Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box Postnatal
(note: This is a transcript of an episode of a podcast I was invited to take part in. The hosts were eager to talk to me about the music in the newly released game Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box and I feel honored to have been invited to appear on their show. The hosts will be familiar to anyone: Frankenstein’s monster, Bigfoot, and an alien. Their podcast is called “Frankenstein, Bigfoot, and an Alien Discuss Game Music and Ice Cream”. Look for it on iTunes. My segment appears about halfway through last week’s episode… )
Alien
Frankenstein
probably Bigfoot
ALIEN: Welcome back, humans. One of your kind is now with us. Behold Matt Sayre!
MATT: Thank you, Alien. I’m happy to be here.
BIGFOOT: (English accent) Welcome, Mr. Sayre.
FRANKENSTEIN: Urrrgh!!
MATT: Hi, Bigfoot and Frankenstein’s monster.
BIGFOOT: Oh, go ahead and call him “Frankenstein”. He’s grown accustomed to that particular appellation.
MATT: Great. I will, thanks.
FRANKENSTEIN: Gyee.
ALIEN: Begin this interrogation by giving us the history of your project and the human faction that has created it.
MATT: Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box is a new hidden object puzzle adventure game based on the paranormal romance novel Tiger Eye by Marjorie M. Liu. The game basically covers the first half of the book. You play as Dela Reese, a young woman traveling in China. She finds a mysterious riddle box and once she opens it she discovers an ancient warrior, Hari, who has been trapped within for centuries. He is cursed to serve as a slave to whomever possesses the box. You try to rid him of the curse and deal with the Magi, the antagonist who is responsible for the curse and who wants his riddle box back.
Our team, PassionFruit Games, was formed specifically to make this game and, we hope, all its sequels. Tiger Eye is the first in the Dirk & Steele (the psychic detective group Dela belongs to) series of books and it’s an exciting series, perfect for video games. The members of PassionFruit Games previously worked at Her Interactive (I did contract work for them, the rest were full-time), where they worked on the Nancy Drew Dossier series. Unfortunately, the Dossier series did not pan out (even though Resorting to Danger won Yahoo’s 2009 Hidden Object Game of the Year award) so the team was laid off. The day after being laid off, however, we were already planning this new venture. And last month we shipped TE: CotRB!
FRANKENSTEIN: Ahh… funn, ME play!
MATT: Oh good, glad you liked the game, Frankenstein! So far the reviews have been very positive and we’re very proud of the work we’ve done.
BIGFOOT: I was surprised to learn that you did over 70 minutes of music for the game. Dear chap, that’s a great deal of music for a casual game!
MATT: Yes, I decided early on that since this game and company are our own “babies” (even the author, Marjorie, is a founding member of PassionFruit and wrote the game’s script) that I would go way above the typical amount of music found in a casual game. For the two Nancy Drew Dossier games, for example, I only did around 13 minutes of music for each. In total there are, as you say, over 70 minutes of music and over 200 sound effects. I also contributed to the voice casting and edited the hundreds of voice files for the game (I also got to perform the very last line of the game… three whopping words which are not “I love you”, by the way). It was all a labor of love (pun intended) as I wanted the game to really shine in every aspect… couldn’t let audio be a weak link!
And, as an aside, I must mention that the soundtrack is available on the PassionFruit website as part of a package with the game or alone. It will also be available on iTunes, Amazon, and all the other major online digital music stores soon.
ALIEN: Capitalism will be the downfall of your species. That will make conquering your planet a straightforward undertaking. The time approaches!
MATT: Ok.
BIGFOOT: Come now, Alien. Let’s leave those matters for another time. Getting back to topic, one of the things that stood out to me was the length of the menu tune. Over 7 minutes! Dear fellow, that’s a real shocker!
MATT: The menu tune was the first piece I composed for the game. I wanted it to be the basis from which the rest of the music was derived. And it does contain the three main musical themes for the game: the Riddle Box theme, Hari and Dela’s love theme, and the Magi’s villain theme. Here are the three themes:
FIG. 1 – Riddle Box theme
FIG. 2 – Love theme
FIG. 3 – Villain theme
Most of the pieces in the soundtrack contain an aspect of one or more of these themes. Sometimes the relations are explicit. Sometimes they are more hidden. But it’s important for a game soundtrack to have enough coherence to form a pleasing whole.
ALIEN: Yes. My people have analyzed the Tiger Eye soundtrack. And we constructed a visual representation of the overall structure of your soundtrack. Behold!
FIG. 4 – Visual representation of Tiger Eye’s soundtrack overall structure
MATT: Hey, that’s Stonehenge!
ALIEN: Correct. That is its human-given name.
MATT: That was constructed thousands of years ago!
ALIEN: Yes.
(long pause)
BIGFOOT: Yes… indeed… our extraterrestrial friends do work in marvelously mysterious ways. Moving forward… does that formation of stones look like it represents the musical relationships accurately?
MATT: Yeah, it’s very accurate. Looks like the solid lines represent more obvious connections while the dotted lines represent more hidden connections, such as melodic inversions or fragments of theme. You can really see how most pieces link back to one or more of the three center melodies. Also, you can see how not all of the pieces are connected to another one. While I love coherence in my soundtracks, I find that not every piece needs to be connected to every other one. Most of them use similar instrumentation or a similar “feel” though so nothing really comes out of left field.
FRANKENSTEIN: Gahhh!
MATT: Yes, left field.
BIGFOOT: Sorry, one of his legs comes from a baseball player. He’s sensitive about baseball.
MATT: Gotcha. Anyway, maybe it would be helpful to talk about some of the specific pieces in the soundtrack? I’d love to give a little extra information about some of my favorites or the ones I find most interesting…
ALIEN: Proceed!
