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For whatever reason, I decided to put my name in the Google Blender. That picture of me in the black polo and khakis is probably the worst picture of me ever taken. I look like I am 200 pounds. And it’s obvious when I read this interview of me that I should never talk to the press. No one had ever told me what to/what not to say, and I had no idea what I could say. So I was a poopy wreck.

Ah, hah, the days before Guitar Hero and billion dollar franchises.

I did not remember that I was an R&D Analyst.

Interview: RedOctane

Author: Ophelea, February 28, 2005

Though not yet a household name, Red Octane is a up-and-comer that has much going for it. Started as a mail video game rental company, they quickly moved into the peripheral field with their Ignition Dance Pad – now considered to be THE standard for home dance pads. CEO Kai Huang, Producer Jon Tam, and Research and Development Analyst Michael, gave us a tour of their facilities, told us a bit of their history and let us play with some of their toys!

GamersInfo.net: What is the first peripheral you ever developed?

Michael: The first was the Red Octane Ignition pad. We actually began as a video rental company but then moved on to develop this rather generic pad. We’d noticed that people were interested in this video game called Dance Dance Revolution around 2000-2001. So, we began by importing pads from some companies that were rather archaic, but people began buying them. After receiving some feedback, we realized it was a growing market opportunity and began to look harder into what people wanted in a dance pad.

The pads were ok but they had some problems – they were thin or slippery. We began to look at how we could improve these dance pads and that eventually became our core product.

Kai Huang: RedOctane’s first peripheral was the RedOctane dance pad. It was a thinner style mat that is similar to Konami’s original dance pad product. We originally just resold other 3rd party dance pads, but soon realized that the quality of the pads was something players were very unhappy with. They typically broke quickly or players had to modify them to make them perform better. We felt we could improve upon the current products on the market and we did that by designing a pad that was more durable, more responsive, and that prevented slipping by using a non slip foam bottom. It was a very well received product and that launched our line of dance pad products for which we’re now known for.

GamersInfo.net: How did you get to the design of the Ignition Pad?

Michael: Through feedback and visiting a lot of hardcore websites like ddrfreakonline.com, trying to find out what the players perceived the pads’ problems were. There are also big modding communities where they’d take the softpads and try to make them better. One idea was simply to take it and put it on a wooden board. So, we took many of their ideas and looked for ways to incorporate that with the hardware to make a pad that was competitive and appealing.

If you start playing in the arcade, most arcade players will prefer this (points to metal pad). This is what they’re used to and being hard it gives bounce back.

But at home they tend to use this (points to Ignition Pad). It’s a bit softer than the true hard pads and being that you’re not wearing shoes, that’s important.

GamersInfo.net: How many ignition pads do you sell on average per year?

Michael: I’m not sure of the exact number but we are in retail – EBGames, Best Buy, etc.

Kai Huang: We don’t provide sales numbers, but our products are doing very well both online and in stores. They sell at EB Games, GameStop, Best Buy, Toy’s R Us, J&R, Microcenter, and other stores.

GamersInfo.net: Do you know what your holiday sales were for the Ignition Pad with the release of DDRExtreme?

Kai Huang: Again, we don’t provide sales numbers, but sales of our DDR Extreme and our Ignition pad sold extremely well during the 2004 holiday season. I would consider this the breakout year for the dance game category.

GamersInfo.net: These pads are different colors, is this pad new?

Michael: Here you can see some general R&D (research and development). These aren’t just our pads but other pads we look at to try and and determine what we can learn from what other people are doing to try and always improve our products.

Many of these are prototypes of dance pads we’ve tried out to try and build the best product for the consumer.

Kai Huang: Our R&D department is constantly reviewing new ideas and inventing new products and/or features. We do this by applying our own expertise to the dance pad products and also by looking at other products both within the category and outside to help stimulate new ideas on how to improve our products.

GamersInfo.net: You do produce the metal pads. Do you produce them at all for the arcade systems?

Michael: No, that’s Konami’s own arcade design. But, we develop our own metal to be the best that a consumer can buy.

What you’re seeing here is the minor warehouse for everything that goes through the online store. The items that are shipped through the retail distribution go through a much larger warehouse even though what you see here isn’t small. But it’s truly not that much in terms of retail.

GamersInfo.net: How well do the hard pads sell?

Michael: Because it’s a higher tier item, near $200, it doesn’t sell as well to kids.

