An article about DJ Hero compared to Guitar Hero and Rockband. The articles, as well as many of the comments on it, provides some interesting insight as to what makes one want to pick up a music game.

Opinion: Why DJ Hero Can’t Save Music Games
by Leigh Alexander

My thesis is a music rhythm game which plays with the idea of mash-up, remixing, and game as a medium of expression and performance. The game consists of two sides: the game stages of music/rhythm puzzles, and the remix studio. The stages are mini-games that serves as experimental grounds for the types of input that can be connected to character performance or environmental animations. Each stage should be mini-games that appeal to causual gamer and take less than 3 minutes to complete. Stages that are cleared will have its sound and animation elements available in the remix studio. In the remix studio, users can remix a song with the sound and animation from cleared stages.

I would like to start by making this game that utilizes the Wii controllers on a PC.

That took a long time. Time to enter the fast lane.

I worked as a computer software programmer for nearly 3 years. I deal mostly with the computer graphics aspects. I also have worked for an online company for awhile, during which time I am also introduced to a lot of board games.

When I’m not working, I doodle. A lot of them are fan art, though sometimes original characters appears as well. I post them online, and I look for other fanarts that I like as well. I go to a lot of the doujinshi conventions in Taiwan, and even met others at work who are also into this sort of activities. Recently, I’m also starting to pay attention to fan vids, especially those handdrawn by the creators themselves. Even though the techniques can be really rustic, the works of an amateur are still interesting for me to observe what works in animation and what doesn’t.

I have also been a gamer for a long time. Up until recently, I mostly play role playing games (particularly JRPG) and simulation games (The Sims, as one example). Recently, I’m also got into music rhythm games such as Ouendan and Taiko no Tatsujin. After that, I started looking into Rockband, Guitar Hero, and Rhythm Heaven, as well as Flash games of the rhythm genre.

I wanted to do something related to fandom at first, but some research papers also informed me that fandom creation can sometimes be a private matter and relies heavily on user content. An interesting idea that keeps on popping up in a lot of fandom studies, however, is the idea of decontextualizing snippets of the original work into something new.

I came to Parsons because the work of being an in-house software engineer is starting to get dreary with no relevant challenges for me as a programmer, not to mention I also have other non-programming projects I wanted to do, too. Hopefully it will get me a job where I don’t have to feel ashamed or guilty for being an Otaku.