The Official Harmonix Podcast

Harmonix is populated by fascinating individuals. People who think so far outside the proverbial box that they don’t even perceive the world in three dimensions. Today’s guest is Matt Boch, Lead Designer on Dance Central 2, and true Renaissance man. Matt schools us on his design philosophy, and regales us with stories from his myriad side projects, such as the recently revealed PXL PUSHR. He may or may also be working on a private robot army for our CEO, Alex Rigopulos. Listen in to find out!

Podcastin makes me feel good!! We’re in my favorite time of year, dudes and dudettes, Autumn. With the Fall comes cool air, foliage, Halloween, pumpkin spice coffee, ghouls, apple cider donuts, and a BIG GAME RELEASE FROM HARMONIX! That’s right, Dance Central 2 is NOW OUT INTERNATIONALLY, and will be out in the US on Oct 25th! We’ve gathered our always energetic choreographers to talk about the game with us on this episode. We also get deep into some spooky ghost stories! Cmere put this in your ears.

The winds of technology are blowing this podcast through the seas of life. This week we’ve hooked up Skype to interview Chuck BB and Rick Spears to discuss their brutally badass graphic novel, Black Metal. If you haven’t checked that out, go get it now!! The regular crew follows with a rollicking discussion the upcoming DLC, one for the record books. We’ll also introduce you to our newest team member, Nick Chester, who has joined Harmonix from Destructoid.

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Harmonix Creative Director, Josh "Robotkid" Randall. We talk at length with Josh about our new iOS app, VidRhythm, as well as his experience leading The Beatles: Rock Band project, with a healthy dose of “Old Harmonix” stories. Also joining us is VidRhythm’s UI designer, Abby Borden, who shares what it was like to move from web design to app design.

At PAX East last year I had the brilliant (read: bad) idea of turning a Q and A on the audience, refusing to answer questions and instead forcing panel attendees to take their best shot at answering other fans’ questions. It was pretty excellent (read: ridiculous) so we did it again this year at PAX Prime. Armed with a series of questions related to VidRhythm, Dance Central 2 and the Rock Band franchise, we demanded answers, made some announcements and in the end, I think, learned a little bit about each other (read: made an entire room full of people purr like kitties before taking them out for doughnuts).

50 consecutive podcasts! This is the absolute busiest time of the year for us, but we managed to get the team together for this milestone episode. We’re in prep mode for the Penny Arcade Expo, so discussion centers pretty squarely on that. Come hang out with us in Seattle, we’ll be giving away tons of incredible new swag and organizing an awesome hangout!

It is a fun podcast this week, gang. Like a really lame Voltron, we gathered every member of our Community Brand Management Communications Team to hang out for this one. This also marks the inaugural podcast episode for our newest community manager, Annette, who joins us from GameInformer Magazine. Discussion touches on such hot topics as: Aaron not having a driver’s license, Annette’s dad being Robert DeNiro from A Bronx Tale, game journalism and leaks, and our GamesCom plans.

As a follow up to our last podcast, we pulled our audio engineer, Nick, in on the action to go in depth on the ins and outs of home brewing beer. If you think you know about beer, I bet there’s still something here to be learned. We also discuss Rock Band hitting 3,000 songs, and share some more stats that we’ve snatched from the data mines.

Fresh from the Boston leg of the Vans Warped Tour, in this week’s podcast the team gives a spirited recounting of the sun-soaked day’s events. We met a ton of Rock Band Network artists and escaped a downpour with the guys from Less Than Jake, who are the best. The crew also runs down their favorite live show memories, and we hope you’ll share yours with us as well.

In honor of our podcast now being rebroadcast on Fusion Rock Radio in Canada, we spend a hearty amount of time discussing The Great White North in this episode. We also talk to Mr. Fish McGill, an unsung hero of our web/community presence, but also an accomplished artist who grew up in Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill Hideout. Also, amidst anecdotes about Andy Kaufman, we talk about RockBand.com’s web content philosophies and chat about upcoming DLC!!