Kai Huang: The metal pads do sell well, but the biggest selling pad is our Ignition dance pad. At $200, most people either can’t afford or don’t want to spend the money on the metal dance pad. But, we make it for the hardcore fans who are looking for the best available product and an arcade experience.

GamersInfo.net: Do you sell them in retail?

Michael: They’re on the GameStop website but due to size they simply couldn’t devote the shelf space. They’re not compact and can’t be folded up.

The Ignition pads are a little more family friendly. You can just fold them and tuck them away somewhere.

GamersInfo.net: I don’t often see much advertising for the metal dance pad and I wonder if maybe you shouldn’t do more? It’s a fabulous product.

Jon Tam: The metal pad appeals to a very specific market and only a hardcore DDR fan is going to pay $200 for a dance pad. But, it sells very well. Even the one we just showed you is being evolved; we’re preparing for another cycle to improve all that needs to improved, to make it truer to that arcade experience.

Even my friends that want to be “hooked up” for a dance pad, though, I still recommend our Ignition Pad. It’s our best seller for a reason; we set it at that price point because it’s earned it. It’s really a great line of dance pads.

GamersInfo.net: Once you realized this was going to succeed, what did you decide to tackle next?

Michael: Usually everybody pitches ideas of new opportunities that we can look into. A lot of inspiration comes from China. So we often just make a lot of stuff, then we go through and decide what is actually good. Sometimes we see something and know that it isn’t quite what people want but we could make it better and into something people will actually want.

Kai Huang: The RedOctane dance pad and other pads within the dance pad category were the first products commercially available. Beyond dance pads, the next product category we decided to tackle was the arcade joystick market. We were in R&D for a year before we introduced the RedOctane arcade stick. It’s a great product that incorporates many of the features we believed the hardcore community wanted in a heavy duty joystick.

GamersInfo.net: An example?

Michael: The maracas game that was available for the Dreamcast was actually one that we looked at but then the system was no longer available. So really, we just started off doing the dance pad and then began to see what people wanted.

We worked on the dance pad for several years. The Ignition Pad is in its 3rd product cycle. The initial pad had layered steps and foam to make it more solid and wouldn’t slip internally. It wasn’t until the second product cycle when we put in tougher foam when it really took off and people started to think that this was “the pad to get”.

GamersInfo.net: Your advertising shows your four most prominent peripherals and the most fitting for today’s games: the Ignition Pad, the Arcade Fighter Joystick, the Shooter Pedal and the Taiko Drum. What came after the pad?

Michael: During the 4-5 years that we’ve been doing peripherals we’ve offered many products, mostly direct from China. It’s been deciding as to whether we should work on our own version that’s been difficult to decide. The Arcade Joystick was probably the next in line. The current version came out in August of last year; but the initial joystick came out around 2002. That was an ok joystick but was nowhere as good as it is now. It was through that we learned what we could do with production – when you first start off you have ideas of what it “should” be. But it’s not until you start production that you find out how hard it’s going to be to make or what kind of obstacles there are.

I believe that’s what many people don’t understand – if you read the forums, etc. They think the idea would be so easy to implement but when it comes to production things changed drastically.

GamersInfo.net: I haven’t seen the Joystick in retail, is it? And if not, do you plan to put it in retail?

Michael: No, it is not. We’re trying to get that in retail however there are a lot of competitors in that field – Mad Catz, Pelican… They always have their standard offerings with games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat and those really make flashy controllers. So, I’m not sure if we’ll get this into retail but we’re working towards it.

The joystick market is a little bit flooded. And we have a history of really working with a “hard-core” audience. We didn’t get into retail with our dance pad until about a year ago, so we’re definitely used to working in that “hard core” realm. We’ve just based our sales off of that – people hear about “Red Octane quality”.

GamersInfo.net: After the Arcade Joystick, you go next to the Taiko drum, deciding to skip the Donkey Konga drum because Pelican was already making one…

Michael: We didn’t know about it in time. We have concept meetings where we each through out proposals and with Donkey Konga we just decided we didn’t feel the opportunity (with Nintendo producing the drum as well) was there for us. We didn’t know about Pelican at the time.

Taiko deciding not to sell the drum separately was a deciding factor for us.

GamersInfo.net: Seeing that Taiko was released in Japan and Europe before it was here, did watching the sales of the game there affect your decision as to whether it was a beneficial product to make here?

Michael: In many ways, we use our DDR information. A lot of people who play DDR will play other music games. So, it’s often a matter of interpreting their interest as to whether they would show an interest.