MATT: Ok, A) Main Theme … I’ve talked about how it contains the three main melodic ideas for the game. What’s interesting though is that as a 7+ minute piece only played during the main menu , I sort of consider this as an “Easter Egg”. How many people will actually sit and listen to the entire thing? That would probably only happen by mistake, if the player happens to answer the phone or otherwise be interrupted before they click “Play”. Players who have not yet bought the game and are only playing the one-hour demo will especially be disposed to getting into the game as quickly as possible. That’s the idea behind casual games anyway, right? To get in and get out whenever you want, as quickly as you want. But anyone who does hear the entire thing will be presented with a trip through the characters and emotion of the game, further helping to give the game an identity.
B) Find the Riddle Box
FIG. 5 – Find the Riddle Box snippet
This piece was created after a couple rounds of beta testing where the feedback indicated that players would probably like a more upbeat tune early in the game. I was probably about half done with the soundtrack and agreed that the music could be a little more upbeat. Going in to the project, I was envisioning lots of lush and beautiful pieces that would help relax and inspire the player. So I was thinking tempos would generally be slower and activity lower. But this is a game and the player does need a little kick in the pants every so often to propel them to the next scene and keep them playing. Also, music is all about contrasts and having a combination of quick, fun and slower, lush pieces just gives every piece more significance. I was very glad the beta testers were there to remind me of something so important.
ALIEN: This is why we breed Rigelian Flugmarfs after feeding them Goom treats. Makes the entire process less stressful for all involved. You will continue!
MATT: Yeah. Flugmarfs. Anyway, going on… C) Neuron Connection
FIG. 6 – Neuron Connection snippet
Talk about a contrast… this piece is the biggest departure of all. I wanted this to sound like it was recorded in the player’s head, sort of muffled and mysteriously active. The neuron minigame takes place essentially in Dela’s brain so I wanted this piece to feel very “inner” and contemplative. It’s a thinking game, after all. I think the piece also really helps to grab the player’s attention if it’s been drifting at all.
FRANKENSTEIN: Brain loud. SHHHHH….. Quiet! (throws his laptop across the room)
MATT: Sorry, Frankenstein. You probably shouldn’t play that so loud.
ALIEN: Final warning, Frankenstein. Cease all throwing. (shoots beam from his pinky finger towards the laptop, which starts floating and moving towards Frankenstein, repairing itself along the way)
BIGFOOT: I never fail to be amazed by those beams. Sorry, please do continue.
MATT: D) Bonus
FIG. 7 – Bonus snippet
This music is for the bonus level, a simple matching game which can grant the player extra “Psi Points”, or hints basically. It’s another departure piece, more exciting and fun than most of the others. I wanted to include it here to show how it hides one of the main themes, the love theme, within its melody using a common compositional tool, inversion. The contour of the melody is basically inverted, going up instead of down and down instead of up (at least for the first couple of measures, then the melody goes in its own direction). You can see it here:
FIG. 8 – Bonus – love theme inversion
E) Together We Rest
FIG. 9 – Together We Rest snippet
This piece actually introduces an entirely new melody. I didn’t want to use too much of the love theme early in the game so I created a new melody more about their growing friendship. It also is one of the more Chinese sounding pieces in the game, with the melody being introduced by the erhu, a Chinese stringed instrument.
BIGFOOT: I do love the erhu. It reminds me of an instrument my mother played when I was but a wee foot. (takes pipe out of his bag and begins loading tobacco in it) If only I could play it, but I’m afraid my siblings took all the musical talent in this family! (lights a match and starts to light his pipe)
FRANKENSTEIN: FIIIRRRE!!! Burn Frankenstein… NOOO!!! (jumps up, knocking over his chair, pushes Bigfoot over and runs out of the room, screaming – more crashes and screams coming from the next room)
BIGFOOT: (picking himself up) I should have known that would happen. Lost in my own memories, once again. Don’t worry about old Frankenstein. He’ll soon forget why he’s afraid.
MATT: Poor guy. I guess I’ll just keep going. Ok, F) In the Restaurant
FIG. 10 – In the Restaurant snippet
Now this piece is the most Chinese sounding one in the soundtrack. It’s a new melody once again and uses many Western instruments but features the erhu and a Chinese flute. I wanted to include it here because it is a fun and catchy melody and completely transformed the scene once it was implemented. It really brought the player into an authentic restaurant in China. Next up is G) Games at the Dirt Market
FIG. 11 - Games at the Dirt Market snippet
This scene is all about helping kids find their lost toys and playing games with them so it had to have a very playful feel. It transforms the Riddle Box theme into a 3/4 time signature and turns it into a bouncy, joyful melody. It’s easily one of my favorites from the soundtrack and shows how malleable, while still recognizable, any melody can be. And finally, H) A New Disguise
FIG. 12 – A New Disguise snippet
This piece is unique because it is the only one, besides the Main Theme, to go through all three melodic themes. The Riddle Box and love themes are not as explicitly stated as the villain theme, however, as this scene is one of the more tense ones, seeing Dela and Hari needing to escape the scene of a crime. A lot of stuff came to a head right before this scene, so it made sense for the music to come together as well. The love theme actually blends right into the Riddle Box theme at one point, as you can hear in the snippet in FIG 12.
FRANKENSTEIN: (walking back in, quietly humming and holding a flower) Prettyyy… many parts… (hands flower to Matt)
MATT: Thank you, Frankenstein.
ALIEN: Frankenstein is constructed of many different parts as well. An inefficient and dangerous way to create life. Will you humans never learn?
BIGFOOT: Haha… so true, Alien. But this piece does seem to affect him more than any of the others. (Frankenstein smiles then closes his eyes then quickly falls asleep)
MATT: Glad it has soothed him. Anyway, those were some of the pieces I thought were worth pointing out.
