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).

Comments

Naaah, nanananana, na-nah, na na NA, na na, naaah!

[MilenCent]

I can't help but think mentioning the game in a discussion on originality in gaming is becoming almost cliche, but here goes. The interview with the KD guys in Game Developer magazine (posted on the web here) has a section where they talk with the guy in change of the music:

... The music/soundtrack of the game came out really well. Games and music have a lot in common. I have really had enough of the standard "the boss battle has music with tension" approach, however. In Katamari Damacy, there is no boss and there are no enemies, so we created a soundtrack that's original to the game.

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.