Rock Band Bar Night – Angels & Kings

Having finally gotten enough work out of the way that I felt I could get drunk and have fun on a Wednesday night, I went over to Angels & Kings, at 11th st. and Ave. A, for their Rock Band night. The last time I was there was back in December, when they had a Harmonix employee running it for the first time, and the guitar controllers were broken prototypes.

The good: They had an excellent bartender who could competently mix drinks–not a light qualification given some of the bartending in this city. In particular, I never drink mixed drinks at the Living Room Lounge’s bar nights because they can’t mix a basic highball. They’re still using the neat setup with the screen projected at the other end of the bar so that the players are looking at the audience rather than at a wall with their backs to the audience, but this time, it wasn’t so crowded that people kept blocking the projector. The people are nice, and there’s no group of regulars to make you feel unwelcome for spoiling their fun.

The bad: Really high drink prices, but then this is New York. They didn’t have any DLC on their machine, but apparently there was some confusion where Harmonix was supposed to give them a card to get all the DLC or something. The guy running it said he would try to get that fixed for next week. The guitars seem to be early generation strats, which means they tend to have strum bar issues.

Overall, though, this is my favorite Rock Band night I’ve been to. It doesn’t feel empty (like the Living Room Lounge) or overcrowded (like Pianos), and the people in charge understand the game and don’t just stick it in the corner (like the Village Pourhouse).

Review of NYC RB/GH Bar Nights

I don’t particularly like going to bars without a reason, but playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero is often an excellent reason. In general, if I’ve found out about a Rock Band bar night in the city, I’ve gone to it. So, here’s a list:

Pianos Bar & Grill: Tuesdays at 10 PM-close, Lower East Side, Guitar Hero 3 played.

This is the oldest of these bar nights I know of; it’s been running for at least a year now. Unfortunately, they never switched over to Rock Band. When I asked their organizers why they haven’t switched over, they told me that they tried running a Rock Band night once, but too many people were failing out and having trouble with the game; also, their floor plan doesn’t make it easy to set up, and they would have to use the PS2 version. So, for the foreseeable future, Pianos will be running GH3, and I won’t be going. But, if you do still like GH3, it’s pretty well run; the organizers are good, they have excellent fries, and if you mention it, they may do a “free drink for a round winner” type thing (they used to do this as a matter of course, but stopped at some point.) They also lost their original organizer recently to another bar, so they’re still having some transition troubles as of last week.

Angels and Kings: Wednesdays, East Village, Rock Band played

I’ve never been to this weekly event, but I’ll try this week. But I do have something to review from a day back in December when Harmonix employees came to New York to run a very poorly advertised Rock Band night at this bar. It was clearly a last minute thing, but everyone was very pleasant. Unlike most of these bar nights, the staging here had the game projected on the far end of the bar from the players and stage, which meant that the players were facing the crowd rather than away like at every other bar. That was cool. What was less cool was that because the bar doesn’t have that tall of a ceiling, people standing up between the players and the screen would block the screen and make it very difficult to play. That day had special equipment brought from HMX, including two prototype wireless XBox 360 guitar controllers; unfortunately, the prototypes tended to not work. I’m not sure what they’re using now. Hopefully there will be an update on this bar later this week.

Living Room Lounge: Sundays at 7 PM-close, South Park Slope, Brooklyn, Rock Band played

So far, this remains my favorite of the bar nights, because the organizers actually understand the game and it’s a much nicer and larger space than the Manhattan bars. Unfortunately, it can still get a little boring if you come alone, because there’s a somewhat insular group of regulars running the Rock Band night. But at least they know what they’re doing, and they have a good number of downloadable songs. The screen is very large and clear here. The only real problem…it’s usually pretty empty except for the regulars.

Village Pourhouse: Tuesdays, East Village, Rock Band played. See my review here.

