The Game Composer’s Blog

The perils of going cheap with music.

Your game’s budget is going to be a major factor in determining the quality of your game. With more money, you can hire more talented programmers, artists, and audio personnel. With less money, the talent level is going to drop unless you are very lucky. All of that is pretty obvious. What’s less obvious is how dangerous cutting corners with your game audio can be. One of the first areas to be cut when trimming a game’s development budget is audio, unfortunately. Here is a list of some of the common ways developers try to cut corners with audio and how they can jeopardize the overall quality of your game.

• Licensed music

Pros

- Save money

- Often very well produced and professional sounding

Cons

- Extremely difficult to fit the character of your game

- Can be used in other places beyond your control

- Difficult to maintain consistent soundscape

Licensed music can add some good production values to your game, but it does so at a cost. The music will often not fit the character of your game and sort of sit on top of your game rather than be an integral part of it. It is this sort of superficiality that often forces players to turn the music off in a game and does nothing to help immerse players in the world you’ve created. This goes for the latest pop tune by Snoop Dogg (which wouldn’t save you money to license anyway) or the generic circus piece off that music licensing site you found on some game dev forum.

Also, you have no control where that music might be found outside of your game. If the piece is used in a toilet brush ad and becomes that annoying toilet brush song that everyone knows and comes to hate, well, you’re stuck with it in your game.

• Go in-house

Pros

- Save money

- Communicate easily

Cons

- Speed of turn-around

- Lower quality production

- Quality of music itself

I’m all for people creating their own music. It can be immensely satisfying for hobbyist composers to write their own music. It exercises the mind and is a great way to pass time. The problem comes when some of them try and turn that into a professional gig. I’ve seen it time and again, hobbyist composers who bite off more than they can chew. That scripter or producer on your team may fancy themselves a composer, but actually creating effective game music requires skills that are, frankly, pretty rare. Keeping up to date on the latest sample libraries and improving compositional techniques requires time and resources that are already being taken up with their day-to-day duties of their job.

Composing music is going to take time away from their primary duties on your team. They will also take more time to actually compose the music, as their undeveloped compositional skills will probably necessitate lots of trial-and-error and guesswork. They will also probably not, as hobbyists, have dedicated a large budget to their sound libraries and their music’s production quality will suffer for it. At best, it will sound a few years old. At worst, it will be a joke.

• Super cheap composers

Pros

- Super cheap

- Maybe local, easier communication

Cons

- Very inexperienced

- Lower production quality

- Poor quality of music itself

- Legal issues with pirated samples

I don’t want to sound curmudgeonly here, but there’s probably a reason why the $50-$100/minute composers are only charging that much. Sure, give them a fair shake. Maybe they’re just coming out of college or otherwise just starting their career, but even then they should be charging more than that if they think they have the chops to create top quality music. Much of what I’ve heard from this particular group of composers is the flavor of the month: their own pale imitations of The Lord of the Rings or the latest Michael Bay movie or Final Fantasy. Giving you music which feeds off of and adds to your game is probably not going to be their forte.

There is also the real danger of the use of pirated samples in their music. It’s just not likely that they can feed themselves, pay the rent, and buy professional samples if they’re charging so little for their music. That hurts the industry as a whole and can come back to bite you if the sample developers find out about those pirated samples in your game.

• Super cheap foreign composers

Pros

- Super cheap

- Possibly high talent level and production quality

- Good experience level

Cons

- Language barrier

- Equally possible to find low talent level

- Lack of transparency

- Legal issues with pirated samples

Many foreign (non-U.S.) composers are very well trained composers coming from excellent universities. The biggest two problems with this group could be communication and issues with piracy. Communication between developer and composer is extremely important when adding music to a game. If the composer does not speak English well, much of the nuance you are trying to communicate about your music direction is going to be lost. This could lead to frustration and sub-par results.

The other problem could be issues with piracy, even more so than the “super cheap” US composers. Piracy rates around the world (especially in Eastern Europe and China) can be extremely high and, while the cost of living may be lower, the price of samples is at least as much as in the US. I don’t want to paint all non-US composers as despicable pirates. I’m simply going on the possible pitfalls and unfortunate instances that I’ve observed. Don’t let difficulties in communication prevent you from assuring that the foreign composer you picked is on the up and up.

• Lowballing established composers

Pros

- It may work

Cons

- Lose future dealings with that composer

- Lose future work with that composer’s associates

- Composer’s effort is commensurate with pay

“What? $1000 a minute? That’s ridiculous. How about $200 a minute?” Besides outright insulting that composer, you are essentially giving yourself away as someone who does not understand the value of good music in a game. You may like that composer’s music and really want to work with him or her, but you’ve just kissed away any chance of working with them, at least for this game and maybe more games in the future. That composer is likely to tell this ridiculous story to their composer friends and they’ll all have a good laugh about you and they’ll all steer well clear.

Of course negotiations are important and composers are happy to find a way to get their music into your game at a fair price. Just remember lowballing is extremely risky when negotiating with anyone who brings unique talents to the table.

• Cut minutes of music from the game

Pros

- Save some money

- Afford established talent

Cons

- Players may get sick of music

- Less immersive game experience

It’s painful to cut tracks from a game, but sometimes it’s the only way to bring on board that talented composer. Instead of cutting whole tracks, maybe you can shave 15 seconds here and there. A good composer will make shorter loops more tolerable. Or, since you have shown your regard for having good music in a game by hiring an established composer, the composer will be more amenable to throwing in a little extra for the game. The better the game does, the better the composer does. A hit is good for everyone.

Just make sure you have “critical mass” for music in a game. One play loop is not sufficient for an entire game. For instance, if there are 4 general locales get 4 different play loops. If you do not have enough music in your game, it doesn’t matter how great the composer you have is. The music will get old fast.

So, there you have it… some things to watch for when trying to bring down your game’s budget. These are not hard and fast rules, of course. You can find a diamond in the rough in any of these groups. But the time you take sifting through the dirt while looking for those diamonds is time that you will lose on the actual development of your game and game soundtrack. When time is money, you actually may not be saving a dime. Bring in the best music you can and that will help you reap the rewards from an all-around excellent game.

October 20, 2008 Posted by thegamecomposer | Developer Music Tips | budget, game music | 2 Comments