BIGFOOT: I am glad you shared your insights to these pieces, sir. Now, I have heard about one of your theories concerning game composition and modularity. Something about seeds? Do share.
MATT: Yeah, this is just a way of looking at composition that one of my teachers and I developed in grad school. Since game music doesn’t always come when expected, it’s useful to look at game music as modular and try to structure it in a way that makes sense no matter what order you hear it in. So instead of plodding along, melody after melody for instance, you sometimes just allude to a melody or other musical idea with a short snippet of it, even if only for a few notes. If this snippet comes early in the gameplay, it becomes a “seed” and grows into something full later on when the player encounters it in its full form. This is a very satisfying experience, whether or not the player realizes why. If that snippet comes later in the gameplay, after the player has already heard the full theme, the snippet is then an “echo”. That is also a satisfying musical event. It’s important to season the music throughout the soundtrack with these seeds and echoes.
TE: CotRB was more of a linear gaming experience, however, so modularity wasn’t that important when constructing the soundtrack. I could control when the seeds and echoes appear. One important seed comes in the very first cutscene, when a flute briefly appears in a dream and plays the first part of the Riddle Box theme. As I’ve already mentioned, that theme continues to grow throughout the game. Then, a very effective echo comes in the very last cutscene, as the protagonists go forward towards their next adventure in a cliffhanger ending, the melody comes back as an ominous echo.
ALIEN: We have seeded many planets with our kind. Yours is next!
MATT: Yeah, you keep saying stuff like that, but…
ALIEN: Quiet! You will be our laborers. And we like your doughnuts. We will need many more doughnut fabrication centers.
MATT: That might not be so bad.
FRANKENSTEIN: (waking up) Doughnuuuuts….
BIGFOOT: Oh dear, Frankenstein’s waking up. That means our hour, regrettably, is almost up! Before we go, could you talk a little bit about the cutscenes and scoring music for them?
MATT: There were a ton of cutscenes in TE: CotRB, something like 25 of them. And I was responsible for all the audio in them. I must say doing the cutscene music was in many ways easier than doing the gameplay music. Being tied to specific visuals takes some of the pressure off. You know exactly what’s going on while your music is playing, unlike during gameplay when it’s much more abstract. Also, the cutscenes have a great deal of dialog so the music is always secondary to that.
There is a great deal of pressure providing the audio, however, as the audio is always last in the cutscene assembly line. I had to wait for the cutscenes to be time locked before I could really sit down and start writing the music and adding the voice and sound effects. This meant that I had to be on top of my game to really crank out the audio tracks. I was actually still working on them the weekend before launch. If I’m late, the game’s late. Yikes. I ended up doing 3 cutscenes a day on some days. But that’s just the way it is. It’s pretty exciting and always extremely rewarding to see how it works in game.
ALIEN: Our time expires! Now give us a summary.
MATT: Ok, sure!
What went right:
1) No time limit for the soundtrack. Oh so nice to be free of the 1-minute loop beast. Ended up with 70+ minutes. And being part of the team from the start meant I didn’t have to rush to finish that much music.
2) Communication with the team. Both the art director and producer have musical experience and were very helpful in communicating what they needed for a scene or cutscene. Any change requests were very effectively communicated.
3) The material (the story). Marjorie’s book is a paranormal romance novel. I normally wouldn’t read such a thing but when I did I discovered an entertaining story full of suspense and emotion. The story isn’t all sappy lovey mush (if at all), but it is rather a captivating read with a variety of emotions that lent itself very well to an array of musical moods.
4) Team’s drive to succeed. PassionFruit Games was born out of harsh times. The entire group had been laid off in the middle of an economic disaster and decided to tighten their belts and make their own game. Our fate was in our own hands. Nobody wanted to be the weak link so there was a dedication to making the best game possible to try and bring this new romance reader market to games. It wasn’t easy, but our survival depended on making a great game so the drive was generally unquestionable. In only 7 months, we made something we could be proud of.
What went wrong:
1) Time crunch at end. As mentioned, this was stressful but fairly unavoidable with our aggressive schedule. Simply the nature of doing audio for games as well.
2) Not enough Chinese flavor. Since this half of the novel takes place exclusively in China, it would have been nice to have at least a couple other heavily Chinese influenced pieces in the soundtrack. I think there is enough as is, but it would have been fun to do a little more.
3) Wasted tracks. A couple of pieces I composed had to be cut out of the game. Due to beta/focus testing, we decided to alter some of the gameplay and remove a cutscene. This ended up definitely making a better game, but it was sad to see that music go to waste. At least now the soundtrack had a couple of “bonus” pieces, so it’s not all bad.
4) Budget. As a start-up, the necessities funded by loving family, we didn’t have a lot of extra money to use for some of the things we’d like, like a few more live instrumentalists or equipment upgrades. I should mention here that live musicians are very important, especially evident in the Main Theme where the flute and alto flute were played by amazing Seattle musician Dane Andersen.
BIGFOOT: Thank you very much for sharing your time with us. Good luck to you and PassionFruit. I’ve played through the game and had a wonderful time.
FRANKENSTEIN: Bye bye!
ALIEN: You have represented your planet well. You will be spared in the coming invasion.
MATT: I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on the show!
FRANKENSTEIN: Bye bye!
ALIEN: Now leave us. On next week’s podcast, we will discuss the recent rise in chocolate chip mint quality and what it means for French vanilla. Good night.
FRANKENSTEIN: Bye bye!
(Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box is available, with the soundtrack, at PassionFruit Games or on Big Fish Games. )
(You can reach Matt Sayre at matt@thegamecomposer.com )
(Frankenstein’s monster, Bigfoot, and the alien are probably not real. Nor is their podcast.)
