Interactive Music in Computer and Video Games STS145 Case History Ryan Barrett Soundtracks contribute more to movies and games than most people realize. Stripped of their soundtracks, the chase scene in the latest action flick and the poignant confession of love in a romance would seem much less compelling. Music is one of the most powerful ways to inspire our feelings and emotions. There are songs that make us feel joyful, despondent, angry, hopeful, strong, and - when the radio plays that new pop song one time too many - even irritated. Historically, many art forms and institutions have taken advantage of this. Movies have soundtracks, theater has musicals and operas, church has hymns, gymnasts and ice skaters perform to music, and even television commercials have catchy jingles. Music is used in each of these to draw out or heighten a certain feeling that contributes to the overall experience. If it is done well, music can be just as effective in computer and video games. Interactive Music, Defined “You’re walking slowly down a hallway too dark to be certain of what, if anything lies in the shadows. You’re being very cautious, because your health is very low, and there are no health-ups in sight…As you go you get the vague feeling that there’s danger ahead. ‘Of course,’ you think, games always throw danger at you in dark places. But there’s more to it than that. You feel worse about this hallway as the seconds go by, your character creeping along with only a pixel or two on his health meter. Is it the darkness? Perhaps...but it’s been dark all along. Why do you feel worse about this now? Finally you realize why. The place sounds worse. The music has gone all spooky and dissonant. You’re just thinking ‘cool’ as a huge blue Orcus with knotted muscles and oozing lips rips your character’s head off. You’ve just had the interactive music experience.” [Harland 2000] The goal of interactive music is to increase the immersiveness of a game, the feeling that the player is not a person at a computer but is actually in the game world and experiencing it as the game character [Cross 98]. Graphics and sound effects are the features that traditionally create this suspension of disbelief, and rightfully so. Vision and hearing are the two most developed human senses, and also the only two sensory experiences that can be reproduced adequately on consumer-level electronic hardware. However, other features contribute to the immersiveness and suspension of disbelief as well, if less directly. A compelling story and strong characters draw the player into the game. Convincing artificial intelligence makes the player forget that the characters are not really alive. Finally, interactive music heightens the feelings of excitement, fear, suspense, awe, and even emotions like sadness and joy [Oldziey 2000] that the game draws from the player. Music has been used in movies and other linear media for decades to accomplish these goals, and it can be just as powerful in games. Interactive music in computer and video games is generally defined as music that changes based on events in the game [Cross 98]. This cannot be trivial, so allowing the user to switch between songs doesn’t count. Furthermore, the events that the music responds to must be dynamic, so playing a different song for each level doesn’t count.Some of the music itself may be generated dynamically to achieve pleasing interactive music, but this is not required [Whitmore 99]. It is worth noting that the music only reacts to the game, as opposed to forming part of the gameplay. There is a genre of games in which the player actually composes or plays music, either directly as in Sony’s Pa-Rappa the Rapper [Matsuura 2000] or indirectly as in Sega’s Space Channel 5. This type of gameplay is innovative, but it is not discussed in this paper. Prehistory and the Dark Ages Interactive music may have gained widespread use recently, but it is not a new idea. In early games such as Asteroids and Space Invaders, the soundtrack was interactive even though it consisted of nothing more than a series of tones played at different pitches [Harland 2000]. When the aliens got close enough to the player’s ship or enough asteroids appeared on the screen, the music would speed up until the player died or moved on to the next level. Since early audio hardware was so rudimentary, this was the only technique designers had to create interactive music. Still, it was employed successfully in many games, including one of the most recognizable games ever, Super Mario Bros. for the NES. Anyone who played Super Mario Bros. can remember the sequence of bouncy, cartoonish chords that would play when the timer dropped below a minute, and the familiar theme that would play at a distressingly hurried pace. Nothing in the gameplay would change, but the tempo imparted an almost palpable need to rush through the level at breakneck speed in order to beat the timer. It may have been crude, but it was very effective. As technology progressed, programmers and composers coaxed more and more convincing music out of game hardware. High-end sound cards synthesized realistic-sounding instruments, and the advent of CD-ROM meant that composers could record high quality music in a studio and simply stream it from the disc during gameplay. After hearing what the new hardware could do, many producers and designers wanted to impress their audience with game music that sounded like music on the radio [Harland IAJ 2000]. Unfortunately, interactivity suffered because popular song are linear, and this format detracted from the games’ immersion and suspension of disbelief. Also, the people who played the games did not stay impressed for long. Games could not compete with the radio and stereo because game music is much more limited by hardware and storage capacity. After hearing the same song over and over again, an entire generation of gamers was conditioned to turn the music off as soon as they got a new game out of the shrinkwrap. This was a step backwards not only for interactive music, but for game music in general. The Renaissance After a while, game composers realized this – starting with LucasArts’ Peter McConnell (X-Wing, Tie Fighter), EA’s Alistair Hirst (Need for Speed II and III), and Crystal Dynamics’ Kurt Harland (Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain) - and began to rethinkthe concept of game music itself. They composed audio
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