14 DAY TRIAL // Dan Teasdale, the lead designer of the Rock Band franchise, has left Harmonix and joined Twisted Pixel, the studio behind the hit XBLA game 'Splosion Man. This surprising turn of events is due to the fact that the developer wanted to have more of a hands-on approach with the titles he created, something that was not possible at Harmonix because of the big size of the company's projects.
On his personal blog, Teasdale wrote in a context where he was speaking about his achievement-driven life that “ At some point during all of this, I forgot to keep track of what achievements I was going for. […] Sure, the hit from releasing the title and seeing people enjoy your games was still a big part of it, but I craved the hit of being hands on. It's 100% of your job as a staff designer, but as I became a senior and then a lead on AAA titles with 200+ people on them, the ability to chart the vision and the direction of a title starts to encroach how much time you can spend tweaking the details personally.”
Rock Band's ex-lead designer quit his job at Harmonix and moved to Austin, Texas where he would become a member of Twisted Pixel. He said he would work on a “ridiculously cool project” with a “well funded and close-knit super team.” This would give the chance to have an influence on every level of the undisclosed game's design.
He also mentioned that his work with Rock Band 3 was finished, as the title was in the final stages in its development. The game is set to be released sometime until the end of the year. Harmonix wants to expand on what has made the Rock Band series great, introducing many new elements to the formula, like the possibility to use real electric guitars, a keyboard peripheral and having pitch correction for the vocals. Given the dwindling sales of rhythm-based titles last year, this may be seen as an attempt to bring new life in a genre seen by many as yesterday's news.