Last week, I read an interesting interview with Brian Chan, senior designer at Harmonix, where Gamasutra picked his brain about casual gamers’ view of the “gimmick” of plastic guitars. This question aside, Brian is pretty dead on with what’s “hot” with the current gaming industry: motion-gaming, microtransactions, mobile titles, etc. I’ve chatted with him before, and this interview reinforces the fact that Brian clearly knows what he’s talking about. His response about gimmicks and an increased immersion in music games stuck with me. Here’s what he had to say.

“Gimmicks, so-called, are really just risky moves taken in the larger narrative of innovation. They are bold and sometimes stupid, but we should applaud such risk-taking. And sometimes they are thin at the start, but many good ideas mature over time and with iteration. They [plastic guitar peripherals] seem like pretty obvious steps in a larger project of immersion, of forgetting yourself in an experience. Immersion is a difficult thing to grow across successive games because of the tendency towards increasingly deeper immersion, which is often similar to a move towards the hardcore. Maintaining accessibility for the newcomer while deepening the experience for the veteran is incredibly tough, and it only gets more difficult as a franchise develops.”

In essence, for a franchise like Rock Band, he touches on an increasing gap between a casual player who simulates a musical experience for a handful of songs, and a “hardcore” gamer who wishes to maximizes their experience by actually learning a real instrument across hundreds or thousands of songs. What originally started out with Guitar Hero simulating one instrument, eventually expanded into five different instruments with multiple variations of “plastic” instruments that can prepare you for playing a song on a real instrument. The difference between the two extremes this far down the franchise is pretty significant.

After the MASSIVE success of Guitar Hero 3, the franchise released sequels that saw less and less engagement, and I wanted to see the franchise go back to their core competency by just just focusing on the Guitar/Bass. Instead, they offered insane power ups and “pig warriors,” which may have been one of the factors that caused the franchise to go on their current hiatus. Coming out this month is RockSmith, which will offer a focused direction of just teaching players to learn real guitar. No drums. No keyboard. No vocals. Not even bass (as far as I’m aware). Gameplay-wise (and yes, I’m over-simplifying it), it is Rock Band 3’s Pro-Guitar, and nothing else. As Rock Band attempts to offer all things to all players, are they spreading themselves too thin? Are they trying too hard to be everything to everybody? By offering the option of playing a real instrument, is Rock Band potentially alienating or confusing the casual player, and essentially becoming too “hardcore?”

Add your thoughts in the comments below!

[via Gamasutra]