The Sound of Gaming

I've been getting into a Video Game mood lately, so I felt I should blog about it. I wont go into everything on my mind - that'd take way too long - but I will dive a bit into one facet of video gaming - music.

Every now and then, people will ask me what my favorite type of music is. This is an awkward question for me, because I honestly don't listen to music that much. I imagine once I start driving myself everywhere and audio is the only form of entertainment on the road, I will listen to more songs, but for now the only type of music I find myself listening to is instrumental; lyrics confuse me when I'm trying to write, which happens to be one of the few times I listen to music.

After having experience with NaNoWriMo and realizing that I needed some music playing while I wrote, I went on a hunt to find good instrumental music. Ultimately, I settled on the music from video games. Movie and television scores are also a great help, but video game soundtracks have become the most common sounds I listen to, not just while writing.

What most people love about the music they listen to is the shared emotion with the singer. I'm just a bit critical of this, as one singer's emotion can't be shared with everyone, and even the singer wont be feeling that emotion forever. Also, any music commercially purposed (instrumental or lyrical) is designed to bring about emotions, which seems to me to automatically negate the sincerity behind the piece. I still like lyrical music, but video game music is different from all other forms of music. Yes, the composer of the music is attempting to draw a specific emotion out of you, but as a gamer, the listener creates part of the emotion within themselves, without someone else forcing it in.

People who aren't gamers or haven't played a certain game wont be able to ingest the same emotion as people who have played the game. The emotion is a response to the memory of the game itself, and most songs play multiple times in any given game. In movie scores, a certain song generally only plays during one point in the movie, so the emotion is associated with that particular scene, but with video game music, the emotion comes from all our triumphs or failures or moments during the game where we felt a certain way. If you haven't played the game, you haven't felt those emotions in context.

Video game music is also, I believe, more personal. For example, think of any lyrical music that presents loss or hopelessness as the emotion. It's not a very fun emotion, so I don't know why people specifically listen to it, but I know it's out there. For a movie example, there's the score from Cast Away, or the track "...To Die For" from Lion King. The songs are sad, and understandably people tear up, but I suspect that the emotion gamers feel listening to the music from Shadow of the Colossus is more real, not because the scene is more dramatic, but because, instead of the tragic moment happening to a lonely post worker or African lion, the tragedy happens to us, personally, playing the role of the in-game character.

The most common emotion in video game music, however, is power and awe. Most overworld music is hopeful, instilling in the gamer an adventurous feeling that they can defeat whatever evils they come across, or just plain happy and fun. There's a lot of peaceful music, placed to make the gamers feel accomplished and satisfied. Of course there's the battle music, which either plays when you enter a turn-based battle or when there's an enemy nearby, but all music in video games is meant to get the gamer into the mood of the game, no matter what it is.

Of course, only people who have played the game get the correct mood-set out of the piece; even if a score is meant to make you feel shocked or angry, it does a better job in context. That would explain why video game music isn't as popular as it should be. When you think about it, composing video game music is an amazing feat. Most scores need to be able to loop over many times, and a lot of more modern pieces need to be ready to end at any time so the system can shift to a battle track, or back to an overworld track. If the music itself wasn't stunning enough, the skill and effort used to compose music that can conform to game mechanics should blow you away.

Now that most games are fully orchestrated (or, at least narrative games are), the music is gaining popularity. Already, multiple organizations are arranging music for symphonies to play to audiences, and I'm already saving my money for when one shows up in L.A.