Tracy Rosenthal Newsom is an award-winning game producer and product leader who brought you hits like Rock Band and Dance Central. I worked with Tracy in the early days of bringing Rock Band to life - and learned so much from her. In many ways, we've traveled parallel paths - moving through the worlds of gaming, digital healthcare and humanistic product design. The common thread is a deep, abiding interest in creating experiences that connect with people in a deep and positive way. And I'll tell you - Tracy knows how to do that. Join us and discover the key practices that led this innovative creative powerhouse towards success.
Check out the video here: https://youtu.be/PbTCRDxUZT4
Tracy Rosenthal Newsom is an award-winning game producer and product leader who brought you hits like Rock Band and Dance Central. I worked with Tracy in the early days of bringing Rock Band to life - and learned so much from her. In many ways, we've traveled parallel paths - moving through the worlds of gaming, digital healthcare and humanistic product design. The common thread is a deep, abiding interest in creating experiences that connect with people in a deep and positive way. And I'll tell you - Tracy knows how to do that. Join us and discover the key practices that led this innovative creative powerhouse towards success.
Check out the video here: https://youtu.be/PbTCRDxUZT4
Intro: [00:00:01.6] From Silicon Valley, the heart of startup land, it's Getting2Alpha. The show about creating innovative, compelling experiences that people love. And now, here's your host, game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach, Amy Jo Kim.
Amy: Tracy Rosenthal-Newsom is an award winning game producer and product leader who brought you hits like, like Rock Band and Dance Central.
I worked with Tracy in the early days of bringing Rock Band to life. And I learned so much from her in many ways. We've traveled parallel paths, moving through the worlds of gaming, digital healthcare, and humanistic product design. The common thread is a deep abiding interest in creating experiences that connect people in a positive way.
And I'll tell you, Tracy knows how to do that.
Tracy: I think this aspect of curiosity, this empathy [00:01:00] for your players needs and desires, and this ability to be humble when your design just doesn't work. Is something that I think any product innovator, you know, needs to kind of put in there in their tool basket.
And, you know, early on, I definitely think that, you know, I knew some of this, right? But as time went on, it became more and more important. Because you'd see when, you know, designers were not humble and they were so attached to their designs and felt like they knew more than their users. I think that's the big thing.
I mean, there's many things right about how to be innovative, but I don't think that there's anything that I care more about than, you know, understanding the human. That we're making this product for.
Amy: Tracy's got a unique perspective on [00:02:00] how humanistic product design overlaps with the world of gaming.
Join us and discover the key practices that led this innovative hip producing creative powerhouse towards success.
Welcome to the Getting2Alpha podcast, Tracy.
Tracy: Thank you. I love being here.
Amy: I'm so excited to get to hang out with you for a while. Any day I get to hang out with you is a good day.
Tracy: This is going to be fun. Thanks.
Amy: So to get started, give folks just a little glimpse into your work life. Like what is a day look like for you these days?
Who are you interacting with? What kinds of decisions are you making and discussions are you having?
Tracy: So most recently, I have been working as an advisor and product experience consultant for a couple of really interesting companies in the digital health and transformative technology space. So two [00:03:00] of my clients are Akili Interactive and the Neuroscape Lab.
At UCSF, and they're both pioneering digital therapeutics delivered as videogame experiences. So, um, one of the things that I have been doing lately, um, each week is going into the Neuroscape Lab. I work on this cool, small R&D team, and we are developing a VR right now. And each week, uh, just a small team Uh, goes into the lab and we play the state of the game prototype.
It's an, it's an immersive experience in kind of a psychedelic natural world where our bodies are learning and repeating more and more complex rhythms and patterns. And so pretty much what I'm doing is going in really working on the physical play. So each one of us will play the game prototype, we'll observe each other, we'll brainstorm on the physical movement design, [00:04:00] we'll brainstorm on the audio design, the UI elements.
The timing, the gameplay feedback, the graphics. And we kind of just go back and forth on what feels good. You know, what can I sense, you know, what's the best way for me to learn this rhythm and we experiment, um, each week. And I go away and I come back and, uh, the engineer has done another rev.
And this is the work of an early R&D in, uh, in a lab at a university, uh, which is incubating, studying and validating videogame experiences that hopefully eventually will become therapeutics for a broad range of brain disorders. It's super awesome and cool.
