One of the ways iRok2 is unique is that you can play any song you want. And we do mean any song. So far you’ve helped us create over 7500 game tracks for your favorite music videos! However, while you can play what you want, you have to first buy the game track. Otherwise you’re limited to a short preview. This puts a damper on iRok2’s “play anything” goal. This is one of the reasons we’ve decided to change the way you access music in our catalog. As of today’s release you can play the full version of any track regardless of whether you’ve decided to save it to your studio. The only limitation will be the number of songs that you can play in one session. The amount you can play is controlled by your player’s energy.
What does this mean? A number of areas of the game are affected so we wrote an Energy FAQ to give you the details. Here’s an excerpt:
Q: What have you done?
A: Playing tracks on iRok2 will work a little different than before. You can now play any track, without having to buy it first. You use up “energy” to play a track. When you run out you have to rest for a while or buy an item to replenish your energy.
Q: Why have you made this change?
A: One of the biggest incentives for this change was to open up the catalog so that players could choose anything, not just the tracks that they buy. Now you can play anything you want but there are restrictions on how much you can play at one time.
Q: How long will it take for my energy to regenerate?
A: It regenerates at the rate of 1 energy every 5 minutes and continues to regenerate while you play. You’ll also get refilled with energy every time you level up. Even if you completely exhaust your energy you will regenerate to full strength in under an hour.
Q: What can I do if I run out of energy and still want to play?
A: In the future you will have a number of options to continue playing but at this point your options are to buy an energy item (which increases your remaining energy) or buy an All-Access Pass (unlimited energy for a week).
Q: What’s the fastest way to gain coins and increase my level?
A: Every track played earns you fans and coins but there are a few things you can do to maximize your income: play the daily track (big bonus!), send a challenge to another player, complete a multiplayer battle, play the daily track several days in a row (huge bonuses!), play 3 tracks in one day (big bonus), get a top score in a video, be one of the top 5 Rokrs (huge bonuses, but skill required), be one of the top 5 Most Active Rokrs (huge bonuses, no skill required). Plus, there are other bonuses not listed here.
When your energy is running low just fill up with an energy bar or the amazing All-Access Pass as shown below:
As always, if you have any feedback on this or anything else please let us know.
iRok2 grew out of a vision for accessible online music gaming and we’re thrilled with how it’s taken shape. Thanks to your feedback and suggestions (and extended playing) we’ve grown from a cool startup idea to an engaging new way to experience the music you love. And we’re not done. Not by a long shot. That’s why we’re expanding our team with another developer and a new community manager position. Think you might be interested in working at iRok2? Check out the iRok2 job posts. Note that telecommuting is an option for both positions. Here’s a summary of the qualifications:
Web Developer
We’re looking for a brilliant developer who loves challenges and wants to work on a small, passionate team to create amazing software. We value experience in web programming (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery), the Django web-app framework (Django, Python, MySQL), Flash (Flex, ActionScript), social games (especially Facebook) and even browser plugin development.
Community Manager
We are seeking a strong, all-in-one, marketing and community manager with passion and experience in social networking and online gaming. This individual will be responsible for the execution of our marketing programs aimed at bringing in players and building a loyal and engaged community. Previous experience optimizing successful SEO, SEM, and social media campaigns is important as is an understanding of online marketing analytics.
In other news, we’ve made a number of small updates in the last while. You may have noticed that there are all new sound effects, for instance. We’ve also updated the game background colors to complement the strongest colors in the video. They now change dynamically and, we hope, provide a stronger connection with the video and music. What do you think? Have an opinion about something we’re doing? Let us know in the iRok2 support forum or the comments below.
Avatars and a more dynamic game environment are coming to iRok2! We usually try to avoid talking-up new features before they’re ready but with these updates we didn’t want to wait.
Avatars have been in the works for a while but we were anxious to stay away from the cartoony versions you see in a lot of games these days. Instead, we wanted something uniquely iRok2, and it took us a while to get it right. What do you think?
Right now, avatars are only available to the iRok2 Insiders group. (Insiders get early access to new features and the inside scoop on everything iRok2. Want in? Let us know.) Clothing, accessories and additional customization for avatars will be added gradually over the coming weeks. Our goal is to provide new items for every release until the store is well equipped.
We’ve also been working on improving the game experience with new sounds, graphics and animation. In fact, the first version with a new animated background is now live. These screen shots show the spotlights and shifting colors.
There will be additional changes in our next release so stay tuned. As always we’d love to hear what you think. Do you like the changes? What would you most like to see updated in the game?
You told us you wanted more difficulties on Tap mode and we’ve delivered. Both Tap and Strum mode now support all difficulties from Beginner to Harder. This change only makes sense since 3/4 of you prefer tapping to strumming. We’ve also updated the difficulty selection window.
