We cannot possibly over-estimate the impact of video game music. This does not just add color to the gaming experience; it turns out to be a very important score for some periods of our lives. The gaming experience is communal in nature, whether you find yourself on the other side of the divide or in the same room. Take CSGO for example, the globally recognized shooter can have gameplay heightened even more through the medium of a solid playlist. This goes for whether you’re in competitive play or enjoying CSGO skins gambling on a wide range of CSGO sites, music is a great way to elevate the game.
Music captivates us and we enjoy it together. In the gaming world, music has evolved as much as technology. While deeper immersion into today’s games visual realism has been made possible through increase in computing power, the same has also been enhanced through the power of music and sound.
The emotional volume of video game music continues to have a very huge influence on its enthusiasts. From the beginning to the present day, the power of engaging soundtracks has been harnessed and exploited by game developers.
Hot Chips
Pong emerged in the earlier years of games. Even people that do not know it with the name will recognize it with the sight of two rectangular racquets throwing a pixel from one part of the screen to the other. As the first ever video game, the first soundtrack belongs to it. It actually had one sound.
This game was a pacesetter that broke a lot of grounds, not just because it used microchips based on digital technology, which is actually cutting edge for the time it came. Chipsets are very powerful, and yet affordable currently, but then, the vision and sound of Pong maxed out the horsepower that was available then. So, you could only get one tone then.
As the chips gained the power to store more information, the soundtracks of games gained deeper meanings, with more concentration on how it enhances the gaming action. The rage became the use of music cues that matched the movement of the characters, as inspired by cartoons in a process known as ‘Mickey Mousing’.
The technique was hugely adopted by iconic arcade games of old, like Donkey Kong, Pac Man, and Space Invaders. The entire scenario might seem quaint right now, but then, sound designers and composers amounted to nothing if they could not manage their meagre resources properly then.
Though it may be boring to continue to pay tribute to Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. score, we still cannot overlook it, at least for its inventiveness. It’s very essential to also appreciate it within the context of the gameplay. The two dimensions that are available to platform games limited them a lot. So, the sound team there did not just invent ways to enhance the action, they also had to come up with music that had a very huge immersive quality to run alongside the little steps of Mario.
The digital chip, with which the programmed music was stored, was a sort of digital synth. At that moment, composers could only hope to create a loop with many digital layers. As the memory space increased, composers could create music and other sounds with samples and achieve a never seen before kind of realism.
Powering Up
The microchip upgrade came at the same time with the boom of first-person shooters (FPS), and the move to the open world format. The concept behind these games may have been about fantasies, but the players needed to play in what seemed like a real world, and the same should apply to the music that the games must come with.
With the arrival of the new millennium, the pace was set for this style of composition by the Halo series. The work of Michael Salvatori and Martin O’donnell on the soundtrack, involved both the pulsating string section ostinati, the militaristic percussion, the staccato sections that are synth driven for pumping effect on the heart, and the mournful and haunting choral chants.
From this elevated position, the ambitions of sound designers and composers have experienced a huge advancement. The recently released DOOMED Eternal was scored by the Australian composer named Mick Gordon. With technology, he can now invent new ways of creating unique tones, especially with the use of robots to control pedals’ effects.
According to him, they’ve been able to design a technology, with which he can control the pedals from his computer. So, with a super accurate computer, his pedals could be made to move and react in the same way.
The power of modern gaming platforms including the mobile systems is many years ahead of what was obtainable with the Koji Kondo, even for the developers of indie games and their audio teams.
The designer and composer posited on Death Hall, Gareth Wiecko, that he prefers Ableton as a DAW, and that they have a lot of incredible stock instruments. For him, so far as piano tone is concerned, he is in love with the Keyscape grand piano tone. Also, through native instruments, he makes use of the Kontakt instruments, plus string patches, through spitfire instruments.
No matter the tools available to the era of the game or the composer, the success of the score ultimately depends on the ability of the action and music to work side by side – a point that is elaborated by Wiecko.
I think the composer should as a matter of importance, understand the vision of the game in line with the developer, and not have any of these elements overshadow the other. With ideas being cross fertilized this way between vision and sound, video gaming has been transformed into an independent phenomenon that lasts in our memories for a very long time, even after we are done playing them.
Header image by BagoGames. Source: Flickr. Used under CC BY 2.0