Amy: Fascinating. Yeah. That sounds a lot like some of the Days we spent together, uh, working on some projects with the iterating and the testing and, you know, figuring out the feedback systems.
Tracy: Well, it's so critical [00:05:00] and it's so fun for me to have had, you know, the previous career that I've had, which we can certainly talk about today. And you and I spent time together doing, and then getting back to the roots of R&D where you are in those really early stages of figuring out what is a core game mechanic.
And in this case you know, what does it feel like when you're moving your body, uh, in VR in an immersive world? And it's, it's really fun. It's, I'm having a blast.
Amy: It's a new frontier.
Absolutely. It's, it's an amazing confluence of really my dream of taking so much of what I learned, uh, in making videogames for years and watching really how truly people change the way they felt when they played, you know, Rock Band and Dance Central, and Guitar Hero.
And I saw it for years and years. And, you know, now I'm, I'm in a lab and we are working on games that remind [00:06:00] me of some of the experiences that I had previously, but it's in service of, of actually helping people who have brain disorders and, you know, are suffering in a lot of their lives. And it's so funny because I think often about, you know, we, we, changed a lot of people's lives when we brought those music games to people's living rooms for years.
And we brought a lot of joy and brought people together through, you know, cross generational relationships got better. And, you know, we heard all kinds of amazing stories of, of people's confidence building. And yet, you know, what we've discovered, the possibilities. of what is happening right now in the world of science is the possibility of actually using videogame experiences as therapeutics.
And that possibility is very real.
Amy: Wow. Let's wind this back to the beginning and learn more about how you turned into the person having these amazing [00:07:00] days. So how did you? First get started in design and tech. And what were some of those pivotal experiences along the way that really built up your skills?
Tracy: Okay, well, let me let me take you way back. So my first career was in the film business. You know, I spent, uh, over a decade making movies for the big Hollywood studios. Um, I traveled all over the country to, you know, interesting and bizarre universes where, uh, I managed car chases. Uh, underground in salt mines and, you know, wrestled with grizzly bears, not me, but action heroes did.
And, you know, went to the glaciers of Alaska. So I did a lot of like really amazing and fun problem solving, creative problem solving and lots of logistics, um, in getting, you know, huge teams of people to do amazing things in short periods of time. [00:08:00] But it was, it was a logistics job, you know, it was a. I was a assistant director and there were great adventures, but there was a, there was a part of my creative soul, uh, that really was not being expressed all those years in the, in the film business and, you know, made a bunch of bad action pictures that, um, was just helping other people do.
And, and I thought to myself at one point, you know, my values are too important for me to be creating content in this world that does not have meaning. And I'm a creative person that wants to express myself. And, and so I took a huge career leap and joined the world of interactive media, uh, in the mid nineties and went to work for Disney interactive, making children's games.
And it was fantastic. It was so rewarding. It was amazing. We were, we were in this world of edutainment products. You probably remember you, you might've been making edutainment products also back then.
And, you know, we were, we were [00:09:00] teaching children to read and do math, but we were doing it with these engaging characters and interactions that brought them delight and joy while they were learning and it was a really fun experience, and after Disney Interactive, I spent some time at Disney Imagineering, and I really kind of learned the best from the best about how to create experiences in a human centered design way, where you really learn about your player and learn about the people that you're making these games or experiences for.
So. It was, you know, a short period of my career, but it was really impactful. And then my husband and I made this cross country move and I ended up in Boston and I was led to a destiny of mine clearly when I joined Harmonix Music in its early days. You know, they were like a small startup and there was this Interest the co-founders in enabling people to feel the joy of making music.[00:10:00]
And I, at the time was really interested in creating new ways to play. That's kind of what I was seeking. I was really interested in like, you know, how can we create new ways to play? And here were these guys, they were amazing. And they're musicians. And I was not a musician. I was a dancer, but music had been you know, my guide, my playmate, my whole life. And I thought this is, this is amazing opportunity.
So, and I wasn't really a gamer either, which was a real advantage for me coming in to create new ways of playing with these musicians, because as a non gamer and as a non musician, I was one of the key people on the leads team that actually Was more like the players that we ended up bringing into the world.
And so, you know, over the course of the years, you know, in the beginning, we were making these rhythm action games that were [00:11:00] really addictive and the audience didn't get them. There was really no context and, uh, they were very abstract. But it was funny because we got this opportunity to make this karaoke revolution, uh, franchise for Konami.