Game Music Postnatal: Nancy Drew Dossier – Lights, Camera, Curses!
The Nancy Drew Dossier series is a new series of casual games coming out from Her Interactive, the makers of I don’t know how many thousands of (actually only 19 to be exact) Nancy Drew retail PC mystery adventure games. The PC series is a tremendously popular series so it made sense for HI to go after the casual market with the Nancy Drew license. I feel very proud to be the composer in this new Dossier series and, as Lights, Camera, Curses! is coming out in box form in June and the second game in the series is coming out soon as well, I thought now would be a good time to do a little “postnatal” on the music in the first game.
Yeah, they’re usually called postmortem’s, but that’s always bothered me a little bit – we’re creating not destroying!
As for the game itself, it is a hybrid seek-and-find and puzzler. It also feels to me like an extremely streamlined adventure game and is quite fun to play. It’s easily worth your time to check out, as I haven’t seen any game quite like it. Number 2 in the series is really hitting its stride with this new formula and I can’t wait for players to check that one out too. But back to the music…
I’ll take us through many of the pieces in the game, of which there are 16 total, and talk about how each piece came about, how they are structured, and how each one fits in with the rest of the music. One common theme throughout the music is that the game takes place on an old-fashioned movie set for a movie that takes place in Egypt, so much of the music will have a classic Hollywood style with some Egyptian touches . So what better way to begin than by talking about the main theme of the game?
Main Theme: This is actually the “signature” of the series and introduces Her Interactive, Nancy, and her new series of games to the players. It is going to play every time players start up any of the Dossier games so it was very important to get the exact feel they were going for in the new Dossier series, which was timeless, nostalgic, adventurous, and lightly mysterious (more “curious”). This also actually served as the test piece which would decide who gets hired as the composer (in a blind comparison by the developers) so it was doubly important to nail that feel. And it turned out exactly how I had hoped. This is one of my favorite pieces and I’m proud every time I hear it:
Main Theme (Signature):
The violin was played live by an excellent local Seattle-area violinist, Valerie Tung, who is going to play on the next soundtrack as well. It’s amazing how much even one live player can breathe life into a score. The art for the opening, which I encourage you all to download and watch, is reminiscent of the beginning of the great PBS Mystery! series (why do all mysteries have exclamation points?) and is great fun to watch. The music was composed before the art, so they matched everything to the music and did a fantastic job. You can get a taste for it in the trailer:
Notice the main theme played by the violin. It’s Nancy’s theme and will be heard throughout the Dossier series in many different forms. I’ve already used it a couple of times in Dossier game #2. Sometimes it will be noticeable, sometimes more hidden.
Example #1, the main Nancy melody: 
It’s a mysterious, adventurous melody and is also very malleable, as we’ll see in the next piece…
Noir: Good ol’ film noir. This can be an orchestral style, but I prefer the jazz combo feel with walking bass, piano, vibraphone, sax, and muted trumpet, with a touch of tremolo strings in the background. Also, most of the other pieces in the soundtrack are orchestral so it’s nice to get a change to a different ensemble.
Noir:
(For the sake of the blog, I’m only playing relevant excerpts from most of these pieces) The sax is playing the main Nancy melody with a couple jazzy notes thrown in, nothing too different. The main thing here is that the instrumentation instantly throws the player back into an old movie mystery set and Nancy’s theme helps keep the soundtrack coherent. But using only Nancy’s theme throughout the soundtrack could get repetitive so what we need is another theme to help glue the soundtrack together. With two themes, there is plenty of material to work with…
Egyptian: And from Egypt comes the second main melody for this particular game:
Egyptian:
This melody is certainly more exotic than the main Nancy theme, but that helps it to instantly transport the player to the set of this Egyptian movie.
Example#2, the main Light, Camera, Curses! melody:
This is also a very malleable melody, which we’ll see later.
Egyptian2: Since so many of the scenes take place in an Egyptian setting, we needed a second Egyptian-sounding piece to keep the first one from getting too old.
Egyptian2:
This should sound at least slightly familiar. I took the melody from the original Egyptian tune and put it on its head (called an inversion). Looking at the music can help show this.
Example #3, main LCC melody inverted in Egyptian2
Ah ha, we have more coherence!
The rhythm stays pretty much the same so there is familiarity there. But all the movement is inverted, downward motion becomes upward motion and vice versa. This is an old trick that I and most other composers have done lots before and will do again and again in the future. It’s a great way to get more material out of something you’ve already written and is an important ingredient in keeping soundtracks (and symphonies) coherent.
Wonder: With all this talk of themes and structure, sometimes it’s easy to forget that not everything has to be rigidly set in a system. It’s ok to have pieces come out of left field and just be something fresh. When you hear a theme over and over in every piece, it does lose some of its power. So Wonder, which comes late in the game at a pivotal moment, really does help expand the palette. I even used a choir, which is always risky in looping music, but it turned out to work very well in the game. The choir was more of a texture than a driving force. Here is the excerpt:
Wonder:
When I first sketched Wonder, it was meant to be the Egyptian piece. However, the producer felt it was too grand of a piece to be used in that way so we saved it for a more special occasion late in the game. Interesting fact, the producer is actually my wife (part of the reason for the blind audition), and she had great insight into the game and the music and how they would work together. Being very musical herself helped us communicate and I encourage all producers out there to take a music theory and/or history class or two… or even pick up and learn an instrument yourself.
Spooky: Spooky was full of scary string effects and helped set the mood for some of the more tense moments in the game. Sometimes it’s hard to work in any deep thematic elements in such a piece, but I did manage to insert the main LCC theme in the lower strings toward the end of the piece, as you can hear in this excerpt.
Spooky:
The theme is there, but its shape is a little darker. It is still recognizable though, especially with the similar rhythm.
