Blake Andrews Hacked 4 Guitar Hero Controllers during Triple Canopy's Live Feed

Live Feed

For this event, Aristilde Kirby, Kimberly Alidio, and Amber Flannery Field presented a fascinating series of music-adjacent microtalks one after another. While the audience remained engrossed in absorbing the words, images, and sounds presented by the speakers, prolific game designer Blake Andrews was tucked away in a glass-walled office– their face glued to their laptop– cooking a video game in real-time using 4 Guitar Hero controllers simultaneously.

The Ascension

After the talks, Blake’s game was presented on the Triple Canopy stage. The game’s objective is to climb a ladder as quickly as possible; the player who reaches the top first wins. Four characters, each controlled by a different guitar controller, climb cascading ladders; each ladder corresponds to a different button on the controller. Players strummed the guitars as fast as they could, while holding the button associated with a ladder, to make their character climb it upwards.

When asked about the game’s title, Blake said, “if I had to give it a proper title, it would be "The Ascension", both as a reference to the Glen Branca song, but also to mirror the action of climbing a ladder.”

Every strum triggered a violent sound effect, perhaps mirroring players’ excruciating desire to win, or just let it all out. The repetition and speed of these strums, with each player generating a different sound, created an energetic cacophony that simultaneously lightened spirits and created tension. To top this, the game’s visuals were set on top of a Family Guy episode… a playful reminder that this was indeed a playtest of a newborn game, one that we hope will be developed further someday. “Instead of 4 guitars it would be played with 100. If you are reading this and can give me a grant, please contact me!,” Blake added.

Blake's thoughts on making a game during Live Feed

Listening to the speakers was interesting while working on the game. Typically it's hard for me to multitask in that sort of way. It is hard for me to listen to music with strong lyrical elements while programming for example. However, I wanted to hear the talks so I propped the door open. The first chunk of working on this game was just mapping the Guitar Hero/Rock Band controllers to keyboard keys, which was brainless enough that I could pay attention pretty fully to Aristilde Kirby's Lupe Fiasco story. I did mess up in some.od the mapping and had to redo it completely, so maybe I was paying too close attention. Kimberly Alidio's performance was a bit conceptual, which worked well having to do actual gameplay programming. I got a little silly here as a result making the player characters nude men. Amber's story about her experience with the New York punk scene was really intense, but I had already committed to making something stupid and silly, so there was a dissonance drawing these nude men climbing ladders making obnoxious noises and listening to a sincere story and tragic story, but I had to get it finished in time! I think I realized that it was on me to bring some levity after such an intense recounting of events. I think people needed to wail out.

Editor's Note

Pariah Interactive curated this playtest for Live Feed 2: Add to Queue.