Slashdot Mirror
Is Music More Lasting Than Graphics In Games?
Thanks to Tokyopia for their article arguing that music may be more important than graphics for the most enduring videogames. The author, apparently a "a renowned game music composer who would rather remain nameless", argues: "In going back to look at a few rare [older] videogames that still [have lasting value] today, it struck me that the graphics have almost always dated horribly, but the music - almost without fail - still succeeds. At worst, old music elicits a smile. At best, a full on emotional connection that really enhances the game." He then references Sega's NiGHTS Into Dreams and Namco's Ridge Racer Type 4 as titles which benefit from this connection, concluding: "Over time, a game's graphics will inevitably be relegated to being the mere nuts and bolts of the experience. The basic structure around which the all important game play is wrapped. But the music? The music is our emotional connection. It's the experience. And it plays forever."
Yeah, Biohazard gave me a warm fuzzy feeling, Nights was pretty teardripping, and Luigi scared the living daylights out of me 8)
Ask a game artist to look at an old game and comment on it and chances are they will mention the graphics in a sort of nostalgic way. They probably won't have a lot to say about the music. The same could be said for a game designer.
This guy is just focusing on the bits that he has control over. His insight about music being more lasting is just his biased opinion, nothing more.
I used to be a coder in the Amiga demo scene and nowadays, when I think back to those times, it's the music that I remember. There were a few particularly impressive graphical innovations that I remember but (obviously) I have no emotional connection to them. But some of the music... oh, masterpieces!
Anyone remember 4Mat and Nuke of Anarchy?
Or the track Jesus on E's?
Some of the best music I've ever heard came out of the Amiga scene.
has written some of the best video game music in history. I mean, I can just sit and listen to the Final Fantasy 4 soundtrack over and over, even though I have only played the game for a few minutes.
I love NetHack.
Every now and then, I hear my daughter (15) playing some riffs of Doom music on her flute.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
On the other hand, I can't figure out what the heck the author means by this categorization--
The first (Tetris, Pac-Man, Space Invaders) is the game that plays you. Your interactivity is merely a response to dilemmas inherent in the game. Move or be eaten. Shoot or be invaded. Reach the end before time is up.
The second type (GTA3, The Sims, Halo) is the game that you play. There are ground rules, but there are also choices. This is the next evolution of gaming: replicating an experience.
After reading this, I'm at a loss to figuring out what he means by this--the first set of games has low quality graphics, the second his hi quality, but I doubt that's it. There are no choices in Tetris?
One reason music doesn't seem as dated may just be because music hasn't changed as much as graphics have. While music reproduction and quality are orders of magnitude better than they once were, it seems to me that the difference is less drastic than the advances in graphics (or, seen another way, the nature of older graphics is more primitive than the nature of older music).
For some reason, the theme from Defender of the Crown sticks with me: great old Amiga game.
Dum dum da-dum
Dum dum da-dum
dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum dum dum da-dum..
Hmm, of course, that could be about 80 other video game themes, now that I look at it.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
If you think there've been no memorable video game soundtracks since mid-2000, you've been sleeping in a room cushioned by your own nostlagia. To name a few excellent soundtracks that've been released between then and now:
I listen to these soundtracks all the time, as well as older ones, because they are good music. They stand on their own as being great soundtracks. You can play the game, and get that extra nostalgia-tilt value in there, but people who are not gamers can listen to these and go, "that's some good music!"
"The pixelated graphics just remind us how silly and trivially we expended our youth. But the music...the music makes us want to waste our youth yet again."
Not to me. The graphics are the same as always, and the music is the same as always. Perspective might change, but it's still the same game. The first and most important part will always be the gameplay. For example, I may hate sports games, but there are a couple of sports games released that have such great gameplay I can play them regardless of their genre. Graphics and sound are a part of the experience; you can't easily judge them in a vacuum.
I can play the old NES MegaMan games with the sound off and still really enjoy it, because the gameplay is something I really enjoy. The graphics don't seem dated -- low resolution and low colour depth, yea, but apropos for the hardware involved.
The only really ugly graphics you see are on the PS1/Saturn/N64 era games, when most games had either non-filtered textures, lack of hardware perspective correction (I hate that about PS1 games), or blurry textures. First-gen PS2 games suffer from a bad case of jaggies, but it's not something that's going to throw me off a good game.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
What about the sound effects from Asteroids? Or the opening effects of the Atari 2600 Pac-Man? It isn't just music, but sound itself.
Sound has always played a vital role in our enjoyment of videogames, just as it has in movies (a bad film score can kill a decent movie). How many of us can't stand silent movies with no scores? I love silent movies, when they have a score, but fall asleep whenever there is just dead silence.
Sometimes we underestimate the effect sound can have on our enjoyment of a medium...
The music from older games holds up so well because it tended to be simple, catchy stuff. Most modern games go for more ambient music, so you don't really remember it afterwards. You can't forget the music from Mario 1 or Zelda 1, but I can't remember any music from Mario Sunshine or The Wind Waker (other than the remixes of the old music).