And I was, uh, the project lead and some, and worked with, um, some wonderful people on that project. And as we were making these singing, these singing games, what we discovered was what really was the beginning of this performance simulation. genre that became our very successful, you know, Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises where we really gave people this ability to feel physically, emotionally, through all of their senses, got to feel what it was like to be a rock star.
It was an amazing process, 14 years there, made, I think, I think almost [00:12:00] 40 games or something like that, um, you know, started in those early days of frequency and amplitude and the karaoke revolution franchise and into Guitar Hero. And then, you know, led, um, a team of over 150 people. to make our first Rock Band game, which was really like the hardest thing the studio had ever done.
I mean, it was, it was insane, but the joy that we as a team had making it was also incredible. I mean, you know, we put people in bands and the office and we connected so much more with each other and saw the potential of how we We would enable that in people's living rooms and, um, that franchise became extremely successful and as the franchise was, you know, progressing and we were trying to figure out as a studio what we were going to do next.
We thought, well, you know, I had always wanted to make a dance game [00:13:00] and that's the way in which I have always interacted with music was with my body. I grew up dancing, um, as a kid and it was kind of a lifeline of mine. And so, you know, we decided, okay, let's try to make a dance game. And, uh, I, I found a bunch of people at the studio who were psyched about doing it.
And led this team to make this amazing experience with the Kinect, you know, Microsoft was one of our partners. And so we were, you know, one of the early products that actually, uh, was the killer app for the launch of the Kinect and being able to, to make a game where you could learn authentic choreography, uh, was, was phenomenal.
And there was so much, so many interesting lessons In user interface, when in fact your body is the control mechanism for those interactions. So that was fantastic. And there were so many lessons that I learned through [00:14:00] that process. And then, you know, the studio continued to evolve and, you know, we made Fantasia music evolved, and we had a period where we had lots of small teams iterating on all kinds of new projects.
And it was really a very interesting. Time when we had gone from, you know, a bunch of really big teams down to a bunch of small teams, iterating on R&D and trying to figure out what, what the next thing was. And eventually, after about 14 years, I ended up moving on. And what I would say is, I'd say probably about a year and a half, two years before I left Harmonics.
I had some very difficult personal things, uh, happen in my life. My, my daughter was a freshman in high school and had a brain injury, had multiple concussions and ended up with post concussive syndrome. And it was a really, [00:15:00] really challenging time for all of us in my family. And this was at a time when my career was, you know, at the top and I was, Out there making people around the world really happy and joyful.
And yet, you know, at home, uh, we were facing a very difficult, invisible disorder, you know, and I became very interested in the brain and what's happening in the brain and, you know, having an adolescent at the time. Adolescents don't talk much anyway. And here there is, you know, an invisible condition where, uh, my daughter, who is a very bright young woman, you know, was losing her, her short time memory.
I mean, it was, it was quite extraordinary. So that kind of took me on a path. To begin to really think about my own priorities and hers and our families and I, I learned a lot about the brain and then I [00:16:00] had my own health issue that came to me and kind of stopped me in my tracks and I think, you know, going through a number of those things made me really think about, about, you know, what does it mean to be a business woman who is working all the time and driving herself into the ground when in fact, what, what are my priorities and, and how do I want to spend my time and give to the world and give to my family and give to myself.
And I think those. ideas really translated into what I did next. And so after harmonics, I, I decided I really wanted to bring the experience that I had to serving people that were suffering and needed healing in some way. And I, I ended up going to Toronto. And this was, uh, after my daughter had healed and graduated high school and was on [00:17:00] her gap year, we moved to Toronto and I joined Interaxon, uh, the makers of Muse, the brain sensing headband.
It's a portable EEG device. It's kind of in an MVP state. And it was the Muse meditation experience where It's a very, very interesting concept where, you know, you would have a portable EEG device that you could wear in your living room or in your office or in your bedroom or out in the park and learn how to meditate.
And so I joined the team and it was a really interesting experience. One of the things it did for me was, you know, required me to embrace a meditation practice. And learn about meditation and really put that beginner's mind on as a product designer, as well as a human being, you know, really embracing what it means.
