Harmonix | Polygamer

Polygamer #121: Arthur Inasi of Harmonix & Greasy Says

Posted on January 12, 2022 by Ken Gagne

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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Polygamer #91: Alicia Caillier of Harmonix Music Systems

Posted on July 10, 2019 by Ken Gagne

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

Polygamer #37: Game designer Carolyn VanEseltine

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Ken Gagne

Carolyn VanEseltine is an accomplished game designer and developer, having worked at such studios as Harmonix and Giant Spacekat. Her recent presentation at Google, "Everyone can make games now", underscores her belief that the freedom to make games is a basic human right, and that games should open and accessible to all as a medium of artistic expression.

But what does it mean to be a game designer? Does one need to know how to program, or is that the province of game developers? Do the interactive fiction made possible by game engines such as Twine and Inform qualify as games? What basic skills should a participant in the upcoming Global Game Jam or Ludum Dare events have? In this podcast interview, Carolyn and Ken discuss these topics and more.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 48:16 — 23.0MB) | Embed