The latest release also includes a small tweak in how Trial Tracks are shown. Now, any Trial Track that you play will be appropriately labeled as a Practiced track. This should make it clear which tracks you’re considering and which ones you’re ignoring. As always, tracks that are practiced will be “remembered” in your Trial Tracks list for 3 more days. If you find a great track to add to your album but don’t yet have an open slot then just make sure to practice it regularly so it doesn’t expire.
With holidays in full swing and a backlog of behind the scenes work to deal with we didn’t get a lot of site updates out in August. Never fear, the summer release drought is at an end - and we can’t wait to show you some of the changes coming up in the next few months. Yesterday we released an update with several new additions and a number of fixes. One of our favorite additions is the new Discovery Track. All Trial Tracks that are added to your Studio now show a banner indicating where you got them.
In the above image you can see the tracks I’m currently exploring in my Studio: the Daily track, a Discovered track, 2 Gifted tracks and the latest track that I’ve Requested. The Discovered track type is new and is designed to guide you to music you might have otherwise missed. It works like this: once an hour we replace your current Discovered track with a new one chosen based on what we think you’ll like. The timer above the Daily track in the above image counts down to tell you when the next Discovered track will arrive. The more you check back at the site you more chance you’ll have to discover something you like. As with all Trial Tracks, when you find something snazzy, you just drag and drop it into your album for safekeeping. Try it out and let us know what you think!
Ok, so maybe we’re not super excited about this. YouTube recently enabled ads in their player which means some videos will show ad overlays at the bottom. We knew ads were coming and didn’t think it would be a big deal. Visually, it doesn’t take much away from the video or the iRok2 game experience. However, performance wise we are seeing a measurable impact on Adobe’s Flash Player (which runs the game and displays the video).
Ads are only shown on some videos, but when they pop-up they tend to momentarily pause the track on slower computers. It’s especially noticeable when the ad keeps changing throughout the game as it briefly pauses the track each time it switches. Unfortunately there’s not a lot we can do about this directly as YouTube doesn’t allow us to alter the video or the ads, and we can’t modify the Flash player itself. If you are seeing a noticeable pause when ads appear you have a couple options:
- Turn off the ads. YouTube allows you to turn off ads on the video you’re watching by clicking the “X” in the upper right corner of the ad overlay (which pops up from the bottom of the video). This works the same whether you are on youtube.com or in the game. YouTube only shows ads the first time you watch the video - so another way to turn them off is to wait until the ad shows (around 12 seconds into the video), activate the Pause menu and Select Restart. The ad should no longer appear.
- Get more speed. There are a number of ways to make the pauses less noticeable: get a faster computer, install the latest version of Flash, run a different browser, try a smaller game window size, etc. Our development computers, for example, are fast enough that we don’t see the ad stutter at all in the office. This link has other suggestions for making iRok2 run faster.
If you find a really laggy ad-enabled video that you want to play you could also consider creating a new track based on a different video of the same song. There are other issues that can cause lag in the game as well. For example, playing high quality videos or loading more players in the rank meter can introduce game pauses. You can be sure we will do everything we can to minimize these game stutters as development progresses.
How do you feel about the YouTube ads? Have you been experiencing slight pauses in the game as the ads change? Let us know in the comments!
We recently sent out a survey to ask players which features they enjoyed most on iRok2. You responded, we collected, and now we want to share what we learned.
What’s the best thing about iRok2?
(top categories based on open-ended text responses, will not add to 100%)
- Unlimited songs: 74%
- Generating tracks: 17%
- Fun: 13%
- Guitar connection: 8%
The majority of you clearly like iRok2 because you can play anything you want. Comments like this were common: “I love being able to pick practically any song on YouTube”. It’s also encouraging that a number of you find track generation to be compelling. At iRok2, we love finding great videos and making new tracks to play along with! The ability to connect a game guitar means everything to some of you.
Rate the following
(summary of results for fixed categories, based on number of people who “love it”)
Highest rated (80+%)
Higher rated (50-80%)
- Playing along with the music
- Finding and collecting tracks
Highly rated (50+%)
- iRok2 donates to artists
- Generating new tracks
- Competing on leader boards
- Ability to connect a guitar
There’s nothing too surprising here. You love the ability to play along to any music. None of the categories received poor ratings; even the lowest ranked, “ability to connect a guitar”, was loved by over half of you.