And, you know, I had spent a lot of time in my life doing yoga. And had [00:18:00] dabbled with meditation, but I hadn't really sunk into it. And so it was quite an interesting experience to think about how do we teach someone to commit to a meditation practice and what are the tools to learn self awareness and really get into the hearts and minds of users who are suffering with, you know, stress in our lives or so many people suffering from depression, people driving themselves into the ground similarly to ways that I did when I was working so hard.
So it was a really fun process. I learned a lot about hardware. And digital apps and, and that whole process and portable EEG.
And anyway, it was an amazing experience. We actually also made some smart glasses and I worked on the R&D of the app, the Smith focus app to have [00:19:00] those smart sunglasses, uh, drive, uh, that experience. So that was a lot of fun. And then after about a year and a half, my husband and I moved back to San Francisco, where I'm from.
And I've, I've been here for the past year and a half. Working, finally, bringing together, which is really interesting, my experiences with videogames into the healthcare world and, you know, working with Akili Interactive, who are pioneering digital therapeutics. Delivered as videogame experiences and also the Neuroscape lab who are working in R&D-kind of environment to create these early experiences and put them into studies to determine and validate their efficacy in all kinds of ways. It's really amazing that, you know, after all of this [00:20:00] time, I'm now working with some companies that are taking the things that we learned out in the world of videogames and really building experiences that are engaging, that people are learning.
You know, desire to do for all kinds of reasons that we've figured out because of, you know, getting to know them and understand them, and then bringing that to a community of people that have such great needs.
Amy: How gratifying.
Tracy: Yeah, it's amazing. It's like, it's really amazing. And it's really interesting too, because there's also just this whole world, this healthcare world that, um, I'm learning about and working with neuroscientists and, and learning about clinical studies.
And, you know, there's a whole new world after, after working in consumer products for so long. So, so yeah, very, very interesting work, uh, that's happening right now here in San Francisco. Yeah. It's good. You moved here. Yeah. Well, that too. I love being back. [00:21:00] I just love being back in California and hiking the trails and being near the mountains and the beach all at the same time just makes me feel good.
Amy: You've been working on the cusp of innovation for a long time. You know, you just looking back on your career, Harmonix was an amazingly innovative company. Always on the edge. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, you were doing edutainment that was innovative at its time. And what you're doing now is this early R&D that's also innovative, but it's part of a growing wave.
You know, there's, there's been more and more people from the games industry getting interested in healthcare and, you know, more and more merging of those two things. So as you plunge into this world, What do you know now about successful innovation that you wish you had known 10 years ago that you are [00:22:00] carrying with you forward?
Tracy: Yeah. You know, the thing that really. I guess the thing that just really resonates with me so much is the value of user experience and, you know, we used to call it playtesting, you know, nowadays there's lots of people out there graduating with degrees in, you know, user experience, research methods, and there's a whole industry that's been birthed, but when I think about it way back when I was working at Disney.
You know, I just started to learn about this concept of playtesting and really they had a bunch of different and interesting ways to do it. But when I went to Harmonix, I mean, we were a small little company. I just, I created a homegrown playtesting process. It was really basic. And I really used my, my intuition to get in there and observe the users.
And I think over the years, I have learned a lot [00:23:00] more from very experienced UX researchers who spent a lot of time with a lot of different methods. But the reality, when I really think about it across, like, what are the little dots that I connect in this. It's really about product creators and experienced designers needing to observe their users interacting with the product or the experience, the need to really inquire about their experience, like putting that inquiry mindset on really needing to listen and understand them and watching their behavior.
And when I think about it, I think this aspect of curiosity This empathy for your players needs and desires and this ability to be humble when your design just doesn't work. Is something that I think [00:24:00] any product innovator, you know, needs to kind of put in there in their tool basket. And, you know, early on, I definitely think that, you know, I knew some of this, right?
But as time went on, it became more and more important. Because you'd see when, you know, designers were not humble and they were so attached to their designs and felt like they knew more than their users. I think that's the big thing. I mean, there's many things right about how to be innovative, but I don't think that there's anything that I care more about than, you know, understanding the human that we're making this product for.
Amy: It's so interesting. You said playtesting. I have a chapter in my new book called playtesting and I use the word really deliberately. because it's from games. Yes. And it's from entertainment too. [00:25:00] But a lot of user experience professionals don't know about play testing unless they came outta CMU and then they do because there's a lot of entertainment professionals there.
They know about user interface testing. They know about. Is the button in the right place? They know about that sort of thing. But I think you hit the key when you said it's what's important about innovation. The more you're innovating, the more you really need to have that humble attitude and figure out how to test a really early rough version of what you're doing quickly.
