I don’t play computer games often. I only had in my life a few gaming consoles, starting in 2001 with the gba. I have Steam and a gazillion games to play -just on this platform- and yet don’t have the time. I play music.
Harmonix (cool simple website I love it) knows how music is one of the best game available on earth (I’d say it’s the One!). There are Rock Band releases every week, 500 songs to play for now in merely 12 months. 28 millions DLC sold so far. On the last three months, music games are driving music sales. Founders of Harmonix are now multimillionaire. The other day I tried the drums (awesome Black Hole Sun) and looked again at how people are enjoying it and it’s brilliant. Even if sales of that kind of game are plummering, the essence of this funny activity that is music is quite unmatchable and will be forever. Like Go or Chess.
So Wii Music could be a great success in the long time. After watching more about it, I really think it will.
Music is so skills and co-op at the same time. The player is constantly giving input while receiving feedback when playing in/with a band, in a looping way I would say. Mastering that balance is meaningful, it boosts global listening skills and I’m convinced the world really need to improve on this point. Oh well.
Grinding? Endless grinding, no limits of levels, masterisation is a long road and every great musician would say "there’s always room for improvement, things to learn in music". Your life is not gonna be enough.
Maybe it’s just me but I find producing music (ie a la Prince "Produced, Arranged, Composed and Performed") is very similar to making games: there’s a plan. there’s an overall architecture, key features. Two billions possibilities of interaction between that growling bass sound and that ethereal synth groove, why you change, in relation to which audio event etc. Exactly like the the birth of a game, so much choices and paths.
Of course you playtest like hell. When you have something, you debug (filters parameters, volume tweaks pan and all).
Screaming Tea Party via Flickr.
So how is it that so few people in the game industry -at least here- actually play music one of the oldiest and best game we ever invented so far? Why people are discovering it with button mashing guitars? Music is not that hard.
A few years ago I learned something: you know that little game called Street Fighter II I bet that like Mario or Zelda’s themes every single game developer can sing one of the tunes of that awesome 1991’s game.
Well the music was composed mainly by developers. They simply had a music band in the Capcom Street Fighter dev team called Alph Lyla that would play at the end of the day and have fun. The music would eventually make it to the final product (tweaked by Yoko Shimomura I guess).
SF’s music is great with various styles, fits the game nicely (Sagat stage!). Has been made by CODERS. *head asplodes*
Q entertainment and Grasshopper are often talking about their respectively teams as "music bands". Jeff Tunnell‘s too.
There’s a great parallel between music and computer games. It’s obvious but not simple, I think you really need to do some music to understand that. Shigeru plays banjo Raph plays guitar, Alec plays piano etc. They all have a different feeling about games that those who don’t.
It makes me think about something: I feel that we in EU push so hard on the visual part of games and from a design (LBP) or technical point of view (Crysis), we simply rock hard, as hard as we blow with audio.
We lack AudioVisual consistency, something quite difficult to achieve but totally crucial: Nintendo is the Lord of the GUI audio feedback that gives you happiness you didn’t even played yet, you’re still in the menu!
Believe it or not, it’s a true part of their success.