Generic: This may be my favorite piece in the game. It feels a lot longer than 46 seconds, thanks to the fact that I always keep it moving forward (see my post last week about keeping repetition to a minimum to get more details on that subject). It’s also very playful and fun, but keeps in line with that mysterious feeling. It is called “Generic” because it is used in situations where no other music fits and works well with almost any scene, though lighter is a little more appropriate.
Generic:
It also utilizes the LCC theme in a more hidden way, adding a few notes here and there, but still keeping the main shape of the melody:
Example #4, LCC theme in Generic melody
Yep, it’s there.
The time signature switch from 4/4 to 3/4 meant I had some leeway in how I brought the melody over. I decided to be a little more playful with it, appropriate considering the instrumentation. Pizzicato strings lend themselves well to this kind of playful feel. I will admit this piece was inspired by a particular piece from the Fable soundtrack which the lead artist thought was a good style to go for. But besides that feel, I believe I steered clear of any musical thievery.
Minigame: This piece was created for a timed minigame and needed to create a sense of urgency… without being too annoying. So I kept it very rhythmic without too many noticeable upper instruments. One minor point about this one, I don’t know about you, but now whenever I hear a low marimba like in the beginning of this piece I think of the new Battlestar Galactica series. I didn’t want BSG to “own” that sound so I went ahead with it and kept it in.
Minigame:
Bonus: This piece takes the LCC theme and makes it the happiest you’ll hear in the game. It’s meant for bonus levels where the player gets rewarded for doing so well in the game. The theme is played fairly straightforwardly and is quite recognizable. The orchestration in this piece is reminiscent of those fun old Hollywood traveling movies.
Bonus:
Hotel: It’s important to keep the overall flow of the game in mind when doing the soundtrack. You can’t have too many pieces with the same theme following each other. Since they loop, chances are higher that the player will get sick of that theme and soon reach for the music off switch. (nooooo!) Sometimes that’s tough for the composer to gauge if they haven’t played it straight through enough. In that case, make sure and pick the developer’s minds on the subject. And definitely demand those cheat codes so you can zip through the game and see how your music is doing in the game.
When the player arrives at the hotel, it was a good time to bring back the Nancy theme. And this time it’s played by the bassoon, lending a more lighthearted feel to the setting. The theme is surrounded by a great lush Hollywood sound which adds an even greater effect to bassoon orchestration choice.
Hotel:
Conclusion
Nancy Drew Dossier: Light, Camera, Curses! was a joy to work on. Being a part of this first game in a new series was thrilling. I think we’ll see many more games in this series as it continues to find its footing. The music for LCC turned out to be integral to the plot, as the player ends up playing some of the music for themselves toward the end of the game. I didn’t include the music here in order not to ruin the surprise, but the player actually plays the main LCC theme (inverted again) and uncovering something amazing. It was great to watch that all come to life once the music was being completed.
What went right?
1. Her Interactive. Everyone who I worked with on the project had very helpful feedback and understood the importance of all aspects of the game and how they work together: gameplay, art, and sound. The fact that my wife is the producer for the series didn’t hurt.
2. The vision for the game was very clear from the start and that helped me focus my vision for the music.
What went wrong?
1. Lack of communication concerning style before starting a couple pieces. “Wonder” ended up working… wonderfully… in the game. But I first composed it as the “Egyptian” piece and feared it would be wasted. The simple solution is just to get the developers to point out existing pieces that are in the style they desire. That really does speak 1000 words. But on the whole this was only an issue on 2-3 pieces.
2. That’s about it!
Thanks for reading this! I hope to do more of these in the future as they help me gather my thoughts on the process and, I hope, help you find new ways of looking at your own soundtracks.
GDC 2009:Interesting-looking audio sessions
I won’t be attending the Game Developer’s Conference this year in San Francisco but that won’t stop me from going through the list of audio sessions and picking some of the more interesting-looking session ideas. Since GDC is coming right up next week, tonight I thought I’d share my recommendations for what you might want to check out.
There are 38 sessions at this year’s conference and I’ll highlight five of the most interesting sessions here. I’d love to hear any attendee’s thoughts on the sessions. And now, in chronological order:
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Procedural Speech Generation: How to Achieve Open Ended Dialog in Games Using Speech Technology (Wednesday 2:30-3:30pm, Paul Taylor lecture) Overview: In this talk we show that game dialog need not be restricted to simply playing back recordings of actors reading lines. By using modern speech algorithms, new lines can be spoken, new virtual actors can be created and the range of style and expression in a game can be greatly enhanced.
Game Music Contracts: Live, Licensed, and Beyond (Wednesday 4-5pm, panel) Overview: Game music contracts and business practices have evolved for next-generation development, and this panel will illuminate the latest developments, best practices, and current trends for engaging audio professionals in the development pipeline. Building on last year’s successful AFM contract announcement, a panel of top execs, union leaders, and dynamic independents will update GDC attendees on the evolution of audio business practices.
Weapon Sound Design (Friday 11:10-11:30am, Chris Sweetman lecture) Overview: This session presents an overview of weapon sound design in action games, sharing design and implementation procedures as well as giving recommendations on how to achieve audio clarity in multiplayer and single player environments.
Recording and Mixing Music for Games: Get that Hollywood Film Score Sound! (Friday 2:30-3:30pm, John Rodd lecture) Overview: Effective music recording and mixing techniques can increase the impact and quality of any game music production. John Rodd will discuss maximizing game music quality, regardless of budget. Hybrid productions, virtual instruments, recording venues and 5.1 surround music mixing will be discussed. Recent game projects will illustrate key points.
Adventures in Voice Acting: Raising the Bar on Voice Acting for Video Games (Friday 4-5pm, panel) Overview: In this interactive and informative session, participants will gain useful tools to increase creative communication between game producers and the creative talent in the studio to better storytelling, improve quality of performances in games, and develop a more efficient process – enhancing both the creative and financial bottom line.
