The Game Composer’s Blog

Dynamic music in the year 3000.

I’ve always been interested in dynamic music and how best to create a dynamic music system for games. Today, though, I suddenly had a horrible thought. What if dynamic music gets so good in the future that there would be no more need for composers? OK, maybe not by the year 3000 as the title suggests, but maybe 2015 or 2020. As we come up with more rules for game audio systems to follow, will there be a time where the dynamic system can just compose stuff on the fly? Adios, game dev world. Hello, Best Buy blue shirt?

It could happen, I suppose. Artificial intelligence is always going to get better. It’s possible now to track certain game states, like how close enemies are and how much health you have, and play appropriate music. We can even have computers play only certain layers of music or mix and match layers depending on various game states. Is it only a matter of time before the computer is composing and orchestrating on the fly? The enemy just saw you on his radar, but he’s 300 yards away. Cue the woodwinds playing a danger chord progression. He’s approaching and now you see him. Cue the brass and percussion to take over the chord progression. He shouts at you to go away. Cue the melody in the cellos and horns.

But what exactly is the melody or the chord progression? Ah ha! Composers may not be out of luck! At the very least in this future world of brilliant dynamic music systems we’ll be composing the nuggets of music that the computer will sculpt into a masterpiece soundtrack. And if we treat our computer masters nicely, they may even let us compose the main menu tune ourselves.

I guess it comes down to the question that everyone will wonder at some point: How human will our computers get? Computers are excellent at following rules. They can take what we create and manipulate it all very well. But creating something requires that human spark. There’s something so satisfying about a piece of music that seems to flow intuitively. You know a great piece of music when you hear it because it seems like it sprang from nature and it flows the way it just should flow. Will computers ever achieve that level of human intuition? I don’t know. Probably someday they will. But by then, our games will be taking place in our holodecks and the world will be a much different place. Artists and programmers will be looking for new work, too, as our games will be written and drawn entirely by simple voice commands.

Could be the year 3000 after all.

July 9, 2008 Posted by thegamecomposer | Ponderings | dynamic music, future | Leave a Comment