I can remember lots of music from 2D games, but music from 3D games tends to not leave a lasting impression. I can remember some music from the two N64 Zeldas, but really only the repeating stuff you were supposed to remember (i.e. Saria's song).
I'm very thankful though that I managed to forget the music to Final Fantasy 7. I'm not an RPG fan, but my college roommate was. I remember trying to do homework with some friends while he was playing FF7. The music in that game is so repetitive that it really gets on your nerves in under 5 minutes. Particuarlly the Chocobo racing music...
how many games I play with mood enhancing music, I'll never forget that like 3 tone midi that played when there was a man on in NES RBI Baseball. It was the same note played four times/verse and like an octave higher each verse. My cousin and I would just sit there and sing
man on the base
man on the base
man on the base
MAN ON THE BASE!!!
(repeat until man leaves base)
It isn't just music, but sound itself.
Hell yes. Who has played System Shock 2? Do you remember the voices of terror in the people? What about those that are transforming into the many? What about SHODAN?
Look at Metroid:Prime. They did the intelligent thing of making new music, but the base of them all were old metroid (the original) songs. Sometimes you have to really listen to hear them, but they are all there. That makes an old gamer like myself really comfy with the switch from the old side-scroller to the FPS.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
for how enduring the music is is at Overclocked Remix. A must-listen for those who know video game music never dies - it just gets remixed.
You probably play action games. Those, while good, rarely prove to be timeless. The article talks mostly about those games that have achieved immortality, and still hold loyal fans sometimes well over a decade after their release. Go to a website like GameFAQs, and look at the top boards in any of the older systems (especially the NES, Genesis, and above all the SNES). The top lists don't change much, except shuffling around between the top twenty or so, and they very rarely contain action games. The action games sold a lot better during their time, but they didn't pull off immortality, and live forever for the next game to keep the fans interested. The top games are mostly RPGs (For example, the top list on GameFAQs' SNES boards has almost always been dominated by Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6, and Super Mario RPG, with Star Ocean, Tales of Phantasia, Earthbound, Zelda, and a few others making their bids now and then). Other genre's only make a good calling for the high slots if they have storylines comparable to the RPGs they're competing against, or just had a fan-made translation hack released, or something simmilar. While you're there, look at the top ten or fifteen boards or so. You'll almost always be able to find a thread asking just what has kept people interested in the game for all the years its been around. Graphics almost never get mentioned - obviously, if that's what you cared about, you wouldn't be opening up and tinkering with your SNES cartridges constantly just to keep the SRAM batteries alive or fighting with dead ROM sites to emulate games when you can't revive or find the hardware anymore. The only mention graphics will usually get is that they may be excellent considering the meager hardware they run on (Some late SNES games were easily a match for the first year's stock of PS1 games, but still not much by any modern reckoning). What does get mentioned is most often storyline (although the older a game gets, the less this gets mentioned, as people get to the point of memorizing event triggers and dialog threads), music, and sometimes gameplay (although that tends to trail off with time too, with brief resurgences when somebody stumbles along some trick that's never been discussed before).
Back in my game programming days, we had the old Sega Saturn running, and we'd play some Daytona. The only thing I remember from that thing is...well, I think Penny Arcade said it best.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
An earlier Slashdot article pointed to the rising use of licensed music for U.S. video games.
If game music is suppsoed to provide the game's atmosphere and instill a bit of nostalgia long after the game is done, how can you convey those feelings nearly as well with licensed music, which were composed for different reasons?
Years from now, you will hear a song from the 80s. Which are you likely to remember from it? That is was a song from the 80s? Or that it was a song used in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City?
The same is true in movies, but the point can be proven there much more easily. Watch Psycho (the original) or The Godfather and pay attention to what the music is doing for the scene.
A good developer, just like a good director, is going to use the music to set the scene, to introduce a character (and even to change a character), and to adjust the viewer/player's emotions.
Doom and Quake used music and sound to put people on edge, which is something that is missing from almost every FPS since the first Quake. Halo used music to give the player a sense of awe, especially when combined with the imagery (given, of course, that you played it when it first came out on the XBox rather than at it's PC release, after people became jaded by hype and not having it because of it's XBox-only status, and the entire genre had already taken from Halo and moved forward).
Many of the console franchises (especially Final Fantasy) rely heavily on re-use of previous musical themes, in part because it brings nostalgia on the part of long-time players, and because they already have an idea of which themes were successful from the earlier releases.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
But thats not my point. Retro games such as the glorious Pacman had lovely sound. This music has now taken a life of its own. Read this Wired Article to see what I mean.
Mod Wisely.
Deus Ex: the only game with theme music this good.
You can hum music. You can't hum graphics or gameplay.
qntm.org
Blizzard offers just about all of the music for Diablo II and the expansion pack as 128-kbps MP3's for free download on their site. You don't appreciate the complexity and depth of the music until you hear it while you're not playing the game. The liner notes are amusing to boot!
:-).
I've dumped them all to a CF card on my Zaurus and am listening to them now
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"