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And my takes on these:
Procedural Speech Generation: How to Achieve Open Ended Dialog in Games Using Speech Technology: Now this technology is very cool sounding. I’m sure in the next ten years many games are going to head in this direction. No more canned responses and chatter, NPC’s are going to get a little life breathed into them. It should be interesting to see the current state of this sort of game dialog. (Paul has interviewed me a couple times and I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about)
Game Music Contracts: Live, Licensed, and Beyond: The business of game music could get a week full of its own sessions, but an hour will have to suffice for GDC. We game composers must not sit idly by as game dev companies get contracts skewed more and more in their favor. Signing unfavorable contracts not only hurts the composer who signed, but all of us composers.
Weapon Sound Design: This one is a bit of a surprise appearing on the list. Sounds kind of mundane but considering the importance and sheer quantity of games requiring weapon sound design, this should be a must-see. It’s a shame it’s only a 20 minute lecture. Seeing how another sound designer approaches this issue should be illuminating.
Recording and Mixing Music for Games: Get that Hollywood Film Score Sound!: Who doesn’t want a Hollywood sound, at least sometimes? I’m always up to see how other composers mix their music. It’s quite the black art. Mr. Rodd has mixed many Hollywood movie soundtracks and should be a good source of information.
Adventures in Voice Acting: Raising the Bar on Voice Acting for Video Games: Surprisingly, the bar for game voice acting is still set pretty low. I hope the panel gets into what to communicate and not just how to communicate to voice actors. Many game producers don’t seem to know what to ask for from the actors or don’t know (maybe can’t hear) common problems with game voice.
Well, there you go, my recommendations. There are many other interesting topics on the schedule and it was hard to keep them off the list, but these five stood out as having great potential to help improve your game audio and your business. Have fun down there! Maybe I’ll join you next year.
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.
Thou Shalt Not neglect silence. (#7)
neglect silence.
Music is of course an integral part of any video game experience. But while other components of video games (like graphics and user interface) are absolutely necessary throughout the entire game, music isn’t always necessary and in fact sometimes should be left out. If a game has wall-to-wall music, one important possibility of musical contrast is left out: the simple and effective contrast between sound and no sound.
Nothing encourages a player to reflect or see a new perspective like eliminating music for a while. It doesn’t have to be long. One common way to use silence is to place it right after finishing a level on the score screen. When the music stops, the player is free to breathe to their own tempo which helps them take control of their own thoughts and regroup. If the game immediately launches into new music without that break, the player is left at the mercy of the music’s beat and remains mentally at the surface of the game experience. ..no reflection, just an urge to launch into the next level. Never underestimate the power of silence to help deepen the player’s experience.
To take a couple of examples spanning a couple decades, think about Super Mario Brothers and Grand Theft Auto 4. In SMB, at the end of a level after jumping up to get a flag or kill the final baddy, a short victory piece is played and then there is a brief period of silence. The player can catch their breath and think back on their hard earned victory. If new music started immediately, the player would naturally be in “anticipation” mode rather than “satisfaction” mode. Sure, even with silence they’ll still anticipate a little but it’s important for the player to get that reward. Music’s not totally left out of the end of SMB levels… they do get the victory music. But silence is an important way to help make the player look back and feel satisfied about their accomplishment.
Grand Theft Auto 4 has a ton of musical content, but it isn’t constantly bombarding the player. You’ll commonly only find the music when you’re driving around or inside buildings. Often, you’ll finish a mission in your car listening to some heart-pumping rock. As soon as you park and step out of your car, you’re greeted with the quiet of a park or the bustle of a city street. Either way, the player is encouraged to reflect on their accomplishment to their own rhythm. The player doesn’t need to be baby-fed their emotion through music. They can find it within themselves with the help of silence. And you can’t always predict how they’ll feel. After mowing down half a dozen baddies, you can feel a little weird then walking around a quiet park with the sounds of the battle still echoing in your own head.
So, be sure and get plenty of musical content for your game. But remember to leave some space for silence. Trust the player to generate their own emotion sometimes. I did write about this in an earlier blog but, sure enough, I found it in the good game music rule book (the long lost and now found Ludus Sonitus Decretum).
Live orchestra… give it a thought.
There’s no getting around the fact that a live orchestral recording is going to sound much, much better than even the best sample-only orchestral recording. The subtleties that are lost in sampled music are hard to ignore. Live musicians bring their own feel to the music and make a whole that is much bigger than simply the sum of its parts. There is a warmth to live music that simply cannot be replicated by samples (at least not yet).
And, of course, that warmth and liveliness comes at a price. A pretty whopping huge price, comparatively. You can pay a typical composer $1000 per minute of music and get some pretty good sounding sampled music. That is, right now, good enough for most games and their players. Samples are always improving and, truth be told, 80%+ of the game players out there couldn’t tell the difference between live and well-sampled music. That’s somewhat disheartening to admit, but that’s where we are.
With that said, if you want the highest production values possible and you want your players to really be blown away, consider adding a few thousand bucks to your music budget. You can hire a session orchestra in Europe for around $2-3000 an hour. Each hour will yield 3-4 minutes of music. Even with 3-4 minutes, you have your main theme and maybe another significant piece in the game. The main theme is very important. It’s the first taste your player gets of your game and you want it to be of the highest quality. Though I said most players can’t tell the difference between live and sampled, I would bet that deep down, they will find a live orchestra to in fact be superior, however subconsciously that feeling is.
