, one that put people off when they saw it in stores. It looked like work because it was, like any hardcore game, and the people rightfully stayed away in droves.
Which is a shame. It's a fine game. I'm enjoying it as I master its control schema. But I can see Gini, bored in her chair, wondering why I'm spending hours finessing my scratching technique - and her casual gamer attitude is not only completely justifiable, but the majority of purchases these days. And so even if they did come up with a sequel to DJ Hero, it'd still use this clunky controller, then that would fail.
Boo. I love these mixes. I love this game. But I can understand why it's just for me. |
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