Slashdot Mirror
Freedom and Stagnation in Gaming Music
Nick Weidner writes "Indie music website Pitchforkmedia.com asks, 'What if John Cage had owned an XBox?'. The article compares today's game soundtrack composers to ambient artists such as Brian Eno, and discusses experimental soundtrack techniques with Jesper Kyd (the Hitman series), Peter McConnell (Psychonauts) and Russell Shaw (Black & White, Fable)." Meanwhile over at Wired News they are reporting on the suppression of musical creativity the designers had to build into Star Wars Galaxies, for fear that copyrighted works would be played in the galaxy far, far away. From the article: "If we allowed someone to play anything they want, they could play a song by Madonna and then we'd have licensing issues...We don't want to give them the option to try, because the bottom line is, if we open that gate, they will go through it".
The latter situation is a real problem for the substantial population of players who enjoy the non-combat activities that SWG offers. Because all the music that entertainers can play has to be designed by SOE staffers, and 'okayed', there are long periods of time where no new music is introduced to the game. Given that every player has to interact with musicians at some point in their career to heal combat stress, it makes for a grating and uncomfortable experience to constantly be exposed to the same music (for players in both the band and the audience).
Thanks, Marvel. I really appreciate it.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
"we've reached a stage where console and PC games use hundreds of channels of digital audio delivered in 5.1 surround sound. Obviously you can hear the progress in music games like Parappa the Rapper and Dance Dance Revolution,"
It should be noted that both of these games are 2.0 Stereo mixes. If you want 5.1 surround, you need a 5.1 surround capable system. The PS2 has less than 1% PL2 game support (PaRappa ain't one of them); the GameCube sits in the low 10s, and the Xbox has a decent amount of 5.1 titles (complete with DD/DTS support). However, not even DDR on the Xbox is 5.1 -- it's still 2.0 Stereo.
The article talks up adaptive audio. If you've played OddWorld: Much's Oddsee, you know that adaptive audio can be done very, very poorly. Much worse than just leaving in a static scoring in the background. If you haven't played it, they basically had 32-channels of audio, each layered on each other, and would play a couple of base samples, scaling up to the full effect as you alerted mudokins to your actions. It would scale back on a timer as mudokins were killed or forgot about you. It was the same music every level (30ish levels, IIRC). The scaling was the same every time.
That doesn't make the experience richer, it just reminds me that I'm playing a (poorly thought-out) repetitive game that forces me to follow the same gameplay mechanic over, and over, until I finally give up. It's the same thing which puts me off the latest 40+ hour RPG, which has about 20 hours of actual thinking work, and 20-40 hours of mindlessly watching the fight intro graphic, pointless time-cruncher fights, and then the victory tune.
Amplitude, at least, took the gameplay mechanics of Frequency and made them more fun, even if you couldn't play just any song (slaving your to their choices of Sony censored music). DDR, at least, has original compositions (many Konami artists!) which make it nice. The article could've been a lot better if it'd actually been about game music.
And then there's the fact that the "getting away with murder" radio song is in about 8 games on the Xbox at this point.... I buy video games to avoid most of society, why do they feel the need to jam it into my games?
What if John Cage had owned an XBox?
Probably the same thing as what happened when he didn't - a few people really liked his music, but most hated it.
The problem with music like Cage, Schoenberg, et al wrote is that it doesn't tie into the associations we're either born with or develop over time.
I can listen to music from just about anywhere in the world and at least get a basic idea of how it's supposed to make the listener feel: sorrowful, angry, joyous, triumphant, like dancing, etc.
"20th century music" (and I use that term in the academic sense) isn't like that. Certainly a lot of it is interesting, and it paved the way for things like modern electronic music, but that doesn't mean it makes a good soundtrack.
The best example I've seen of the utter failure that can result in situations like this is the soundtrack to the Babylon 5 TV movie "A Call to Arms," and the short-lived followup series "Crusade." The music is well-made, but has essentially nothing to do with what's happening on-screen. Screechy metal sounds and dissonant strings make me feel uneasy as I see the main ship cruise across space, but there's nothing to be uneasy about.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
John Cage's 4'22" was the soundtrack for most of the early Infocom games, as far as I can tell. Some of other early Commodore 64 games that required frequent floppy drive access may have been using Terry Riley's "In C" for their soundtrack as well... It might be hard to prove either, though, if someone wanted royalties...
