Frequency (PS2) (left), Amplitude (PS2) (right)

How did you come up with basic structural design of the game, the general format of it? For example, in Frequency you had a tube structure, and you changed that to a flat plane in Amplitude?

Well, it was a controversial decision, and actually a lot of our fans didn't like it. The motivation was that, first of all, Frequency was not commercially-successful in the marketplace. It won all kinds of awards and got great reviews, but wasn't commercially-successful. In fact, neither was Amplitude. After we created Frequency, and Frequency was not successful, Sony, to their credit, said, "Alright, we don't really understand why this really great game didn't sell. Let's try again." In an industry where risks and innovation are generally avoided like the plague, Sony's head of development is a real innovator and wants to develop gaming. So he said, "Look, let's try again, but let's make some changes that will make it easier to market this."

Kakaroke Revolution (PS2)

In addition to just upping the visual polish overall, one of the things we wanted to do was open up the tube and expose a world outside of it. One of the comments we kept getting from people was Frequency felt sort of claustrophobic. People were, in video games, used to looking at a lot more eye-candy and expansive environments. We wanted it to look more like a contemporary video game with environments, along with the retro look that Frequency had."

The primary goal in opening up the tube into a flat plane was a purely visual one, driven by people's expectations of what video games are supposed to look like. It was as much a marketing decision as anything else. It affected gameplay. Whereas there was this circular, one-dimensional terrain that you could rotate around indefinitely, all of a sudden you had this terrain was a line segment where you could get trapped on one side or another. We had to be very careful in how we designed the gameplay. It was possible to execute a course perfectly by moving to one side then quickly returning like a typewriter back to the other side and continuing. The re-engineering of the gameplay was essentially a response to a visual design decision we made from a marketing perspective from what people thought the game should look like

Amplitude featured more mainstream artists than Frequency did. Are you partnering more with the music industry rather than promoting underground artists?

Again, it was as much a marketing decision as anything else. We love promoting underground artists. Several of those artists in Frequency—and to some degree, in Amplitude—are our own staff composers. We really like the idea of using video games as a venue in which to showcase new music. I wouldn't say that as a company we would take a step away from showcasing underground artists.

Kakaroke Revolution (PS2)

It's much more that we were facing the simple reality that, if we were not able to make Amplitude successful, we weren't going to be able to make more games like it, and we want to continue making more games like it. So we were trying to do everything that we could to reach as wide an audience as possible. In Frequency the music was almost exclusively electronica, which is a niche market. The staff here loves electronica, so we were building for ourselves when we chose the artists in Frequency. But with Amplitude, Sony felt there was a real need to try to reach a more mainstream audience by including artists that were platinum-sellers. That's the reason for the change in Amplitude.

Is there a sequel to Amplitude in the works?

Not currently, no.

That's a shame.

It is, because we'd like to make more of them. But in order for that to happen, we need to sell, at a minimum, hundreds of thousands of units of each title, which is not a sales level we achieved with those games.