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What Eran Egozy wants to talk about most these days is the upcoming release of his gaming company’s new title, The Beatles: Rock Band. But one gets the feeling that other things might be going on at the Central Square headquarters of Harmonix Music Systems Inc., which he co-founded with Alex Rigopulos in 1995.
As video games designed for mobile play and digital delivery get increasingly lightweight and whimsical, Harmonix’ Rock Band title remains wedded to a set of specialized equipment — proprietary controllers for guitar, vocals, drum and bass.
With San Francisco-based Spoonjack having just released an application — iBone — that turns Apple Inc.’s iPhone into a trombone (http://ibone.spoonjack.com), how can Harmonix compete?
Egozy isn’t worried. Rock Band’s heavy equipment is what is making the game popular with a demographic that now includes parents and company partygoers, he said. The instrument-like controllers make players feel like rock stars, and house parties feel like concerts.
But Harmonix’ history — before its Guitar Hero title blew up and the company got bought by MTV parent Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) — is more in step with the iBone than the PlayStation. One of its earliest products was a PC game called The Axe. Promising “There’s a musician trapped inside everyone,” The Axe let players make electronic music with a mouse or joystick, while the software adjusted the pitch to prevent any “wrong” notes. (In other words, no Eric Dolphy play-alongs, I guess.)
It didn’t catch on, Egozy said.
Another early Harmonix project was perhaps less commercially viable. “What if Music Were in the Air?” installed a sort of a sophisticated theremin in Disney’s Epcot Center in Florida.
Could Harmonix return to its whimsical roots? When I talked with him last week, Egozy wouldn’t say. But he said the company remains independent of its corporate owners: “They’re down in New York and we’re up here, which I think is good,” he said. “If you get subsumed into the monolith, you kind of lose a bit of your creative energy.”
Did they do it on purpose?
The Nantucket Conference and the annual National Venture Capital Conference are back to back this year. The National Venture Capital Association’s shindig, which alternates year to year between coasts, is in Boston this year and ends at noon on the same day the Nantucket Conference begins. For those who aren’t flying directly to Nantucket for the annual off-season entrepreneurial confab, there will be some overlap.
Both conference organizers say it’s just a coincidence. However it happened, it seems to be working: Attendance is, like unemployment and borrowing costs, up. The NVCA expects 500 to 600 people, NVCA spokeswoman Emily Mendell said. The Nantucket Conference, with about 150 attendees, is running a guest list for the first time in its 10-year history, said Scott Kirsner, the Innovation Economy blogger and Boston Globe columnist who runs the event with Shayne Gilbert of Silverweave Inc. and Alyssa Stern of Silverweave and Future Forward Events LLC.
This at a time when conferences around the country are looking like temporary ghost towns. Nantucket could be benefiting from a little overflow, as partners fly in for the NVCA event, Kirsner said. But in a year when people are skipping events they don’t need, Nantucket may be one of the few that makes the cut, he said. “When things get difficult, entrepreneurs feel it’s important to strengthen their relationship with investors.”
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