And that's really the skill that I think when you come out of game that I consider the, one of the cores of game thinking, and it's what you're talking about. And it has a humbleness to it, but that doesn't mean a lack of vision.
Tracy: Absolutely. No, I, I totally agree with you. There's, there's an intention.
There's like a creative intention that you have to bring to building an experience. [00:26:00] And then what happens is you watch your player try their best. To accomplish or perform the interactions, the game that you built. And so often we discover a whole bunch of things that we didn't know, you know, about, you know, what it feels like for them to perform the actions that we designed.
And in that process of observing their behaviors and observing their actions of, you know, listening to. Their desires, their challenges of like interacting with something that we built that just doesn't work for them. I mean, that's the part that's fun because you often discover something in that process of playtesting.
And then the other part I would say about playtesting, which is interesting, is that the play part, you know, for me, it's, it's experiential, right. And experiential means so many things, you know, it's not just the click of a [00:27:00] button, but it's, how is the player feeling? What is their intent? What's, what's comfortable?
What's like just physically comfortable, like so often. Yeah. You know, when we're building products, I think people tend to remove the somatic. They remove the physical from the human being that is entirely physical and, and usually interacting with their product physically, whether it's their whole body or part of their body.
And so, I think there's something about that where we have to, you know, integrate the body, integrate the mind, you know, where are they coming from, and then integrate their heart, you know, where, how are they feeling? And so those things all combined, when you are creating an experience. All of those come together and then that's what you play test and then that's what you learn from.
And then you iterate and then you do it again. You know, and that's the fun. I love that part.
Amy: I do too. And it's, it's where it gets good.
Tracy: Yeah.
Amy: Right?
Tracy: Absolutely.
Amy: Can you take us through a [00:28:00] few moments of what that was actually like on Dance Central? The story of you as a dancer joining a company full of musicians and then getting a chance to make one of the launch games for a new somatic platform.
How did some of this, you know, lessons learned from early prototyping and play testing? What did you learn as a dancer that challenged your assumptions on that project?
Tracy: Yeah. Wow. There were so many fun things. I mean, you know, this is just a fun story that I'm going to share. I would say like maybe half of our team ish, maybe less than half, maybe a third of the team, you know, enjoyed dancing and, you know, like to dance and maybe we're good dancers.
And then I'd say maybe more than half the team were not that comfortable in their bodies. probably had never been to a dance class and [00:29:00] only were like dragged onto the dance floor because, you know, a partner, a friend made them do it. We had hired these amazing choreographers to become our level designers, which, by the way, was just an amazing opportunity of bringing this extremely different type of thinker and creator onto a design team, just a fantastic experience.
And one of the things we had to do in Dance Central was to, you know, teach you a routine. I mean, in a lot of ways, the experience was learning a routine and then getting good at it, right? And so what we realized was that we needed to Learn how people learn to dance. One of the things I love to do in, in, in the process of creating something with or without technology is, well, what's break it back down to like, you know, the most basic, let's get one of the choreographers to run a dance class for all of [00:30:00] us.
And so we have the entire team was required to take dance class. Well, that was phenomenal, okay, because there were so many people in the class who were not familiar with that experience, and they were the developers. And so as a team, we would observe ourselves and our teachers teaching us. And so as an example, one, a couple of things that I would take away from that.
That in hindsight, if you're a dancer and you take dance classes, this might seem obvious, but it really wasn't when we were designing the game. So when we had our tutorial mode that was teaching you the steps and breaking them down, initially we had our interface and we were showing each one of the moves.
And it wasn't doing that well in the early prototypes. People were still kind of having a tough time with timing and anticipating. So [00:31:00] anticipation was really important because of the fluidity of movement. And so if you were to learn one route, one move into the other, you actually really wanted to be able to anticipate so you could learn how to bring them together.
And so I think one night we were, you know, taking dance class from Frenchie or something. And there was just this recognition that she had these cues that she would always be saying while she was in dance class, whether it was timing, which was a five, six, seven, eight, or whether it was and one, or whether there was actual words.
And sometimes they were words like, and right. And left and, you know, and in and out, things like that, that the timing was really important. And so we ended up creating this thing called verb barks. That's what we called them as the team. But they were these little audio cues that we put into the tutorial and the difference in the way that people were able to [00:32:00] learn by this simple little thing that we observed in a dance class.
