Pete Sperring’s Online Presence

In 2008, 409.9 million units/games were sold to consumers. This was an 11% rise on sales the year before. Despite a downturn in the economy, the video game industry was still able to expand. I have watched the rise of the gaming industry closly for some years, and in my opinion, its growth mirrors that of Hollywood. We’ll see good and bad games released of course, but more games will be made than ever before, and that means more sound will be needed for them.

I was reading this article in Edge magazine recenetly on the scoring of the soundtrack to Sony Entertainment’s long awaited “Killzone 2″. The article focused on the 28 minutes of music for the games cutscenes. The score by Joris de Man was initially expected to be fleshed out in MIDI by the games sound designers due to time constraints, however Sony wanted “a triple A title to have a triple A soundtrack.” This led the sound design team to Abbey Road, ultimately realising de Man’s score orchestrally over two days. Nowadays the tendency of games designers to use real recorded audio soundtracks is becoming the norm for big titles. MIDI is still a possibility for the in-game sequences however, mainly due to its ease of use, and thus easier to trigger or build in intensity given in-game events. I realised that I already knew this, and in fact had considered it years ago.

Killzone 2 performed in Abbey Road Studio 1

Game music is all about triggers. I realised this playing the original “Halo” on the Xbox some years ago. When you walked into a room, a beat would start. As you walked deeper into the room certain progressions would add more and more instrumentation, gradually building to a climatic score that would never drop… Until you open the door to the next big set-piece. I remember being deeply impressed with the way the music had not only reflected my style of playing, but also how it had seemed to drive me forward, forcing me to advance in the level so that I could hear the next musical progression. In terms of pacing my gaming experience, it could not have worked more effectively. When I spoke about the Wall-E soundtrack in a previous post, I mentioned that music had to lead the actions of the character because of the lack of dialogue. The music in Halo achieved the same effect; it told the viewer/player what was about to happen.

I thought to myself what other game music had had a similar impact on me pacing wise, and one game that stuck in my mind was “Gears of War”. I decided to look into it, and found the sound designers had also used an orchestra to drive the score. There is an interview with the composer here if anyone is interested in reading it. I also came across this video which talks about the sound design on the sequel, “Gears of War 2″ which I think you should watch because it features an interesting approach to coming up with sound effects for games.