Hey look I shipped another game
This past Tuesday, February 1, marked the release of my 3rd Rock Band track pack and my 4th Rock Band title overall:
The sequel to the hit game Rock Band Country Track Pack, Country Track Pack 2 brings you such songs as Dwight Yoakam’s country rap “Intentional Heartache” that involves spraying various things neon green:
At one point during development, we had a bug relating to the scoring of the “talky” vocal parts of that song beginning around 2:55. So unlike most other bugs, we couldn’t use autoplay for testing and debugging—we actually had to sing. Normally this isn’t a problem for our QA team, who sat in a different room (they got to be really good at singing the songs in the game), but for the developers, it was a whole different story. The lyrics to the song are so ridiculous (if you haven’t watched the video above, you really should), that every time we picked up the mic to test something, it brought the productivity of everyone else in the room (including much of the Shoot Many Robots team) to a screeching halt.
Another interesting thing to note is that while all of the previous track packs have shipped on the PlayStation 2, this was the first track pack not to do so; it only shipped on the PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. I don’t know why that decision was made, since the game is based on the original Rock Band 1 engine, which runs just fine on the PS2. My guess is that the PS2 sales of the previous track packs were so low that the revenue from that platform did not outweigh the cost of licensing, manufacturing, and distributing it, but that is purely speculation.
With 3 track packs under Demiurge’s belt, I cannot comment on whether or not any further track packs are in development. I can neither confirm nor deny the existence of Rock Band Metal Track Pack 2, Rock Band Country Track Pack 3, Green Day: Rock Band 2, Rock Band Emo Track Pack, Rock Band Japanese Hip-Hop Track Pack, or Rock Band Alternative Punk Acid Black Death Metal Calypso Pop Extreme Edition Track Pack.