At the moment, Living Room Lounge is the best one, though Angels & Kings may be quite good as well. Only go to Pianos if you’re not bored with GH3 yet, and just don’t go to the Village Pourhouse until they get their act together and stop treating their Rock Band night like a kiddy table at Thanksgiving.

Update: Gibson Patent Lawsuit

Gibson has apparently responded to Activision’s complaint for declaratory judgment with all the grace and temper of a spoiled fanbaby, and they not only countersued Activision for patent infringement, they’ve sued a whole bunch of retailers, and Harmonix and Red Octane. Kotaku reports on Harmonix’s press release in response to the lawsuit, reproduced below:

It is unfortunate that Gibson unfairly desires to share in the tremendous success enjoyed by the developers of Rock Band and Guitar Hero. This lawsuit is completely without merit and we intend to defend it vigorously.

Gibson’s patent, filed nearly 10 years ago, required a 3D display, a real musical instrument and a recording of a concert. Rock Band and Guitar Hero are completely different: among other things they are games, require no headset and use a controller only shaped like a real instrument.

100 points to Harmonix’s PR department for actually explaining why they don’t infringe; they are, of course, correct–though they seem to be responding to the abstract rather than the claims. The abstract states:

A musician can simulate participation in a concert by playing a musical instrument and wearing a head-mounted 3D display that includes stereo speakers. Audio and video portions of a musical concert are pre-recorded, along with a separate sound track corresponding to the musical instrument played by the musician. Playback of the instrument sound track is controlled by signals generated in the musical instrument and transmitted to a system interface box connected to the audio-video play back device, an audio mixer, and the head-mounted display. An external bypass switch allows the musician to suppress the instrument sound track so that the sounds created by actual playing of the musical instrument are heard along with the pre-recorded audio and video portions.

The claims do require an actual musical instrument, but don’t require a 3D interface or a musical concert (some of the dependent claims talk about a 3D interface and concert, but not the independent claims.) Remember, in patent law, it’s the claims that lay out the boundaries of the invention; the rest of the specification can help to define the words in the claims but can’t substantially change the limitations of the claims.

In a typical patent prosecution, a drafted patent goes back and forth between the lawyer and the Patent Office (hereafter PTO). During this process, the PTO will search the prior art, and object to claims; the lawyer will then either argue back that the objection isn’t good, or modify the claim to avoid the objection for every claim. Eventually, when the PTO runs out of objections, they have to grant the patent. The specification usually goes unchanged in this process. What this means for the layman is that the abstract is actually not a good description of the invention the patent actually claims, and shouldn’t be relied upon for public opinion. When you look at a patent, go to the claims, not the abstract.

Rock Band Night – Village Pourhouse

I left the TV on in the background the other night, when I suddenly heard, “And Guitar Hero night is apparently more popular than the Giants games!” Immediately, I went to the living room and rewinded the local news program, and they showed footage of a Rock Band night at the Village Pourhouse, at 3rd Ave. & 11th St. I checked their website, and headed off for their “Guitar Hero” night last Tuesday.

Sadly, there wasn’t much there. I showed up around 8:30 PM, and went to a deserted back part of the bar to find a Rock Band setup with a group of 4 20-somethings attempting to play (badly), and no management types managing it. The microphone was plugged in, but wasn’t working; apparently, no one realized that you have to plug in a standard controller to make it work. The drum set was broken (the yellow pad had a broken wire and didn’t work), but no one seemed to know about getting a warranty replacement. The 20-somethings left after about 20 minutes, and I stuck around and had dinner. No one else showed up, and I left unsatisfied.

That being said, maybe it was just a slow night; apparently they had had a tournament the previous week with about 40 people showing up. Since this tournament was never posted on one of the major RB/GH sites like ScoreHero or the Rock Band forums, or on Kotaku or Joystiq, I doubt that any particularly good players showed up.

At least the food was decent, if very overpriced–and at least it was Rock Band. Pianos still hasn’t switched over; apparently they tried to do a Rock Band night and had too many groups failing out.