I do have mixed feelings about sending orchestra gigs overseas. As a semi-professional instrumentalist here in Seattle I do like to see gigs stay local. Local musicians work hours a day practicing their craft, constantly seeking new gigs. They deserve compensation for their hard work. But as a game composer, I simply want to see games have the highest quality sound possible. While the caliber of player in European orchestras is an unknown quality, overall they will achieve very good results. The nice thing about staying local, however, is that you can physically sit in on the session and be much more efficient. Though the cost per hour of orchestra time in a local orchestra may be 1.5x to 2x that of a European orchestra, the cost per minute of recording the local orchestra may only be 25% more:
European orchestra: 3 minutes @ $2400/hour = $800 per recorded minute
local (Seattle) orchestra: 4 minutes @ $4000/hour = $1000 per recorded minute
So either way, you’ll be in good shape. One thing, though. Be sure your composer is an excellent orchestrator. Many game composers aren’t trained in orchestrating for real instruments and don’t know how to use such an ensemble effectively. Composing for samples is completely different from composing for real instruments. The last thing you want during an expensive recording session is to have players constantly having to re-write parts because they just don’t work on their instruments. Professional musicians are good at covering up a composer’s mistakes (because they can play almost anything) but you still want the parts to fit well on their instruments, and within the orchestra.
Can’t cough up that much money? Well, you can do the next best thing and find a little extra cash to enable your composer to hire a live musician or three to come in and sweeten up the tracks. It may not be a complete live orchestra, but even having one live player will infuse the music with some much needed life. Especially for a piece that has a solo instrument highlighted, get that live player in there. $100 should be good to get at least a semi-pro in your composer’s studio for an hour to spruce up your game’s music. Again, make sure your composer has experience writing for real instruments. I should warn you, having a college degree in composition is no guarantee of having the ability to write for real instruments. Ask to hear some of that live-performed music. Time is money. Don’t take chances on this.
So, there you have it. A couple ways to help take your music to the next level. Maybe you don’t have the cash to do it now, but keep this in the back of your mind for a project down the road. You’ll be happy you did.
Pirated samples.
It’s about time I do the obligatory complaint on this blog about how much it sucks that people pirate instrument samples. Actually, the pirating itself doesn’t bother me so much. It’s not like the people pirating have the drive or talent to do anything worthwhile with their pirated samples. Their talent level is in fact inversely proportional to their laziness. But it does bother me that their pirating does affect me and other legitimate composers.
With each pirated sample, the sample developers feel even more need to a)raise prices and b)inflict even more copy protection on legit users. I’m not sure piracy really does take away from anyone’s profits. The people pirating would probably not have bought the software if the pirated versions were not available. That’s certainly debatable and not really the point of this post. The point is, whether or not there is such a monetary loss, the developers feel the need to raise prices and add copy protection.
Raising prices is an obvious annoyance, though it’s fine in some cases where the samples are so good you would pay almost any price. But some samples do end up going into price points that are far above what the samples are actually worth. Unfortunately, with rampant piracy it’s harder and harder to tell how good particular samples are because you don’t very often have good demos of the samples from which to judge their worth. Developers are so scared of piracy that they are very hesitant to release any free demos. So we’re left with word-of-mouth reviews. That’s ok, but I still want more hands-on experience with a product before I plunk down a few thousand bucks.
The biggest bother to me is the copy protection. I have so many dongles sticking out of my computer it’s ridiculous. And I even had to pay for one of them. What?? I have to pay in order to let the sample developers know that I’m not a bad guy? Didn’t I do that by buying the samples in the first place? So why did I do all that serial number entering online? Oh, that’s just so that the company can legitimize my legitimate copy of my software and let the dongle know that we’re all good. And then I think if I take out the dongle, the computer is instructed to melt so I’m very careful with that. Don’t even get me started about when it’s time to upgrade my computer and I have to remember all these serial numbers and passwords so that I can legitimately uninstall then reinstall. But I can only do the 3 times or something? What happens the 4th time? Oh yeah, more melting… or maybe that’s when it tells my computer to kick me in the groin.
And meanwhile the pirates are laughing at me while they use their samples on any computer they want, installing and uninstalling just for the fun of it. Why am I the one being treated like a criminal? A most vexing state of affairs. So really, it’s not the pirates I’m complaining about. It’s the knee-jerk reaction to them by the developers. But it’s hard to blame them. A lot of work goes in to making samples. I know, since I’ve made some. The sample developers need to make their money so they can continue to bring us better and better representations of real instruments. I hope we can come to a better balance soon though between copy protection and legitimate user annoyance.
One more point… game developers, be very careful dealing with some composers whose rates seem too good to be true. If sample developers find out that the music in your game is using pirated samples (which it probably would be), you could be in for some hurt. Having dev team members use pirated software is never a good idea. Samples especially are easily identified and traced.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this in the future (maybe when I make my next big purchase), but it’s nice to get that off my chest for now. Carry on!
Silence.
No, this isn’t about the book by John Cage (and if you get that reference, nice job!). It’s about the importance of silence in your game. When people think about game music, they usually think back to something along the lines of the Super Mario Bros loop. It’s a great tune, instantly recognizable, and almost never gets old thanks to enough variation.
Music implementation, especially in boxed games, has gotten a lot more sophisticated since then. With CD-ROM and DVD games, you can have a lot more music in your game. So music gets stale at a much slower pace. However, the colossal casual games market is plagued by generally less sophisticated music implementation. It hasn’t really progressed much past the old Super Mario Bros style of loop, loop, loop, win music.
Of course download size is the limiting factor here. As broadband internet spreads and gets faster, this will be less of a hindrance to providing good music in your game, but what to do until then? Well, beef up your music system! Don’t just do loops. With the limited megabytes you have to play with, loops will still be integral. But consider going a little further and adding things like layers and starts/endings.
