The state of music in videogames (for lack of a better title)

[Image: odonnell]If “video games” were a widely recognized musical genre, it would be my favorite. My ringtone has been the original gameboy Tetris theme for years. I remember going into .WAD files to pull out music from Diablo (is there any better ambient music than the town music?), although I was really after the audio clips from Franham the Drunk.

Last Saturday I went to see the Seattle Symphony’s production of Play! A Video Games Concert. Yes, it was awesome. And that picture up in the corner? That fuzzy spotlight-spot? That is Martin O’Donnell.

I have a lot of respect for what composers do in general, and in some cases the specific challenges that composers* who work with video games face. As many other entries in this month’s round table have already pointed out, the biggest of these challenges is the non-linear format. When you start writing music for an interactive medium, a lot of the control you have in, say, movies, goes flying right out the door.

There are workarounds, of course, like scoring in-game cinematics, but I think the real accomplishments happen when music is hardwired into the right game.

The truth is that while music is an awesome addition to some games, it can really pull me out of the experience in others. I started to draw a line at First Person Shooters, and then I thought about Halo and realized that I’d have to say First Person Shooters on the computer. But then I thought about Deus Ex, and realized that I pretty much had to say just Half-Life.

For most video games, I think the music stands apart from the game itself. It’s still seen as a great way to accompany film-like portions of games or draw out emotions (FF VII anyone?) And I’m glad that video games have brought about such great music (which in turn, lead to an awesome concert). I’m not sure there’s any finer accomplishment than writing a theme that can be heard on endless loop for decades and not get old (hello there, Mario Bros.).

What I’d like to see going forward though, is more linkage between a game and the music. As a basic example, the original Deus Ex had two tracks for every location: they had an ambient track for cruising around, and an action track for fighting.

For those of you who don’t know much about Deus Ex, it was essentially a conspiracy-theory RPG built into a First Person Shooter engine. You spent a lot of time sneaking around and discovering things, and occasionally you got spotted, called out, or just decided to shoot some guys.

Whenever you did something that triggered the enemy AI, the music would jump into overdrive. Eventually it’s almost list hearing the skid before the crash. The music makes the adrenaline flow - where are they coming from?

In the end it’s really very simple, one-level integration. But even the subtle shift to situation-based music makes such a big difference over just having events or locations triggering a track. I’m not sure what the next step is, but I’m going to be excited when we figure it out.

And in closing, here are a few video game tracks I enjoy.

Myst III: Exile - Main Theme
Halo 2 - Peril
Deus Ex - The Illuminati (Ending Credits)

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* by composers, I mean to include everyone who writes the music. Doesn’t have to be a “score.” It can be trash80 for all I care.

Please visit the Round Table’s Main Hall for links to all entries.