The Game Composer’s Blog

Game music, a matter of life and death.

AIAS awards soundtrack category… wha??

Yesterday I learned that the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences unveiled their finalist lists for their 12th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. One category stood out to me as being very silly:

aias_logo

Outstanding Achievement in Soundtrack

Guitar Hero World Tour – Activision – Neversoft Entertainment
LittleBigPlanet – Sony Computer Entertainment America – Media Molecule
Motorstorm Pacific Rift – Sony Computer Entertainment America – Evolution Studios
Rock Band 2 – MTV Games – Harmonix Music Systems, Inc.
Singstar PS3 Vol. 1 – Sony Computer Entertainment America – SCE London Studio

So what particular skill went into assembling these track lists? As far as I know, these soundtracks are just playlists of the producers’ favorite tunes or, more likely, tunes that they thought would help their games get more sales. Seems like nothing more than either personal preference or marketing decisions, probably the latter. How do you give an award for a playlist? Seems like nonsense to me.

Or even worse, this could just be considered to be an award for who can cough up the most dough to give to the record companies to license their tunes.

That said, I am torn on who I hope wins between two of the choices. I would love to see Little Big Planet win because their list seems more varied and includes a track from Prokofiev’s soundtrack to Alexander Nevsky. But Rock Band 2 has Weezer, the greatest band in the world (or something like that).

January 30, 2009 Posted by | News, Ponderings | , | Leave a Comment

Some sounds to avoid in your game…

How many times have you been driving down the road while listening to the radio and then heard a police siren suddenly come out of nowhere or a car start honking its horn at you? But then you realize it wasn’t coming from a real police car or angry fellow motorist, but rather from your own car speakers. Isn’t that aggravating? And it’s equally as aggravating to be instantly yanked out of a video game by similar types of real-world sounds coming from your game.

Of course, you can use any sound you want in a game but they have to be expected and unique. Most of the transgressions mentioned in this post involve sounds that are supposed to be ambient. If your game takes place in an office, then there will be phone rings and computer bleeps and bloops. These sounds are expected. But instead of using the most realistic phone ring sound you can find, you should craft a recognizable – but unique – phone ring sound. That way, the player will never be jerked out of the game and wonder who’s calling in real life. Similarly, don’t use computer sounds in your game that sound even vaguely close to Windows or Mac sounds. If a Windows “email received” or error sound is heard, the player will be tempted to alt-tab right out of your game.

You have to be very careful with traffic and neighborhood sounds as well. It’s not as disruptive an issue as the sounds coming from your car stereo but since everyone lives in some sort of neighborhood with its own real sounds, the ambient game sounds can possibly take a player out of your game. If your game takes place out in the country and you decide to have chainsaw or lawn mower sounds going on in the background, you run the risk of taking your player out of the game as they go to the window and prepare to curse at their neighbor who they think is mowing their lawn at 2:30am. If you do have these loud, disruptive types of sounds in your game at least make them unrealistic enough to not confuse your players.

We should always be striving to further immerse players into our games. Usually that means creating realistic and compelling sounds. But sometimes, especially with sounds that are common in our day to day lives, a little less realism is what’s called for.

January 30, 2009 Posted by | Sound Design Advice | 2 Comments

   

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