Music in games and then some
Audio in games is rarely thought of as high-end sound, or even high quality.
However game audio has many similarities with high end ideals. Extended dynamic range for one, extreme soundscapes is another, and most of the modern stuff works excellently in surround.
Ofcourse most of these original sounds are often compressed with a lossy codec, or are lossless but of inferior resolution. But they keep getting better.
Now, on to the music.
GTA 3 Liberty City, I never played the original GTAs, but started here.
GTA is a reality simulation most of all, an alternate reality. Being engrossed with the game for some time I learned to like a lot of the music in it. At first I thought it was all original, it matched the sly humor of the game perfectly, both sonically and lyrically. The same way the game made satire of our real life society and mannerisms the music seemed to satire the same in music. I loved it. It gave the game a deep coherence.
This all changed when GTA Vice City came out. Gone was the cool music, and instead we got the 100 biggest hits through time, and yes -if you are only mildly interested in music and above 25 you've heard them all already. After a couple of hours of playing I was desperately changing the radio to the talk station to get rid of it.
Around this time I saw Scarface on television. As some of you may know, the story of GTA(all of them) is you being a street punk who grows to be the towns biggest gangsta. Not unlike the story of Scarface. But I noticed something in the movie I hadn't noticed before, a song. One of the songs of GTA 3 Liberty city was playing in the background on one of the disco scenes. Wonderful.
Now I knew that all songs in GTA 3 Liberty City weren't original(and I can probably look it up on the web or somewhere too but I never bothered). Yet the finding of only one of these songs in all the time since the game came out is cool. In my mind -all of those songs are music from an alternate reality. Vice City so ruined itself with easliy identifiable songs.
GTA San Andreas came out recently. It's bigger and badder and ofcourse with an all new selection of songs, I wonder if they got complaints on the music in Vice City because in San Andreas the music is again hard to identify(some of it at least) though not so obscure as in Liberty City.
A friend of mine made a cd with 3 or 4 of the radio stations in Liberty City. Whenever this gets played, say at a party, everybody likes it. It's like a perfect radio station, one that is way to good to be real. And I find it strange in a way that all these people(many of whom have never played computer games) respond so well to it. It makes me wonder what they would feel about the game.
As I've watched the arts for some time now I've come to see computer games as the ultimate one. In the same way that film gobbled up photography, painting, music, theatre and put them all in one, computer games have gobbled up film, installlation art and interactive arts and put them all in one.
And economically speaking the computer game industry dwarfes everything, it is probably bigger than all the other arts put together.
Once my generation(I think it's the last one where a significant proportion does not play computer games) stops going to the cinema film will die as mainstream medium and go where painting and dance is now.
At the same time my generation is also the first to bring computer games with them into adulthood. Five of us gathered around a playstation the day that GTA San Andreas came out. For us, it was the biggest cultural event of the year.
The best computeer games have something that big budget cinema can only dream about. A personal voice(most games are designed by *very* small teams, in stark opposition to films, they also cost a fraction to make), up to date philosophy and politics and often a highly critical attitude to violence and war(even as most games are about violence and war) that no film since Casablanca and Dr. Strangelove has managed to muster. Ofcourse, in the same way that most films are garbage most games are garbage too. But the good games make the good films look pathetic.
As a film-maker this is not really what I want to hear. The only future for film lies in evolution yet few are willing to invest in risky projects(I've proposed some) so film will go nowhere but desperately trying to copy last years best game
(where film is now as far as I can tell).
And there you have it.
However game audio has many similarities with high end ideals. Extended dynamic range for one, extreme soundscapes is another, and most of the modern stuff works excellently in surround.
Ofcourse most of these original sounds are often compressed with a lossy codec, or are lossless but of inferior resolution. But they keep getting better.
Now, on to the music.
GTA 3 Liberty City, I never played the original GTAs, but started here.
GTA is a reality simulation most of all, an alternate reality. Being engrossed with the game for some time I learned to like a lot of the music in it. At first I thought it was all original, it matched the sly humor of the game perfectly, both sonically and lyrically. The same way the game made satire of our real life society and mannerisms the music seemed to satire the same in music. I loved it. It gave the game a deep coherence.
This all changed when GTA Vice City came out. Gone was the cool music, and instead we got the 100 biggest hits through time, and yes -if you are only mildly interested in music and above 25 you've heard them all already. After a couple of hours of playing I was desperately changing the radio to the talk station to get rid of it.
Around this time I saw Scarface on television. As some of you may know, the story of GTA(all of them) is you being a street punk who grows to be the towns biggest gangsta. Not unlike the story of Scarface. But I noticed something in the movie I hadn't noticed before, a song. One of the songs of GTA 3 Liberty city was playing in the background on one of the disco scenes. Wonderful.
Now I knew that all songs in GTA 3 Liberty City weren't original(and I can probably look it up on the web or somewhere too but I never bothered). Yet the finding of only one of these songs in all the time since the game came out is cool. In my mind -all of those songs are music from an alternate reality. Vice City so ruined itself with easliy identifiable songs.
GTA San Andreas came out recently. It's bigger and badder and ofcourse with an all new selection of songs, I wonder if they got complaints on the music in Vice City because in San Andreas the music is again hard to identify(some of it at least) though not so obscure as in Liberty City.
A friend of mine made a cd with 3 or 4 of the radio stations in Liberty City. Whenever this gets played, say at a party, everybody likes it. It's like a perfect radio station, one that is way to good to be real. And I find it strange in a way that all these people(many of whom have never played computer games) respond so well to it. It makes me wonder what they would feel about the game.
As I've watched the arts for some time now I've come to see computer games as the ultimate one. In the same way that film gobbled up photography, painting, music, theatre and put them all in one, computer games have gobbled up film, installlation art and interactive arts and put them all in one.
And economically speaking the computer game industry dwarfes everything, it is probably bigger than all the other arts put together.
Once my generation(I think it's the last one where a significant proportion does not play computer games) stops going to the cinema film will die as mainstream medium and go where painting and dance is now.
At the same time my generation is also the first to bring computer games with them into adulthood. Five of us gathered around a playstation the day that GTA San Andreas came out. For us, it was the biggest cultural event of the year.
The best computeer games have something that big budget cinema can only dream about. A personal voice(most games are designed by *very* small teams, in stark opposition to films, they also cost a fraction to make), up to date philosophy and politics and often a highly critical attitude to violence and war(even as most games are about violence and war) that no film since Casablanca and Dr. Strangelove has managed to muster. Ofcourse, in the same way that most films are garbage most games are garbage too. But the good games make the good films look pathetic.
As a film-maker this is not really what I want to hear. The only future for film lies in evolution yet few are willing to invest in risky projects(I've proposed some) so film will go nowhere but desperately trying to copy last years best game
(where film is now as far as I can tell).
And there you have it.
posted by bangskij at 17:23
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