You know, and translated that real world experience to the tutorial in the game. So anyway, it's a, it's a little story, but it's, it's something that I always remember, because I think sometimes when we are designing in the world of technology, we forget to go back to the basics and look at the real basic places for a way to learn a method that might be more effective in the experience design.
Amy: I love that story. That's a great story. Wow. So you now work with some innovative companies and research labs, people that are creating games. And new experiences beyond what any of you have really created before. What are some of the really common mistakes that you [00:33:00] see the people you advise and the companies you work with make in the early stages of bringing their ideas to life?
Things that maybe you're helping them with or that you yourself may, you know, earlier on.
Tracy: Yeah, I think I'm thinking more about sort of maybe over the course of, you know, many different products I've made over time and worked on.
One of the things I think about often is that, you know, creative people often think they know what their users want and often someone who is in an early stage company has come up with this great idea and they just start making it, but they haven't actually gone out and done the work to find out if this great idea is something that people want.
And I've seen that often over the years. The other thing that I think sometimes happens, and I've [00:34:00] certainly seen this before, is that there's a lack of context, often in early designs.
So, you know, someone may create something, because in their head, they have already connected all the dots. But the early stage of that experience or product that they make doesn't have the context. And when you bring it to the user, they tend to be lost. I think it's a piece that sometimes can come in to your early onboarding, or it may need to come in.
You know, if you're later on, it could come in your marketing materials. But I, this might be because I, You know, my early days of being in the entertainment business and storytelling and filmmaking and, you know, that is a place where I come from. I feel like storytelling and the context of why someone is there, wherever that is, is really important because [00:35:00] context creates meaning for people and helps them to, you know, understand why they're doing what they're doing.
So that's a piece that I've seen early on. And then onboarding is an interesting challenge. I think over and over again, people underestimate how important it is, how really often people don't invest very much in understanding what someone needs to understand in the beginning to really get that engagement.
And so that's another, another piece that I sometimes see, but I think probably the most important, um, is understanding your user listening and observing, because sometimes if we spend too much time building a core experience before we understand, you know, the needs and the desires, we've gone, you know, down a road and we've got to make like a really big turnaround.
Um, so yeah, I think, I [00:36:00] think those are, those are a few.
Amy: Yeah, those are great ones, you know, and this really ties back to what we were talking about earlier, which is this almost paradoxical blend of strong vision with a great hunger for iterative feedback. Yes. And it's a rare thing. And it's something I've noticed the really.
Most successful creators who aren't always the easiest people to work with, but the most successful creators I've both worked with and kind of been adjacent to, they have that, that paradoxical thing and harmonics clearly has it. At least they had it through you, you know, which is that it's not that you don't have a really, really strong vision, but it's that the way I put it is.
Your hunger for market truth overrides your ego.
Tracy: I love that. And yes, I completely believe that we had [00:37:00] a team. We had a really, really special team at Harmonix for many years. And I think that we had like a North Star or a vision that was almost like a top level, right? That we all understood, you know, whether it was, you know, the joy of making music, you know, for non musicians or whether it was the desire.
To, you know, teach people how to, you know, authentically dance, you know, like an MTV dancer, but we really had this hot, these high level visions, but then there was this opportunity to play with iteration and experience. You know, we didn't know the how. And so you have to, you know, you have to try something and, and then that doesn't work and you try something else.
And I mean, over and over again in harmonics, we would iterate and iterate and iterate. I mean, I, when I think about how many iterations we went [00:38:00] through to create The feeling of being in a band. So, you know, we had made Guitar Hero and we understood the rhythm action mechanic of the guitar. And that translated to the bass.
And so there we were making the drum experience, which was. Really knew and had its own challenges. How do you teach three limb independence? You know, it's just crazy and fun But then there was this higher level goal, which is how do you help people feel like they're in a band? especially when you have them all looking at a television screen and Really focused on the notes that they needed to hit to be playing their music You And so that goal was really, really important.
And we went through lots and lots of iterations at Harmonix. To get that feeling correct. And that was [00:39:00] not something that we knew how to do, even though most of the people at the company were in bands. And because we were translating that into a videogame experience, um, that was different than being on stage.
It was completely different, uh, because you were interacting with a screen and that meant that your eyes were in a different place. So, yeah, I mean, we spent lots and lots of years, um, iterating on experience and on UI and really getting, uh, the magic there.
