I don't know if I would consider myself a follower of the genre, but I've always had a soft spot for
Celtic music. There's not many things that can consistently have the effect of instantly taking me to a different place. I often wonder why this is.
Is it because I am of Celtic decent?
Is it merely from the knowledge of my heritage?
Is a susceptibility buried somewhere, hidden away in my DNA?
Or is it ingrained into us as humans, as beings, children of emotion and sensation?
Do
others see as I do? Floating on the notes of a soft bagpipe, the swaying grassy plains of the highland stretched out beyond, standing atop a craggy cliff in a land I've never been to, chilled by a salty sea breeze from the western surf. Do others see it?
Maybe I need to stop watching Braveheart at 4:00 in the morning.
In reality, the right music can have the deepest of effects on us, even if it shouldn't. Take some footage of someone chopping vegetables, put a
Clint Mansell score over it, and you'll somehow find yourself empathizing with the plight of the common celery. This of course leads to the dilution of great works. When everyone and
their dog uses Lux Aeterna, it begins to lose its effect.
Blanketing your creation with great music will only lead to ineffectiveness through repetition. Successfully coupling the auditory high points with the visual ones is a vital part of creating those all important "neck-shiver" moments. This of course becomes exponentially more difficult when the medium is nonlinear.
Which, of course, brings us to games. (Oh don't pretend like you weren't expecting that transition. I can segue to the industry from eating pancakes with your Grandmother at a Japanese IHOP.)
Linear singleplayer games have an easier time with this. Not only are they generally shorter, but because they follow a set path, designers have a better idea of where to put music cues. They have somewhat more control over what the player is experiencing. Of course, they still can suffer from being too repetitive, depending on the length of the game and how much music is available.
Spore used a generative music system. It seemed to work well for that type of game. The music was always recognizable, but it still felt mostly fresh.
Unfortunately, music in multiplayer games generally gets shut off by players after awhile. It just gets too repetitive after multiple play sessions. Also, for the most part, the music is played at random times or might even be on
repeat.*
*(Related note about
Red Alert 3: I love you
EALA, but
dear god, looping music
hurts me
in the face. Also, there's a reason we love
Frank Klepacki; give him more to do.)
Valve's Left 4 Dead has attempted to remedy this. As Tim Larkin explains in the audio commentary, "We took several steps to keep the music interesting enough that the players would be inclined to keep it on as they play. We keep it changing so it won't become tedious; to this end, we created a music director that runs alongside the AI director, tracking the player's experience rather than their emotional state. We keep the music appropriate to each player's situation and highly personalized. The music engine in Left 4 Dead has a complete client-side, multi-track system per player that is completely unique to that player and can even be monitored by the spectators. Since some of the fun of Left 4 Dead is watching your friends when you're dead, we thought it was important to hear their personal soundtrack as well. This feature is unique to Left 4 Dead."
From personal experience, turning off the music in L4D is a very bad idea. The gameplay cues (such as when a Witch or Tank is nearby, or a zombie horde is incoming) you get through the music are very important. And honestly, even after playing it awhile (read:
too much), I have no desire to turn it off. In my eyes, they succeeded.
So what about MMOs? Is it possible to have
effective music that lasts?
A few people over at
Slipgate Ironworks (John Romero's startup) are trying to do just that. They're developing what they call a "Generative Adaptive Music System" for their MMO. Rather than only having a set soundtrack, music is generated on the spot. Different zones might have different instruments or "feels" associated with them. As Jim Hedges explains in the article, "We don't want the music to tell the player how to feel -- we want to create a sound canvas that hopefully supports how the player is feeling." It's hard to know how successful it will be until we hear it in action, but it sounds very innovative.
These sorts of systems are trying to bring us to the next step in music. They're striving to not just be generative, but
adaptive. That is, matching the high points in the music with the high points in gameplay. The music adapts to what is on the screen.
I think this is where the future lies. Luckily, there's a large trend in the industry to make gameplay itself more adaptive. By watching what our player is doing, as well what challenge level our player seems to be at, we can cater to them better. The more we can keep track of this and act accordingly, the better our players will be immersed and achieve a flow-like state. Hopefully, music can be a part of this trend.
The next logical step, of course, is in a few years when we might even
have access to what our players are actually
feeling. That's a blog post for another time, but my neck is shivering just thinking about it.