For an example, here is something we did in Solitaire Pop. Have a basic loop consisting of just drums and harmony. Then have a layer that can fit right on top of that that spices things up. It could add a melody or extra rhythms to make things more interesting. Also, have a short piece ready that can plug right into the end of the loop that can end the music. Then have a similar short piece that can start the loop up again. Then you have many more sonic possibilities without that much more compositional work, though it does create a little more work for the programmers in order to implement such a system. Make the layers and starts and stops all happen randomly. For a casual game, that’s usually good enough. But you can go deeper and incorporate another idea from Solitaire Pop. We also had a “danger” layer that could play over the loop when things started looking bad for the player. The possibilities are endless! You just have to make them happen.
But back to the topic of silence, it’s amazing what a little silence will do for a game. Suddenly you can hear things you may not have noticed before. Maybe you’ll notice your heartbeat. Whenever there is a change, sonically or visually, it’s human nature to take notice. And there’s no bigger change than music becoming silence. The player will take notice. And that’s what we want, the player to be sucked into your game even more.
No matter how brilliant a one or two minute loop is, it will eventually get old. We need to keep things as fresh as possible for as long as possible. Consider different ways to build a music system for your game. It really does bring some more life to the experience. And sometimes the best addition is done by subtraction.
Your game’s music ensemble.
(this post applies to those games that wouldn’t obviously be more suited to a more adrenaline-based soundtrack based on rock or hip hop or accordion, etc.)
I’m all for epic orchestral soundtracks. There’s nothing like hearing a huge orchestra playing grand themes and sweeping us up in the excitement of victory and moving us to tears in times of strife.
But only in the right games.
Not every game calls for a full orchestra with a choir, just like not every game calls for a hip hop or a rock soundtrack. But so many games could benefit from pulling back a little and experimenting. Especially in the world of indie games where the gameplay is often new and innovative, why not come up with a new and innovative music ensemble to complete the picture?
The first couple of Katamari games did this beautifully. Their ensembles ran a huge stylistic spectrum. There were lovely lush orchestral pieces, but there were also some pieces with almost unidentifiable instruments playing the Katamari themes in new and interesting ways. And it was all executed masterfully. The mish mash of ensembles fit the gameplay, just like the way the ball grows bigger by collecting a mish mash of random objects.
It would be refreshing to hear a soundtrack that had only piano. Or maybe a soundtrack that had classical instruments, but only two at a time. Not every game art style uses the same palette of colors. Why should the game audio style? It really comes down to the game. I’ve just seen too many games with a forced orchestral soundtrack.
Granted, this isn’t a huge problem. But it does seem that far too often the first template game composers go for is the orchestral one. Why is this? Well, probably because writing for an orchestra is actually easier than writing for smaller ensembles. You have an incredible amount of colors to choose from. There is a wide variety of cliches to throw in, ever so effortlessly. A bigger ensemble being easier to write for seems a bit counterintuitive. And certainly, making a fresh and interesting orchestral piece is very difficult. But to throw together something acceptable is a cinch with an orchestra.
Part of the reason for this blog is to help improve the quality of game soundtracks and “acceptable” doesn’t cut it. We want “awesome” or “yowza, I’m speechless!”, right? Originality within the music and within the music’s colors heads us in the right direction. This isn’t all on the composer’s shoulders, of course. All you game devs out there should think carefully about your music direction. Sure, consider an orchestra. But maybe step back a second and think if there is any other sound you might like. Solo guitar? Some Jethro Tull flute and cello? Give it a shot.
22.1 Surround Sound. Whoo!
I was prepared to write tonight’s blog about how I think surround sound is overrated. But then I spied Star Wars sitting there all innocently in my DVD collection. And there’s the GTA4 case on the coffee table in front of me. Both of those titles just scream to be listened to with a good surround setup (so to speak). Sometimes it’s fun to be in a bed of sound with the hi-def on-screen action and just lose yourself in another world. Surround sound definitely can help to achieve that, especially in a dark room watching a dark movie or game.
I guess my big problem with surround sound is that it’s not always all that necessary and it can sometimes actually get in the way. So many games just don’t need it. Sure, if it’s a first-person game it is nice to have. But, really, if the screen doesn’t fully envelope you then why should the sound? Without fail, during a gaming or movie session the first time I hear a sound come from a rear speaker I’m actually brought out of the gaming or movie experience. If you turn around you don’t see the person the sound came from. You see the speaker or a wall or the plant your grandma gave you. So you have to remember that the next time you hear a rear channel sound. After a few minutes of playing the game that becomes less of a problem and it can really be helpful to know when a bad guy is shooting at you from behind. But the fakeness is still in the back of your mind and you just know it doesn’t sound quite natural. How did that plant fire that gun?
This may sound strange coming from a game composer and sound designer. Aren’t I supposed to be all revved up about the latest and greatest audio advancements? Well, as someone who works on games I just want the game experience to be the best it can be. And a great gaming experience does not require surround sound. It requires magnificent content and appropriate implementation. I haven’t seen one game that requires surround sound in order to be fully enjoyed. Sometimes in certain games it enhances, but that’s about it.
Interestingly, a recent Nielsen survey of console owners did find that 54% of PS3 owners, 48% of Xbox 360 owners, and 43% of Wii owners own at least 5.1 surround systems. These figures may be inflated because of the group that was surveyed, but I’m sure surround systems will become more and more a common part of most people’s home set-ups. As the Wii has proven for video, however, the latest and greatest technological advancements don’t always bring the most fun game experiences.
It’s still about the content.
About This Blog
This blog is dedicated to topics concerning the creation of music and sound for games. It will deal with issues that come up in the day to day work of The Game Composer as well as thoughts on the industry as a whole. I hope it will be useful for developers and other game audio professionals. Feel free to contact me: thegamecomposer@gmail.com
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