Give Me Some Emotion, Maestro
I left work today after a very long day (crunch time), hit play on my iPod and was rewarded with the soundtrack from The Chronicles of Narnia – Prince Caspian. It’s kind of interesting to walk around the world listening to a soundtrack. Sometimes it doesn’t fit together with what you’re doing, but sometimes things just click together to amplify the emotional response of what you’re doing immensely. Music is incredibly powerful that way, and getting a triumphant section of The Kings and Queens of Old playing just as I found what I needed in an aisle in the grocery store can make a tired heart soar over such a mundane thing.
Skilled movie makers quickly understood the power music has in conveying and guiding emotions. Watching any movie would be rather flat and boring if you didn’t have the powerful background music to the fights, the dramatic music to the partings and the eerie music building up to something grand. The best movies with the most powerful music have composers be a part of the movie-making process, tailoring the score to the pictures shown, matching and enhancing the drama of the scenes.
Games developers don’t seem to have understood. Music is usually an afterthought, and even when it’s an integral part of the identity of a product, it’s still something that’s a separate entity from the game itself. Even the games with much heralded “dynamic music” generally only have a simple “fade in music when action starts” or “fade between two soundtracks when action level changes”.
I applaud the effort of identifying the action and making the music somewhat respond to that, but the music itself is still a separate entity from the game. The games I’ve seen the most with dynamic music have been strategy games, which is something of a genre that otherwise struggles with emotional content, since it’s by nature far removed from the actual humans or creatures involved. Zelda: The Wind Waker is supposedly good with it, but I actually haven’t played it due to lack of hardware.
I think this is one big reason that games are seen as lacking the emotional power of movies. In its current form, game music conveys not much else than “excitement” and “non-excitement” corresponding directly to “action” and “calm”, causing a rather flat level of emotion. We lack the various degrees of joy, sadness, fear, buildup, triumph and disaster.
Some would claim that this is because we focus so heavily on war as a subject… but anyone who says so clearly hasn’t seen Band of Brothers.
I believe we need invite the musicians and composers in. It’s time for composers to become first-class citizens of the gaming world, to adapt the concept of music to the games just like soundtracks are an adaptation of music to movies. Games are not linear, and as such the music can’t be linear either, and that requires us to take on composers not only to write a soundtrack or theme to the game as if it was a movie, but to work in development of actual in-game music, taking shape as the game takes shape.
It’s up to us as game developers to identify the mood of the game — but we need to get composers on-board to actually make musical pieces that fit that mood. The first truly emotional, triumphant computer game battle victory can only happen once that is in place.
Games | slicedlime | 
Monday, January 12, 2009 22:26
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By Johan Svensson, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 @ 0:15
Left 4 Dead has some interesting stuff about music in the commentary mode. Musically it’s not that much more than a few different tracks with different amount of tension, but each player has his own score. One player may have tense dramatic music while others currently have no music at all.
I happened to re-watch the L4D intro today, and even now I’m noticing new things in it.
Each of the boss infected has their own “theme” – the regular four have a short 3-4 note introduction melody that plays when they spawn, and today I noticed that these short themes are even present in the intro movie if you’re paying attention.
The infected themes are directional too — when I play without my headphones so I have surround sound, I instinctively turn in the direction of those three dark piano notes, since I know a Boomer just spawned over there.
The two remaining boss infected, the Tank and Witch, have their own complete special score since they have very special purposes rather than the roadbump the regular four boss infected act as.
By Stitched, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 @ 22:23
Cool blog. Having just moved to Sweden from the UK (via Canada), I can understand how music can make one’s mood lift.
The comment about Band of Brothers is dead on. The violin players, near the end, when they find the concentration camp – ooof. Powerful, powerful emotions; both visual and auditory.
By slicedlime, Tuesday, January 13, 2009 @ 22:25
Johan: The stuff about Left 4 Dead is interesting… I’m not much for the game type but that sounds interesting in its own right. How does it blend together with other music in the game though?
Stiched: I’ve always loved the Soundtrack to Band of Brothers too… the theme song is one of the really powerful emotional ties to the series as well.