Civ IV's Baba Yetu Wins First Grammy For Video Game

quantumstream writes "Christopher Tin made video game history yesterday by winning a Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) for his song, Baba Yetu, featured prominently as the main theme song of Civilization IV. The composer, who wrote the song for his former Stanford University roommate Soren Johnson, has also seen the work featured at the largest choreographed water fountain in the world at the Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai."

Comments

Re:Civ IV?

[Rakshasa Taisab]

I know it can be hard to read the article where it says it won as part of a compilation album that was released not long ago... But could you actually just skip the critical first posting instead if you can't be arsed with reading the article?

Definitely deserved

[Sir_Sri]

Of all the video game music that could possibly qualify, this one is definitely deserving.

It's just the Lord's Prayer in Swahili, but exceptionally well done.

Re:Definitely deserved

[A. B3ttik]

This was a triumph!!

Re:Definitely deserved

[AdamThor]

I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS.

Re:Definitely deserved

[c0mpliant]

I'm making a note here 'HUGE SUCCESS'

Re:Definitely deserved

[stjobe]

As far as video game music goes, Age of Conan has a truly wonderful soundtrack.
Here's just one (eerily beautiful) example: The Dreaming Anew - Memories of Cimmeria.

Re:Definitely deserved

[donscarletti]

My sister walked down the aisle to this music in December. Most people in the church didn't know it was from a computer game, the few I told were shocked. As a games programmer, I am proud that our artform is less of an artistic laughing stock today than it once was.

Re:Definitely deserved

[WuphonsReach]

Key issues:

- The really bad happiness mechanic.
- Having more of a luxury resource was pointless after the first one.
- Easily exploited city-states. To the point where they imbalanced the game.
- Poor game balance at release. Just absolutely horrid game balance.
- Really *realy* poor AI at release.
- 1 unit/tile stacking sounds neat, until you try and work with it in the ancient era.
- Game board is way too small. If you're going to do 1/tile unit limits, then you need 4x to 6x more tiles for the same area. So if the hexes had been divided up into 6 smaller hexes, it might have actually been viable.
- Mass simplification of so many attributes of the previous game.
- There was way too much "throw the baby out with the bath water" to the design of Civ5. The young hot-shot developers were given too much free reign to put their "stamp" on the franchise, rather then keeping them in check and developing a better Civ4.

I played about 40-60 hours worth in the first few weeks. Wanting to like it, trying hard to like it, but ultimately it was a severely flawed Civ release. I'm not surprised that it got really shitty reviews on Amazon (last check, almost 600 reviews and it barely averages a 2.3 out of 5.0). Hell, there are 593 reviews and 279 of them are 1-star reviews.

They need to fire the lead designer who did Civ5 and look long and hard at what people liked about Civ4 and work that into the next revision of Civ5.

Re:Civ IV?

[jonnythan]

The song was first published on an album in the past year, making it eligible for this category.

Wonderful music, wonderful game.

[Kashgarinn]

I always loved the music in Civ IV, especially this song, and Leonard Nimoy did a wonderful job on the quotations, here's a taste:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Z6e7igvMA.

The song is the "Our father" prayer in Swahili, if people didn't know.

Re:Civ IV?

[gblackwo]

The two choices are mutually exclusive. You can't get first post AND read the article.

Re:Civ IV?

[SirGarlon]

Yeah, the Grammys have a soundtrack category but it looks like it's for film and television only. So having the song (re)-released on an album is what made it eligible for consideration.

Civ IV vs. Civ V

[MoldySpore]

Yea, as much as I liked Civ V, Civ IV definitely had more epic music and voice-overs. That intro music paired with narration and voice-over work by Leonard Nemoy makes Civ V's music and voice-overs seem lack-luster in comparison, and they are pretty good too! If they could combine the music and voice-over work from IV with the advancements in gameplay in V, you'd have an amazing Civ game.

Fountain Show

[ahecht]

If you haven't seen the Dubai fountain show choreographed to Baba Yetu, you owe it to yourself to check out the amazing video on YouTube (uploaded by the composer): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMf85JxUod4

Don't forget Brentalfloss' great parody

[Halo1]

Civilization with lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL6wlTDPiPU

Civ seems to be an "even number" series

[Sycraft-fu]

So far we've had 5 games and all have been worth playing. None of them have been a "Oh my god, this is crap, why'd they release it?" sort of thing, but as you'd expect some are better than others. Those are the even numbered ones so far.

Civ 1 was a good game, but a little simplistic and suffered from some bad design decisions, such as a civ being able to steal Automobile and instantly build tanks, regardless of other tech levels.

Civ 2 was just an amazingly solid game. Detailed, yet pretty easy to play over all, no real design flaws, just a real top notch title, to the point is still one that people pine over (see things like Freeciv).

Civ 3 was kinda meh. Not a bad game, but it seemed like a step back from Civ 2 in many ways. The graphics were better but the game play got way too much on the micromanagement, and the AIs didn't seem to be as good. All in all it was ok, but many people stuck with Civ 2.

Civ 4 was just legendary. Best Civ ever. Beautiful graphics, solid game play, extremely flexible expansion system, etc, etc. Just a home run all around. Extremely popular, many expansions, many more mods, just Civ as it should be done.

Civ 5 seems to again be a step back. Beautiful graphics and a solid engine behind everything, but a rather crappy AI and some questionable design decisions (like non-stacking units which lead to massive sprawl late game). Not a horrible game, but in more than a few ways one that doesn't measure up to Civ 4.

That just seems to be the pattern. Hopefully this means that Civ 6 will once again be an amazing game.

I should note that I don't hate Civ 5 (or Civ 3), just that I do feel it doesn't measure up to Civ 4. I also feel it was an overrated game. Most review sites gave it a 9-10 score. I think had it been from another studio, just a 4x game and not "Civ" it would have been 7-8 more realistically. Not poorly done, but some real room for improvement in a number of areas, particularly when evaluated against its predecessor.

Re:Civ seems to be an "even number" series

[H0p313ss]

And wouldn't you know it, I bought III & V.

Re:Civ seems to be an "even number" series

[Daetrin]

"Civ 5 seems to again be a step back. Beautiful graphics and a solid engine behind everything, but a rather crappy AI and some questionable design decisions (like non-stacking units which lead to massive sprawl late game). Not a horrible game, but in more than a few ways one that doesn't measure up to Civ 4."

After watching the debate in the online communities (mainly CivFanatics, the general tenor of which is summed up in Sulla's article about the subject) and playing almost 200 hours of the game myself, it seems that most of the problems in the game are related to depth. Which isn't to say that the game doesn't have depth, but that they did a great job on the basics while the underlying elements have flaws that aren't apparent at first.

I think that almost everyone who enjoys such games will love Civ 5 at first, all the changes they've made to the series will certainly provide a fresh experience. It's only as you spend more time with the game that you'll come to understand (consciously or unconsciously) the problems those changes have introduced. The amount of time it takes for that realization to happen will depend on how "hardcore" of a player you are. If you're a casual Civ player (though describing it that way is perhaps somewhat of an oxymoron) you can get a lot of fun out of Civ 5 before the problems drive you away in frustration or boredom.

Re:This is great.

[Nadaka]

...but not as surprised as my wife who loves to tell me what a big kid I really am...

The worst part is that when she does that, you can't just take your toys and go home.

Re:This is great.

[Jedi Alec]

Ehmm, these days almost everyone games. Just because they're not playing an FPS with a bunch of jackass 15 yr olds on Xbox live doesn't mean they're not gaming...

Farmville is a game. Bejeweled is a game. World of Warcraft is literally overflowing with adults.