Music and the Gaming Industry

History of Music in Computer and Video games

Music and games have changes drastically in the past 10 years , and not just in the computer and video games scene either. This takes a look at the progression of music and its role in all forms of gaming.

Ten years ago , when the Commodore 64 was taking off , the XT still had 640K of RAM , and Space Invaders masquerades as tables in cafeteria's , music and games were just beginning to get going. Space Invaders , and its lack of music , was almost the last of it's kind. The XT was still limited to the good old PC Speaker , but in the case of the Commodore 64 , the SID chip suddenly brought a new dimension to computer games : music. The little SID chip could handle 2-4 voices in 8 bit sound , but this was enough to spark the ball rolling for computer games. Out came games such as Delta , BubbleBobble and Cybernoid , shoot-em-up games with surprisingly effective music. Following this up came the Last Ninja series , which showed how effective music could be.

Not to be outdone , the Amiga was released with a superior version of the SID chip , and CreativeLabs brought out the SoundBlaster for the PC. Indeed , the SoundBlaster was a pivotal point for the PC industry - SoundBlaster was , and still is , the recognized standard for PC-based sound. Suddenly , PCs had 4 voice , FM synth digital sound. The PC speaker died out in under a year. Game producers took to the SoundBlaster like a bull to a red rag. Suddenly , everything had digital sound. But hiding in the background , the capabilities of MIDI were yet to be realized by games designers.

In this period of 1992-93, people like Future Crew and the BitMap Brothers were making demos and games that showed off the use of music. The Unreal Demo was a fine example of synchronized digital music and visual effects. Flashback , the sequel to Another World , showed another great example of a game complimented by shifting ambient music. Flashback took advantage of the MODule files to do this. Unreal Pinball also used MODs to compliment its digital sound effects.

Then came the time of the MIDI. Game designers realized they could plug MIDI files into their games. It was cheaper , easier and gave more controllable results. And so they did. Origin's "Wing Commander" series used MIDI music for its music , as did LucasArts for X-Wing and TIE Fighter. Midi was destined to be relatively short-lived though , as when the CD-ROM hit the market fully , games started to return to digital sound played directly off the CD. Westwood's "Command & Conquer" and "Red Alert" games used this , even giving the player control over the music like a CD player. Origin took this system onboard for the continuing Wing Commander series.

A few games companies started to think laterally at this point , and said - "with the growing system requirements for our games , what if a user wants music , but loses too much performance with full-blown digital sound ?" The solution put forward in Interplay's "Redneck Rampage" was one choice - digital sound from the CD , or MIDI. This approach was adopted by ID with Quake II and Hexen as well.

Presently , these are the systems still being used by games designers around the world.

The Direction of the Music

Initially , music for a game was whatever sounded good at the time. Back in the days of the Adlib and SoundBlaster 2.0 , designers still didn't worry too much about music because too few people had these options. Whatever fitted best at production time was what went into the game. This was the reason PC music was still inferior in quality to Commodore's Amiga and 64 - not because the hardware was any better (the SB 2.0 and the Amiga chip were similar) - what set them apart was the design. Amiga's ALL had sound capability - it was built in. Thus all game designers used it fully.

Once the SB 2.0 was considered the standard , and the SB 16 was starting to grow , designers started taking the time to produce higher quality music in their games. Take for example the sound and music in X-Wing as compared to the standard of Wing Commander 2 , a difference of release dates no more than 2 years apart. Wing Commander 2 featured few instruments in its midi music score , and reasonable but "flat" sounds. X-Wing had a bright midi score , which admittedly was assisted greatly by the fact that -everyone- knows the StarWars theme by heart , and dynamic sound effects.

This marked the start of a new era in computer-based music. Not so much the quality , but the theme , the atmosphere of the music matching the games. Lets face it , if you're zipping around in an X-Wing fighter , the only thing you want to hear is John Williams's "StarWars Main Theme" blasting through the speakers behind the explosing TIE Fighters.

The idea of using a famous name to write the music for a game was not unheard of before this. The game "Captain Blood" used the music of French composer Jean-Michel Jarre. However , it wasn't until more recently that games had dedicated music from named groups. The most notable example of this is ID's Quake II , which is set in the dark future , very industrial and semi-gothic. What better to use as the digital score but music from bands who are known for such genres - in this case , Nine Inch Nails. Interplay's Redneck Rampage music score reads like a list from American Alternative Music Weekly. And this is only the beginning. More and more games will be doing this , which makes the future of computer games look very rosy indeed.

Non-computer based games

We've looked at computer games - the obvious medium for explosive growth in music. But if you think thats the ONLY field , think again ! Think back to 1992. Until then , board games were just that. Boring , musically. You wanted music with one , and you turned on the stereo. However , this wasn't to last. Enter Atmosfear , the half-video , half-board game , with music tracks and all. Suddenly a whole new dimension to board games was opened up. And this isn't the end of it. In 1995 , TSR Inc. released the Red Steel campaign setting for its AD&D (Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) roleplaying game , adding another new dimension in sound and music to its product with this interactive adventure on a standard CD.

A final word

The world of gaming and music are now closing together. What is music really ? Sounds mixed to form a harmony , much of which creates an illusion or tells a story of something. What is the difference between music and games ? Interaction. By bringing music and gaming together , what have you got ? A form of Virtual Reality.