In the process of scheming how I'd be composing music for our first project, I had the thought that my music should act as secondary importance, reflecting the visuals in the game, as they would be the most important influence on a player's perception of our work. In playing a game, be it a tabletop RPG, cards, boardgames, Red Light Green Light, or, yes, video games, sight is often the sense we rely on first to perceive how the game is played, react to its style, and take in our first moments of wonderment. It goes without saying that our favorite games will likely bring back fond memories of their styles, despite major advances in technology between then and now (see my undying love for the SNES). Should the non-mechanics and story portions of games rely most heavily on visuals, or could audio perhaps be just as important, if not more?
From a young age, I picked up on random sounds and learned that they often acted as pointers or cues for certain events: the Sesame Street theme playing meant it was mid-morning and time to settle in the living room and be patient for lunch, the garage door opening as the sun sets meant my dad was home from work, the Windows XP logon noise playing at stupid o'clock in the morning meant it was time for someone to sit and play any number of random video solitaire games all day. Sounds triggered memories and signified habitual actions - but other audio, in the form of elaborate music, left an even greater impact on my life. Simply recalling themes from movies, TV shows, and games was one thing, but to have the songs that played during those multimedia experiences impress upon me in profound ways was incredible (and initially shocking). Early on, my father sat me down in front of the family NES to watch him play Mario, Zelda, and several other series of games, and over time, I could recite any random melody throughout them, knowing from rooms away what he was doing when those songs repeated themselves.
As I aged and began to make my own game and media purchases, I, of course, started to appreciate them more. Growing up in a Nintendo household, most of my experience was in the 8- and 16-bit eras, though we had an N64 before I finally caved and tried a Playstation-not-One-but-Two. Even still, I was transfixiated by 16-bit, and oddly enough, mostly by the synth used for its music. Final Fantasy VI was my first major game purchase, costing me $75 used back in the mid-90s. Starting that game all on my own, I took in amazing visuals in the form of Mode 7, but more importantly, learned that games didn't need to have the same theme for levels over and over again! Each character had a story, and with that story was a theme, something to represent them in audio form and not just by their garb! Different locales had unique background music, and story events in the game actually had hugely emotional works of their own! As a budding musician, I was entirely enthralled by this concept, so much that I rushed to play other games in the same genre - RPG, of course. Chrono Trigger, years later, stunned me in the same ways for the same reasons, and was still reminiscent of the sounds that made me ooze nostalgia.
But what of these days? As games, consoles, and PCs advanced technologically, the capacity to play CD-quality audio and include real-sounding instruments arrived, leaving the technical limitations of yesteryear completely by the wayside. Sampled instruments or even LIVE PERFORMANCES in games were becoming commonplace, but the tradition of truly awe-inspiring compositions remained. Some artists continue to even draw on these feelings of nostalgia that folks like me have, making entire albums or game OSTs with these "outdated" methods, and yet the content is as fresh and inspiring as any other new work. It appeared to me, then, that my favorite memories in media weren't strictly the graphics that I saw, but the music that tumbled around in my brain throughout all those hours of grinding and gazing at the screen lifelessly.
I'm left with a quandary now - do I write music appropriate for the visuals Farran creates, or do I go off and isolate myself, composing to my mind's eye and wishing desperately that our visions converge in the end? For me, audio is just as important (if not more so) than visual components in my games, but I'm also writing and creating for the modern video game consumer. Perhaps someone could suggest something I should try?
