Web gaming company InstantAction is launching the beta version of its Instant Jam online guitar rhythm game today. What’s unique about it is that it can be embedded on any web site and can be played along with thousands of songs that consumers already have in their own music libraries.
The game is aimed at disrupting the billion-dollar-plus console music game business, which has had its own troubles lately as users have grown tired of the expensive and limited play of games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. InstantAction is showing off the game this week at the Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany.
“It’s a high-quality, 3-D game that fan sites or anyone can embed,” said Louis Castle (pictured top), chief executive of InstantAction, which is owned by Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp internet conglomerate. “It’s like Rock Band or Guitar Hero, but we do things a little different.”
For starters, Instant Jam is a free-to-play game on Facebook. If you own the song, you can play it for free in the Instant Jam game, which works with Guitar Hero guitars that can plug into a computer. (You can also use a computer keyboard.) You can also pay real money for virtual goods inside the game, such as a custom-designed guitar from your favorite band. If you buy a song through Instant Jam, the purchase is fulfilled through e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com or iTunes and the song is added to your music library. You can thus listen to the song on devices that can play your library.
“The great thing is, you can play the game for free, you can embed it on your blog, and when you purchase songs inside the game, you can add it to your music library and get virtual goods,” Castle said in an interview. “There’s no reason to steal songs anymore, because if you buy a song for a dollar, you get more than a dollar’s worth of value in virtual goods. We think that is friendly for the music industry.”
Several thousand songs will work with Instant Jam, which is more than the number of songs that work on console games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero, altogether. The beta test is limited now and will be expanded in the coming weeks via the Instant Jam site. Users can share the game as easily as they can a YouTube video. Mac support is coming soon, and the game requires you to download the latest version of Java if you don’t already have it.
Instant Jam is the first internally produced original game from InstantAction’s Las Vegas game studio, which employs a number of Westwood Studios employees. Castle, a famous game designer behind titles such as Lands of Lore and Command & Conquer, was a co-founder of Westwood, which was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1998. Castle joined InstantAction in mid-2009. As part of IAC, Instant Action is a big new player. It’s part of Diller’s internet media empire, which includes 50 fast-growing properties such as Ask.com, Match.com, IWon! and Urban Spoon.
The Instant Jam game is built with InstantAction’s Torque engine, which was originally developed by Garage Games, which InterActive Corp purchased and turned into InstantAction. InstantAction has been up to a lot of interesting work. Its web site is host to a number of games that can be played instantly. Players can play the games in their browsers without downloads; the games start and then download fully in the background as the user is playing. InstantAction also lets you embed a game, such as LucasArts’ Secret of Monkey Island, on any site so users can play it instantly. The company has partnered with Gaikai to make its instant-playback even faster.
The Instant Jam game has some similarities to Rockfree, a free-to-play game launched by Acclaim Games, which has since been acquired by Playdom (which has now been bought by Disney). We can expect to see a big battle in PC-based online music games, given the different players who are participating in the market.
It will be interesting to see if users really want to play music games on their computers, rather than on the consoles. But the entry price is certainly right, and Instant Jam can liberate players from being confined to a small set of pre-designated songs on console games. Castle says it’s easier for consumers to discover, try, enjoy and share their music this way. Dozens of new songs will be added each week, said Amir Rahimi, (pictured, left, with Castle) executive producer of Instant Jam (and a former EA producer). Over time, InstantAction will add features such as customized avatars and more social elements.