Stefan Hahn (S&H Entertainment)

Monday, December 7th, 2009, posted by K.Panagiotis

We recently announced our partnership with S&H Entertaiment and we thought that it would be a good idea to do an interview with the owner of the company Stefan Hahn.

So Stefan, at first I would like you to introduce yourself and what the company is about. Tell us a few things.

My name is Stefan Hahn, I’m a German living in Taiwan, and co-owner of S&H Entertainment Localization, a localization company specialized on video games of all kinds, founded 2003. In our company, everybody’s a gamer, so sooner or later it became obvious that it wasn’t enough anymore to just translate games – we had to create our own games! Since we’re well connected in the industry, getting a good team together didn’t really take that long, and here we are …

So your latest work is “The Roadie”. Tell us as a few things about the concept and the story of the game.

“The Roadie” is our first game, since we just started up that branch of our company early this year. If everything goes as planned, there will be many fun games with heavy soundtracks from our digital workbenches in the future. Our game combines the very well-known concept of rhythm games with a character-driven game: how you do in the game has direct influence on what the roadie has to endure in the middle of the screen. If you let him get hit too many times, the electrified wall of death that’s chasing him will catch up to him and electrocute his ass. As far as the story is concerned … well, the world will never forget the day of “the accident.” Who knew that plugging in a giant amp stack just as lightning struck could open up a portal to another dimension? Certainly not our down-and-out roadie who did the plugging. Inter-dimensional portals sound pretty cool and all, but when they have robotic alien creatures streaming out of them, they’re quite the opposite. And now, a world torn apart has only one savior to fight against the maniacal robot army: the same roadie that caused the accident.

What’s behind the idea to create “The Roadie”?

Well, the idea to start making games first hit me when I was waiting for my wife during one of those seemingly endless shopping days. First, I thought about an ape swinging through the jungle while dodging enemies, but somehow, the heavy music just wouldn’t fit to the usual cuteness of apes, so I scratched that idea. Later on, our lead programmer suggested making a fat little roadie the hero of our game. We all liked the idea so we eventually went with it.

Why did you choose to create a Heavy Metal-themed game?

We all love Metal, so there wasn’t really a second thought – it had to be connected to music in one way or the other.

Nowadays, we see lots of movies and games inspired by rock and metal music, like the movie “School of Rock” for example or the guitar hero games. Do you think that metal music is a fashion nowadays or it is going to become a fashion in the near future?

Yeah, definitely! Lots of stuff has been happening in that direction lately. Hard’n heavy stuff (and evil shit, while we’re at it) is really popular these days and I assume we’re not at the peak yet. I guess that must be connected to the uncertainty of our times in one way or another.

Do you personally listen to metal? If yes what bands do you listen to?

Hell yeah! I’ve been listening to metal since my early teens, which are … errh, a while back now. I’m really into (melodic) Death Metal and Black Metal in general, my favs being Evocation, Aphyx, Dying Fetus and Marduk.

What do you expect from “The Roadie” and what should the crowd expect from this game?

Oh, I don’t have any expectations at all. What will be, will be. But I hope that a lot of people will have a great time playing the game. They can expect hurting fingers, fast-paced action and a jiggy soundtrack. After all, this isn’t a rhythm game for the weak, but for Metal enthusiasts!

Do you have any metal references in the game like maybe a well-known track as a soundtrack or a famous metal personality appearance or something?

Nope, we wrote the music ourselves. Getting something famous on board would have killed our budget. We’ve been offered a marketing spot in the upcoming Slayer/Megadeth tour in North America, but man, if we can make a fraction of what they wanted for that with this game, we’re gonna be very, very happy.

How can the fans get this game?

That’s really easy: just go to www.theroadie-game.com and click on the cow skull button. This will lead you straight to the game in the App Store. You can also look for “The Roadie” or “S&H Entertainment Localization” using the search function of the App Store.

So is there anything else that you would like to add? Anything else that you would like to notice or whatever?

Yeah, we also got a soundtrack out. It’s called “The Roadie – Soundtrack” by “Shentloc”, our own music project so to speak. It’s available at iTunes, amazon and all other well-known digital music services. All songs can be bought individually. We also a song out called Redemption, which is with vocals, plus the song for the first future add-on level, “Tyrant”. We will be adding more levels to the game if it sells ok. Thanks a lot for this interview!

Interview by: Karagiannidis Panagiotis.

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