Amy: Right. And that's what went into Rock Band, which turned, I mean, that was a big bet.
That's an expensive game. All that iteration when you're in a studio, that's a big bet, but then it paid off, which is few, you know, and brought so much joy. And still brings joy, right? And that's an amazing thing to have gone through and been part of and been a key [00:40:00] driver in.
Tracy: Yeah, it was, I mean, it was certainly a highlight of my career.
There's no doubt about it. And, you know, sometimes you think, wow, I spent 14 years with harmonics, you know, it was a family and we grew up together, many of us did, and I feel blessed that I could take those learnings. into new fields now, you know, that, and it sort of expand the opportunity of actually what we did in the realm of entertainment.
Well, we can bring that into health and wellness. We can bring that into healthcare. That's possible.
Amy: Well, I think what you're talking about is a really core part of this, which is Tuning systems, because a lot of times people that come out of web or just product are used to defining features, but they're not really used to tuning systems.
I learned a huge amount working with you and harmonics and that. [00:41:00] Crack team tuning systems sitting there in front of the spreadsheets, you know, going in month after month and week after week, I wasn't nearly as deep into you and just seeing this little tweak that little tweak, same song, this little tweak, this feedback system layered on this feedback system, tuning, tuning, tuning, tuning.
And you bringing that experience into VR and healthcare systems is really exciting because it is systems at the core of it. It's systems. And a lot of people that come from games into product, bring with them that knowledge of not just how to define a spec, how to tune a system.
Tracy: Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's really important and it's definitely something as we bring, you know, different industries together and we begin to learn from each other.
Um, there's, there's a lot for us to learn as we're bringing, you know, an entertainment and videogame [00:42:00] companies together with healthcare companies together with scientists. Um, and I think there's some really great opportunities there to bring the learnings from videogame development into a way that we can really serve a whole new population.
Amy: So, As you look at and make choices about the projects that you embrace and that you take on, what is it that really lights you up about a project or a team or an area and makes you want to plunge in and, you know, bring some of this knowledge and experience and storytelling skill to that project?
Tracy: Yeah. I mean, I think really what leads me are my values to serve the greater good, you know, and when I, I, I, sometimes I, you know, when I tell my story and I think about the days that I was, you know, blowing up buildings, not personally, but helping a, you know, film crew manage a car chase [00:43:00] or a big special effects scene.
There was no meaning for me in that work. I mean, it was, there was, it was fun to be in an interesting place, but when I think about changing people's lives and the way they feel and how we touch them with an immersive experience. That's what lights me up, right? That's what I'm excited about. So I'm really committed to working with, you know, creative people and business people that have that intention also.
And I think there's such an opportunity. I mean, there's so many people in the world that are either suffering from mental, physical, and spiritual ills, um, or just struggling from life's immense pressures who aspire to heal. And there's such a, A need for the human being to flourish. And there's a lot of people working against that in our society.
And yet there are a lot of people in our society that desire to improve [00:44:00] people's lives. And those are the people I want to work with. You know, it's of course, exciting to me when there are people that are building experiences, because that's the thing that I love. And I love thinking about and translating, you know, experiences in person to virtual or maybe virtual to in person.
I think that's the real key. You know, when I, when I think about what I'm excited about that, that's the big one. And you know, certainly these companies I'm working with right now who are incubating and developing videogame experiences, um, that may eventually, um, treat neurological disorders.
Like that's super cool. And it's super cool because. You know, one, there's such so much potential there. I think about, it's a lot of people in this world that pharmaceuticals don't work for. And yet we know that all kinds of modalities of experience, physical experience, can [00:45:00] actually change the way we feel and potentially can really shift our brains.
And so I'm excited to play around and, and create experiences, uh, and maybe some eventually that are similar to, to those that I've made before and hopefully many new ones, you know, I was recently thinking about. When we were making, uh, the Rockman and Dance Central franchises, and there was a time when we, in addition to, you know, hearing stories like you've saved my marriage, thank you.
Or my child never wants to play a game with me and you've brought my family together across generations. And like those stories of connection were amazing. But then there were like the stories about the children with autism who played our music and dance games. And, you know, we're connected and happy.