This sig intentionally left justified.
I'll let Yu Miyake, our sound director, tell you about the music he created in his own words:
"Takahashi, the director, allowed me to direct the music any way I wanted. I would never have been given that kind of creative freedom working for an ordinary director. My goal was to have the music appeal to everyone, and so I tried many different methods of directing and creating tunes in order to have that appeal."
A little later:
"We were very serious when creating the music. Most game music nowadays is pretty forgettable. I wanted to create a soundtrack that would stick in player's heads, sort of like an evil curse. I also wanted to avoid using a single musical genre. Everything from the selection of the vocalists to the selection of song lyrics, was carefully considered."
Also worth reading for the process by which the "Nah, nanananana, na na..." song, so winningly alluded to by me in the subject line, made it into the game.
"And then there's the fact that the "getting away with murder" radio song is in about 8 games on the Xbox at this point.... I buy video games to avoid most of society, why do they feel the need to jam it into my games?"
Right on brotha! These kinds of decisions are two-fold: 1. A publisher's marketing department, which have nothing to do with the development of the game, think they are doing players a favour by securing popular music licenses. First they think we'll like it, and second they think it's a "strategic alliance which furthers our brand identification with generation x y or z". BLAH.
A great example of why this fails is to play SSX Tricky, and then play SSX 3. While, yes, Tricky also had a licensed track as the primary tune, it was completely remixed and reworked to change with your gameplay. Now go play SSX 3. It's basically, start the race, a popular song plays as you go. YAWN. The key problem is it's "popular" only to a small niche audience, and besides, WHO wants to hear the same crap they already hear on the radio?! This makes no sense. If this worked, then why aren't game visuals all the same? Why bother with ANY original content at all?
i read that post 4 times trying to figure out how the hell johnny cage has anything to do with gaming music.
--- stoooopid
I miss the days when games like Command & Conquer were released with their own original soundtracks that weren't the all ambient or orchestral. Sadly it does seem like they just don't make games like that anymore, at least the ones from the big publishers/developers.
Thankfully there is still independent developers out there making games with great soundtracks thankfully. One in particular that comes to mind is Jets'n'Guns. While the game might not be a high budget production with graphics that requires the latest and greatest hardware nor does it have the most deep and involving story ever created but it does have the most important aspect down, its fun, unlike most games released this day and age. Not only is it fun, but it has the best soundtrack I've ever heard in a game. (Even as good if not better than C&C TD/RA which I considered to be the benchmark which to compare all soundtracks to.) The soundtrack is by Machinae Supremacy and you can download it from their discography section and I highly recommend you check it out.
GTA was one of the worst things to happen to video game soundtracks, in my opinion. Although the fully licensed soundtracks add to the immersion and the personality of the game, other developers (I'm looking at you, EA) have taken the concept to an extreme by inserting licensed music into nearly every game. The custom soundtrack feature on the Xbox (and soon the Xbox 360) provides a little more freedom to the consumer, but ultimately it also discourages the production of original video game soundtracks.
It wasn't that long ago when games like Mario and Zelda featured catchy, original tunes, and even recent games like Halo and Katamari Damacy had good music. But it seems that the current trend is to use mainstream, "popular" bands in soundtracks, which will drive up production costs and ultimately cost the consumer more.
I'm very grateful for great game composers like Koji Kondo (Mario, Zelda) and Yu Miyake (Katamari Damacy), but sadly it seems that their jobs are beginning to become outdated by the rapidly changing industry. If only the major players in the industry would spend more time focusing on creativity, the industry could expand without having to be transformed into a trend-driven contest of mediocrity.
I can't believe I forgot to mention the game I was talking about was Katamari Damacy. Argh!
I knew what you were talking about just from the title. Thanks for the link to the post mortem, good read. Can't wait for We Love Katamari.
-Reid
One of my favorite soundtracks is the one for Wipeout, by CoLD SToRAGE. He's made the songs available on his site.