GamersInfo.net: What would you say makes your drum better than Taiko’s other than you don’t have to buy a second copy of the game?

Michael: The face of the drum is more sensitive. If you were to open up both Taiko drums the sheets are different. I find that with the Namco drum there are just dead spots. And what that comes from is the sensors that are placed to pick up the vibration. If you hit one dead center you get a dead spot. What we did was place more, smaller sensors, making our sheet simply more sensitive.

If you try both, you’ll notice a difference. Not that the Namco drum is bad, but I think ours is better.

GamersInfo.net: Not having played either, are they tensile? Is there bounce back? It helps keep you from getting tired.

Michael: It has some, but not much, it’s not a true drum but there is some.

GamersInfo.net: Where did you get the idea for the pedal?

Michael: The pedal is an idea that Jon Tam noticed from playing Time Crisis – that there were just no good pedals available. There was nothing that simulated that arcade feel to it. You had to hit one of the pads on the gun to simulate the pedal and you lost that arcade feel.

Jon Tam: Namco’s decision was to put all the pedal functionality into the gun. Some third party developers had put out pedals that plugged into the gun. But what I found out through experimentation was that a second controller plugged into another port acted as a pedal.

I had known this for years, so when the Playstation 2 versions came out, again I noticed if you plugged in a controller even when playing multiplayer, you could plug in two controllers and two Guncon 2s on Time Crisis 2 and have two pedal functionality.

So, it was conceivable, but the whole difficulty in creating the Time Crisis pedal was making a metal pedal feel substantial enough to give the Time Crisis experience.

GamersInfo.net: What are some of the is you developed, finished R&D, finished prototyping, but they just didn’t make it?

Jon Tam: We go through a process. We make sure everything gets written up and gets analyzed from a marketing and sales point of view as well. Just because it’s a great idea, doesn’t make it sound business decision. Will the public buy it?

The Time Crisis pedal actually has a very high cost of goods – because it’s metal, because it has diamond plating. But, the amount of circuitry and buttons in there? Very low. It’s the metal that costs a lot in that pedal. You can’t mold it. Literally, in China, you’ll have people folding them and welding them back together. So, it’s a very high cost of goods.

Joysticks are another accessory that the company has worked with – and we’ve produced basically 2-3 general types we’ve made. But it’s something we’re still considering – we’re “flirting” with that market. 2D fighting games have rather died outside of Japan. Capcom Fighting hasn’t been doing very well; even 3D fighters – the “big ones” – don’t do well in the market. So it’s determining what type of joystick will the market support.

GamersInfo.net: An FPS joystick? I can’t be the only one with terrible dexterity who can’t manage two analog controllers…

Jon Tam: That kind of controller has been conceived and thought about ever since Quake 1 for the PC. In terms of ideas, I don’t think ideas ever die; you just have to find a better answer.

Michael: All of ideas aren’t completely 100% innovative. It’s just a matter of making an enhancement to something existing to get it just right.

GamersInfo.net: With Xbox Arcade developing there will be an entirely new type of gaming that will be available on a console that works best with trackballs, joysticks, etc. Have you thought about working with that?

Jon Tam: I haven’t specifically. The way that this company works is that we’re pretty free-form because we’re a small company. So, if you’ve got an idea you write up a one-sheet. Everything you believe about that idea has to fit on one sheet. Then you do a basic cost analysis and determine what the market will bear.

GamersInfo.net: Do you have something that you’re working on now?

Jon Tam: We do but it’s still not approved for public announcement yet.

GamersInfo.net: What would be your dream item to design and build to make video games easier and more fun to play?

Jon Tam: Well, there’s been a lot of talk about an FPS controller and doing work with that. But also if you look at the big sellers like Halo or SOCOM, etc. – those players are already accustomed to using the gamepad. And again, if you look at the popularity of the games and the companies producing them, how many millions of dollars in research would they have already put in?

It’s really something we want to do and we flirt with it constantly but it’s a big challenge for a number of reasons beyond just design. You have to work with the developer; you have to have them build code for your controller, you can’t simply produce one and hope it’s compatible.

You can’t have a mouse work perfectly like a mouse and have it plug into a PS2 controller. There is a product in China – we’re not affiliated with it – called the FragJoy. It’s an adaptor that works as a mouse and keyboard for a controller but it does not perfectly emulate the same experience you would get from a PC mouse because it’s not tunable that way. The problem is that eventually you have to return to center. Your joystick always returns to center when not in use and how do you get a mouse to do this?