And those parents were reaching out to us and saying, thank you. I heard about a study. [00:46:00] I'm can't remember the, the university, but I heard about a study where they looked at empathy and discovered that a group of people playing Rock Band actually, you know, exhibited more empathy for each other. And these were strangers.
Then, you know, the control group. And so it's just interesting to consider like, Hey, we were making these games to just, you know, have a ball and have fun. But actually there was a lot of changes in people's mood and elevation in the way they felt and, and even the confidence that they felt within their themselves.
There's this great story about when we brought Dance Central to E3 for the first time. And I remember we had all these guys, we had lots of male gamers, a lot of them were kind of, you know, big and bulky and used to sitting [00:47:00] on the couch playing videogames. And yet, we needed to bring our dance game to these game editors and get reviews.
And we wanted to get good reviews and I kept thinking, okay, I'm not sure if these guys are really my target demographic, but what, what are we going to do to really make them give us a good review? And it was so interesting because we created these big stages so that they didn't feel alone and scared when they went up to dance.
And we danced with them and we created an experience where they were comfortable. And within a very short period of time, this sort of look of fear on their face, very like, seriously, I'm going to dance to Lady Gaga, you know, turned from total and complete fear to this moment where I [00:48:00] saw in their eyes, the truth, which was like, Oh my God, I do have rhythm.
I can dance. Thank you. This is so much fun. And so it was, it was this amazing moment for me when I was nervous. You know, I thought, you know, maybe a bunch of teenage girls was going to, we're going to really enjoy this game, but Did we succeed at finding that magic moment where we could turn someone who was a little bit fearful and wasn't sure of the comfort in their own body to be able to move and to help them find that joy and that building that experience that confidence was something that Was really special about the experience that we made.
And I think about that when I think about the possibilities of what we can bring to people who are suffering from their own, you know, challenges, right? Can we help them? remember that they have a heartbeat? Can we [00:49:00] bring a moment of joy into their life that extends? And so that's something I often think about today when I'm thinking about how can I bring experiences that I created previously into some new form for a new population.
Amy: That's beautiful.
Tracy: Thank you.
Amy: I love that. Well, I feel like, you know, the stories you're telling are really About skill building and collaboration. And that's so much of at least, and let me, first of all, out myself as a harmonics fan girl, as well as a collaborator every single. So for anyone listening, every single harmonics game that Tracy mentioned all the way back to amplitude, I've played and was obsessed with.
In just like my favorite studio ever. So, you know, it was such an honor to get to work with you. And just as a, as a fangirl, you know, I [00:50:00] just so appreciate that my skills got better playing these games. They actually make you better at something.
Tracy: They do. I mean, we took a lot of time to teach you how to master something.
Like that was a big part of the game design, right? And so that was a big part of, you know, really thinking about how do you teach somebody To do something they don't know how to do and how do you help them master it? And how do you make it fun while you're doing all of that? You know, and all those pieces together are really important.
And I want to, I want to mention, uh, or bring back something that you just said. Absolutely. Like collaboration, Is such a key part of creating innovative experiences. And, you know, the teams at harmonics were so connected to each other, but they were built from incredibly diverse group of people, really a [00:51:00] diverse group of thinkers.
And that made our games better. You know, you don't make great products with a homogeneous group of people. You make great products when you bring diverse thinkers and creators together who are humble enough to listen to each other as well as to listen to the potential users. And, you know, you were one of our collaborators, um, early on in the Rock Band days and it was amazing having you.
And, um, there were so many interesting people that we brought in as collaborators. But also who were, you know, who joined our team over the years. I mean, like I said, you know, we had lots of musicians and choreographers and really interesting, you know, artists and engineers from, from all walks of life.
Amy: That's such a rich point. About the nature of collaboration and, you know, it produced the work it produced stands on its own, right? It's a that's the result of that structure. And it's [00:52:00] very exciting that you're bringing this to health care and I'm. Personally following closely to see what you work on next.
So thank you so much, Tracy, for joining us and sharing your stories and wisdom and sense of play. It's just, it's been super fun to hang out.
Tracy: I love having conversations with you and whenever we get together. They're always amazing. So it's really fun to have one with you on your podcast.
Amy: All right. Talk soon.
Tracy: All right. Take care.
Outro: Thanks for listening to Getting2Alpha with Amy Jo Kim, the shows that help you innovate faster and smarter. Be sure to check out our website, getting2alpha.com. That's getting(number)2alpha.com for more great resources and podcast episodes.