The games industry is a very broad artistic church. From architecture to sound engineering, almost every artform is virtually represented in some way, and all at various stages of evolution. Although many games can’t manage to tell a story more complicated than Roger Red Hat, by comparison gaming’s orchestral scores and electronic soundtracks are held in the highest regard.
It’s fair to say that gaming’s contribution to music is one of its biggest success stories. These days, videogame music is played in concert halls around the world, and its creators are some of the most respected people in the industry. But what exactly is music’s contribution to gaming? After all, music is not a fundamental component in the development of a game, insofar as the game will continue to function without it.
Yet the pervasiveness, quality and success of videogame music indicates it is more vital than may initially be apparent. So what can we learn from music’s influence on gaming? How does it affect the player’s experience? And to what extent can it influence the way games are created? To answer these questions, I spoke to three members of the games industry who have tackled the relationship between music and videogames in very different ways.
Jack Wall is one of the game industry’s best known composers, having written music for the first two Mass Effect games and the likes of Unreal II and the Myst series prior to that. He is also the co-founder of Video Games Live – the touring concert event which had its debut in 2005. Currently working on the score for Black Ops 2, Jack believes that music plays a crucial role in the development of storytelling in games. “Music is the unseen character. It's the emotion behind the actions of the player. It's gently there to show the game designer's intention. It's totally collaborative with the developer.”
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Music is the unseen character. It's the emotion behind the actions of the player. It's gently there to show the game designer's intention. It's totally collaborative with the developer.
This is the relationship between music and games that we are probably most familiar with. Music can be used to accentuate the actions of the player, to provide certain emotional cues and communicate the tone of the current level or scene. In some ways this scoring of a game is similar to creating music for a film, designed to run in concurrence with the events being played out on the screen.
But even the most directed games must take into account one massive variable: the player. With a complex game like Mass Effect, this can include how long a player is in a particular area, transitions between peaceful and combat situations and the choices the player can make. “It's really not until I start to see gameplay that I truly know what to do with the music,” Jack says. “As soon as I see a decent rendering of a level I can get a beat on what the music should do.”
Interestingly though, music does not always follow the pace of the game. Sometimes the opposite is true. An example of this is the end-run [Minor Spoilers] from Mass Effect 2, composed by Jack before this part of the game was developed:
“Casey Hudson came to me fairly early and said, ‘I'd like you to start by writing the end music for the game. [Spoiler] There's going to be this suicide mission and I want it to feel like you're taking your team and rushing in to save the universe’. He was giving me permission to write a truly kick-ass piece of music. No visuals and no timing. He wanted to get the music done so that when he was piecing the ending together, he'd be listening to that piece of music.”
When music begins to directly influence not just how a game is experienced, but how a game is actually created, things become really intriguing. Sometimes music can be the basis upon which entire games are built. Since the advent of home and commercial computing, it has been possible to break down digitised music into its component parts. The resulting information can be used in the creation of levels and environments – and the most successful example of such a game is 2008’s musical rollercoaster Audiosurf.
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Audiosurf can visualise not only the music as it happens, but also the music's future. Players can see the music coming to heighten their feeling of anticipation.
“A big part of it was just wanting a better music visualiser,” says Dylan Fitterer, Audiosurf’s creator. “There were a few I enjoyed, but they quickly became boring and my mind would wander. I wanted one that could create a better listening experience by focusing my attention on the music.”
The path to creating a more engaging music visualiser involved making it interactive, compelling the player to react to something directly linked to the music. Audiosurf further differentiates itself from standard music visualisers in more fundamental ways, as Dylan explains. “It analyses the entire song before the player starts listening. This way Audiosurf can visualise not only the music as it happens, but also the music's future. Players can see the music coming to heighten their feeling of anticipation.”
Audiosurf approaches music from the opposite direction of Mass Effect. Whereas Jack creates music for games, Dylan has created a game for his music. At the same time, however, both games share a striking commonality, which Dylan goes some way to explaining. “I'm excited to have found a tight relationship between gameplay and music. Because it's a game, Audiosurf is a better music visualiser. Gameplay goals serve to focus the player completely on the music. Because it's a music visualiser, Audiosurf is a better game. Replayability is my most important ideal in game creation, and music gives Audiosurf unlimited replay.”
Here we have a conceptual feedback loop in which the music and the game complement each other. Music becomes more powerful, more evocative, when the listener is involved in an activity linked directly to it. In turn, those actions that become associated with the music are themselves heightened. This applies equally to Mass Effect and Audiosurf, even though these games implement music in very different ways.
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Game Scores are often freely or procedurally rhythmic and can have strange formal structures, all emerging from the player’s inclinations.
One man who has put considerable thought into the theoretical similarities between gaming and music is David Kanaga, the co-developer behind the upcoming maverick indie title Proteus.
“Many of us are not accustomed to perceiving the time-structures (rhythms/forms) of videogames as musical,” David says. “They are often freely or procedurally rhythmic and can have strange formal structures, all emerging from the player’s inclinations. These rhythms and forms tend to more closely resemble free jazz and other improvised music than they do the film scores or pop forms that a lot of game music takes its inspiration from.”
Proteus strips away many of the conventions we have traditionally come to associate with videogames, foremost amongst which are a predetermined challenge or objective, and the ability to directly interact with the environment. Interaction is only possible through the game’s music, which changes dynamically depending on the player’s location, the time of day, the season, and so on. Every tree, animal, and building emits an individual noise, the sounds gradually layering themselves as the player explores the game’s islands.
“Music in videogames can be so interesting because you’re creating a musical space, a field of possibilities, rather than a musical script. This allows the composition process to be infused with improvisation/play at all times, even as a final product. And because of how the computer is good at handling data, and manipulating it, it’s possible to delineate the boundaries of the spaces in dynamic ways that haven’t really been possible until now.”
Proteus sits somewhere in the between Mass Effect and Audiosurf in terms of how it plays with music. Like Mass Effect, the music alters depending on the actions of the player, but at a layered, note-by-note level rather than in specifically composed chunks. And like Audiosurf, the music is directly related to the layout of the level, except the relationship is inverted, so the movement of the player dictates how the music evolves. This results in a curious psychological effect where the player is encouraged to explore and experiment without any direct instruction.
Source : ign[dot]com