Developing something that emulates the mouse is not technically doable in a “perfect” sense but you can get very close. It has been done with the FragJoy. We’ve designed products like that but we’re still in pre-production.

GamersInfo.net: Can you think of any truly wild ideas that you want to do?

Jon Tam: Some of the ideas that have been thrown out are a seat for a driving experience that has hydraulic exchange instead of just dual shock rumbling? Could it interface with the code so that it has collision detection “oh! You’ve been hit from the right side!” We’re not at the point where we can approach Sony and say, “For Gran Turismo 4 we’re going to implement code for your product…” But there is a dream to have a product that simulates that.

GamersInfo.net: I notice that what you don’t have are steering wheels and flight joysticks. Is that because the market is flooded with them?

Jon Tam: We won’t create a product unless it’s competitive with the best. That is where we always want to enter the market. We won’t enter with “just another steering wheel or joystick”. Will the flight simulator market support another joystick?

Michael: Market conditions in the end, are really the deciding factor. No EBGames is going to give up floor space for a $250 item that they might sell 5 of.

Jon Tam: A good example is gun games. NO gun game sells well except for the Time Crisis series. Sega didn’t even produce a gun for House of the Dead 3, which sold ok. I believe it was approximately 150,000 units. But then what’s your attachment ratio? Let’s assume it’s 25% and that’s rather high. So we say 30,000 units. Is that enough to produce all of the molds and production necessary for that one game?

GamersInfo.net: Controllers for kids. No one has really gone that direction. My children’s hands are small as are mine. Not that there are a lot of games for children on the Xbox but even the S-controller is simply too large – my own hands cramp up. Have you looked at simply producing something of scale?

Jon Tam: We’ve evaluated children’s products. But we’ve never really investigated what you are calling “children’s controller” for a major system. My personal opinion is that if I did the market research I would find that there really isn’t a large enough demand or market for it. The Playstation controller really isn’t that big. The Xbox S-Controller is relatively small.

GamersInfo.net: I also think the assumption is that when we say “kids” we mean 8 years or 10 years old. I’m thinking of even younger children, 5, 6, 7…

Jon Tam: My question to that is “what games are children who are 5 or 6 or even 8 playing?”

GamersInfo.net: My own children are playing Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket…but my 8-year old is playing the entire Lord of the Rings seies of games so he has a significant number of key combinations to work with. A perfect example is the Winnie the Pooh game that my youngest had when he was 4. There were no dexterity issues as that game was designed for the young. But the controller was too hard to hold on to and he honestly didn’t have the strength because that is just developing at that age.

Michael: We have a lot of interest in children’s items. We’ve done a lot of research into it. But it’s hard to determine a controller that will work specifically for a child – not simply a smaller adult’s controller, we could take 10 games as a sampling and build one based upon common denominators but it wouldn’t work perfectly for each game, only well.

Jon Tam: The real belief that a lot of us have here is that we need a controller that is appropriate for a game. It has to have a high enough attachment ratio that it makes sense to go through the entire process of design and production to earn a high enough margin. But they’re very specific to the game.

GamersInfo.net: Have you given any thought to the PC market? You have a lot more flexibility in terms of what you can produce.

Michael: Yes. Especially when it comes to that FPS controller we spoke about earlier. I don’t think that we specifically concentrate on one market – PC vs. Console. We concentrate on the idea. We’ve found that casual players of games, particularly those over the age of 40 who grew up with the Atari controller are looking for something different but they’re not necessarily a large enough segment of the gaming population. But, something like the trackball you mentioned earlier might be a good idea – I’d like to look into that further.

It’s just very hard to convert people because the keyboard and mouse have become such a standard almost through people being forced to use it that they have a hard time considering using anything else. Also, there’s no added cost if you use a mouse and keyboard.

GamersInfo.net: Do you feel if you were to get your name as synonymous with game rentals as GameFly that it would help your retail sales? Too many times we’ve mentioned we’re going to speak to your R&D department and people are unaware of your rentals…

Michael: It can be rather difficult to relate those together and I really can’t comment on that as don’t work in that area as much.

Kai Huang: I believe the more we can do to bring the RedOctane brand in front of consumers, the more it will help all aspects of our business, whether it’s game rentals or video game accessories. We take a unique marketing approach for each area of our business, so you won’t necessarily see us advertising that we rent games online and sell video game accessories in the same ad. But customers that rent games from us will eventually check out our accessories and vice versa. There is definitely synergy there.

GamersInfo.net – Interviews – Interview: RedOctane

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