Dance Central | Polygamer

Arthur Inasi has spent the last 15 years at Harmonix, developer of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band rhythm games, working as a sound designer, level designer, voice actor, mocap actor, and more. As creative lead of Dance Central VR, he oversaw the series’ reboot for Oculus virtual reality headsets. His side hustles include producing music under the name M-Cue and hosting the podcast Greasy Says, where he offers unfiltered truths from his career as a brown game developer.

In this podcast, I ask Arthur about his experience collaborating with renowned musicians such as Usher; the educational aspects of Harmonix’s games; the potential in Harmonix’s recent acquisition by Epic Games; the need to mask oneself and be a “chameleon” to fit into the games industry; balancing being assertive and being collaborative; the hobbies that keep him going, and what we can expect from the second season of Greasy Says.

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for a transcript and links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 57:29 — 66.8MB) | Embed

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Alicia Caillier is a product manager at Harmonix Music Systems, developer of music-rhythm video games such as Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Amplitude, and Frequency. Their most recent release is Dance Central for Oculus, the first virtual-reality entry in the long-running Dance Central series. For the first time, players can go online and explore a virtual dance club, learning moves from the game’s pros and tearing up the dance floor with other players.

In this podcast, Alicia and I talk about how a master’s degree in music business led to an internship at Harmonix, kicking off an unimaginable career in an industry she never expected. What is “music business”, and how did it prepare her to work in video games? How did studying in Valencia inform her global perspective? What does a product manager do, and how do they help ensure a game is the right balance of difficulty and accessibility? What opportunities did Dance Central’s transition to virtual reality create, and what does it mean to create an inclusive virtual space? And just how good is DJ Pineapple at DropMix? All this and more in this week’s Polygamer!

Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

Links mentioned in this episode:

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 59:41 — 28.2MB) | Embed

Tag Archives: Dance Central

Polygamer #121: Arthur Inasi of Harmonix & Greasy Says

Polygamer #91: Alicia Caillier of Harmonix Music Systems