Rockstar producing new Spec Ops title
Actual rock star spills the beans and observes that writing game soundtracks is "way easier than writing songs".
Rockstar doesn't like to give much away about its forthcoming projects. And when we say "much", we mean "anything more than the game title and half a screenshot until release day", generally.
So we suspect they were more than a little bit cross when yankee rocker Josh Homme went running his mouth off about a new Spec Ops game they're producing. Oops.
The Queens of the Stone Age singer spilled the beans in an interview with MTV.com, saying that he and bassist Alain Johannes were busy "writing the music for a Rockstar game called Spec Ops."
"There's a bunch of versions of new songs," he added. "Some of them are mellow, some of them are rock and some of them are, like, hick-hop because we're a bunch of white guys."
"I can't play any videogames when we're on tour or in the studio because then I would get addicted, and I don't need any more addictions," continued Homme, proving just how rock'n'roll he really is.
"But the whole thing was great because it was so easy. It's way easier than writing a song, because with videogame music, everything just needs to be, like, 30 seconds long." Shorter = easier: a valuable lesson for us all.
The tactical shooter series is owned by Take-Two, Rockstar's parent company, and enjoyed a Dreamcast outing plus four titles on PSone. None of them were any good at all.
However, we're optimistic that the people who brought us GTA, Manhunt and Red Dead Revolver might be able to do something decent with the franchise. According to QOTSA's record label, Interscope (who also provided all the songs on the San Andreas soundtrack), the game will be out by the end of the year. Rockstar says - wait for it - "No comment."