Optional suggestions to improve iRok2
(top categories based on open-ended text responses, will not add to 100%)
- Better tracks: 17%
- Song/track lag: 8%
- Easier guitar connection: 7%
- Other: 12%
The most requested feature continues to be improved track generation. Lots of you said something like this: “make the strumming and notes more real and on time”. We hear you and will continue to improve the quality of our tracks as well as update the entire catalog when the algorithm changes. While this is a critical component of game play that’s core to the iRok2 experience, it’s also an exciting area of development that we are anxious to pursue further.
A number of you continue to experience lag so we’ve begun aggressively tuning the code to handle a wider range of computers and internet connections. While the number of people who use a guitar is relatively low, we consistently find that these players strum through way more tracks than keyboard players. As you would expect, we’ve got lots of guitars in the office to play - which we do, a lot - but we also love being able to just jump into a game with the keyboard without having to reach for a guitar first. We’re committed to making both peripherals easy to use so if there are ways to improve our guitar connectivity we want to hear about it.
Thanks to everyone who filled out our survey! This information is critical to prioritizing our ongoing development and we really appreciate you taking the time to help. What do you think of the results? Do you have a different opinion on priorities? Let us know in the comments.
The Daily Track is meant to focus the community around a new track every day. It’s a great way to explore music you might not otherwise experience. Up until this point we’ve been identifying the tracks best suited for this purpose ourselves but we would like to open it up to the community. Do you have a favorite that would be great as a Daily Track? Let us know! You can send it to us by email or through our support forum. There are no hard and fast rules on what makes a great Daily Track but we do have a few guidelines that should help.
The best tracks have:
- Good audio: high quality, not too quiet, no background noise
- Interesting video: reasonable quality, visually entertaining, not a static image
- Strong game track: fun to play, follows the music
Avoid tracks with:
- Excessive pre-roll or post-roll additions: boring and irrelevant extra content before or after the video
- Extraneous overlays: distracting stuff like lyrics or comments displayed on top of the video
- Inappropriate or offensive content: excessive swearing, racist or sexist references, explicit video
- Long durations: generally four minutes or less is best
You should also know that we verify each video does not have too many geographic restrictions or require that you log in first. So if it plays great for you but isn’t available in other countries we probably won’t use it.
What kind of songs are best? We’re pretty flexible but prefer content that everyone can enjoy. This usually means songs that are familiar. However, if the band has 3 followers and their tune is astonishing then the community needs to hear and play it.
Not everyone is a rokstar with a plastic guitar. That’s what you told us in our site survey. Even iRok2’s easier difficulties can sometimes be a little intimidating to play. We hear you. We’ve taken another look at how we display the game track and notes and made a few improvements. Our goal, as always, is to make the game both fun and accessible. Check it out in the two screen shots below (both using the 3-fret Easy difficulty).
Before:
After:
If you focus on the track changes you’ll notice we now only show the note lanes that are needed - centered and slightly zoomed in. The notes also move a lot slower on the easier difficulties. We’re hoping this makes it feel less like you’re being shot at and more like you’re paddling down a stream admiring the endless beauty of a multi-colored forest reflected in the calm water below. The challenging difficulties, for the most part, remain unchanged. What do you think? Is this a step forward? Would you have preferred the stream analogy include multi-colored piranha?
Our 3000th Track - thanks doot567!
Our 3000th game track was generated on Jun 5 by doot567. By clicking Request Track for the “Imagination Movers theme song” video at just the right time, doot (can we call you “doot”?) earned a one month All-Access Pass and 3000 coins! Congrats! Stop by doot’s studio, check out the music mix and arrange a friendly Challenge. It’s kinda crazy, but our catalog is already teeming with 3458 different tracks. This means that the 4000th track competition is just around the corner. Stay tuned.
As I write this our catalog count has just hit 2905 tracks. Thanks to everyone who’s requested tracks and helped to grow our catalog to this point. Since we’re almost at the magic 3000 number we decided to add a small incentive. The Rokr who requests the 3000th song will get a free one week All-Access Pass, 3000 coins and a mention here on our blog.
So how do you request tracks at iRok2? Well, let’s say you’re playing the Daily Track when you suddenly remember some obscure song from your long forgotten past? What do you do? You click the iRok2 search bar and type it in, of course.
But what if (i know, perish the thought!) iRok2 doesn’t have the track? This is where track requests come in. With every track search we display a list of suggested YouTube videos that match your query in the side bar. Find the one you like, preview it and then hit the Request Track button. That’s it.
Go back to your rok star duties and within minutes we’ll deliver a shiny new game track in your studio and add it to the New Releases list. Plus, you’ll be displayed for all time as the game track producer.
BTW, not only does YouTube have millions of music videos but now that they’ve hit their 5th Birthday they are registering over 2 billion video views per day! That’s pretty big.
What do you think of track generation? Got a video in mind for number 3000? Drop a comment below and let us know.
