XBox, PS2, and PC game audio

[Chris Groegler]

Thanks to Phil for letting me start another discussion about game audio over here on HC. There was a thread on Phil's MusicPlayer forum that was pretty fun and we had a good thread about different aspects of audio in games.

 

I'm currently Lead Sound Designer at Red Storm Entertainment and have been in the industry as a sound designer/composer since 1994. One of the reasons to start a thread like this is to help people get a better understanding on what it takes to make audio for games and to open up a new side of audio that maybe you hadn't thought about getting into. I'd like this to be a discussion thread and at times I'll describe what I'm currently working on and explain some of my thought process as I create sound effects.

 

One thing that I discovered from the MP thread was that more people were interested in the music side of audio in games. There were a few times were I'd describe a scenario and have people write music specifically for that situation. We got some nice tunes from that exercise and I'd like to do something like that again. It was fun to hear other peoples interpretation and hear about their process in coming up with their idea.

 

This thread will cover audio across all platforms and I'll try and explain the differences when developing audio on each one. I'll even get into the next generation consoles like the 360 and PS3.

 

Chris Groegler

[gsHarmony]

I guess I'll start with the questions. How does the game audio world differ from traditional film scoring? I would guess that you would have more music freedom because you probably wouldn't have to worry as much about hits, dialog, or sound effects getting in the way.

 

I would guess that one of the main challenges of game audio would be to create something that wasn't too obviously repetitive. One of my favorite game scores is for Morrowind, but after playing the game for 40+ hours and hearing the music for the 1000th time, it gets a little old.

 

I'm assuming that most orchestral work for games is done using the popular sample libraries. As the gaming industry gets bigger and game soundtracks become more popular, do you expect more live players to be used for games? I was just wondering because a concert at the Disney center in LA quickly sold out a concert where the LA philharmonic was playing Final Fantasy music.

 

Finally, how hard is it to get started in game audio? I have a lot of interest in this area, especially for RPGs. I have always thought it would be interesting to score something where I could create a theme for each character, town, enemy, etc.

 

Thanks for starting a great thread.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Chris is THE man when it comes to this subject - I'm looking forward to the discussions - and thanks again Chris for your willingness to share your expertise!

[Mike Martin]

Chris,

Thanks for joining us over here. That was one of the best threads ever over at the MP forums.

[Chris Groegler]

Thanks Phil and Mike for those words. I appreciate it.

 

gs, when scoring for traditional film you know exaclty what is coming up. So you know that at 01:34:25 on your smpte readout that you'll need a cresendo to emphasize when a character gets killed, but in the game world that could happen at any time. Interactive music has come a long way and if you have the support within a project to implement a system that works, it could be a great experience in a game. It takes a lot to make it "work" as you'll need to know what is happening in the world to cue up different sets of music cues. On the most simplest of ways you could look at it like this. You have this game where you walk around looking for treasures and every once in a while you encounter a threat. So you could have a cue that is just walking music and then a transition piece into another piece which would be the encounter piece, possibly another transition into another cue for when encountering treasures. So the game would detect which of these four/five cues to play based on what is happening to you. So how many variations on each cue, and how do you handle which key those would be in to give the player a sence of having the music go somewhere? This is just a basic setup. Think of a game and all the possibilties and then think of having to come up with all the variations of music.

 

You mentioned Morrowind which is a great game and sounds great. It's very hard to not have repitition in a game. Just think of how much music you would need to not hear the same music repeat.....just look at the example above. We don't have that kind of budgets just for music, at least not on the projects I've worked one. It is changing and the standard is getting better.

 

Talking about standards, it's hard not to find a game that doesn't have music with a real orchestra or live instuments. Do some research and see how many time the Seatle Symphony has recorded music for games. This is a very good thing for composers and the end user. With the likes of G.A.N.G. we are seeing a push for better audio in games.

 

Chris

[Chris Groegler]

Hi EngineGuitarist. Glad to have you being a part of this thread.

 

This is a great question and something that I'm pretty familiar with. My most recent project, Rainbow Six: Lockdown for PS2, just came out last week and we had some licensed music that we used for the shell music and some in-game environmental music. I'll start with the process (at least for this project) and explain the steps used to get to the final music selection.

 

I met with our Lead Game Designer and discussed with him his vision for the game. Within this discussion it was apparent that we wanted to go with a more edgy soundtrack than the previous versions of the franchise. If any of you are aware of the Rainbow games, Bill Brown wrote a great orchestral theme for the original Rainbow Six titles. At a very early stage in development I took his theme and recorded a guitar/drums based version of this theme to show how this music would fit into our shell screens. We felt it fit well within the game and decided this would be our direction. So along with another designer we put together a proposal of what music we wanted in the game and where it would be used.

 

So now that we had our style we submitted our proposal to our management and then in turn to the head of UbiMusic. This was a new experience for me and let me just say that we didn't get who we initially had proposed. We did get some great music, but it was a little heavier than we wanted. UbiMusic deals with licensing music and has some relationships with many publishers. This was a great way to deal with it as I/we didn't have to deal directly with the publisher.

 

So to answer you question about how to get licensed music in a game, I think you'll find that it's mostly dealing with publishers/labels. It's sometimes easier to go with a label or publisher because they have a great library to choose from. You could strike a deal individually with separate bands too, but I'm not sure if that'll be more expensive. You could probably get a better deal from one publisher than from ten different ones.

 

I think it would be great for local bands to get the exposer of being in a game. I guess a lot would depend on if their music fits into the realm of that game and how music they would charge for their music. Also, what benefit would it be to have their music in-game when one could license Jessica Simpson (just an example!!). There's something to be said about having named bands in your game!

 

Soundtracks for games are becoming more common too so that's another way to promote music in games.

 

Chris

[Phil O'Keefe]

a long question i have though is, who is the best preson to contact for getting a song in a game? I think the best example of mass exposure like this is grand theft auto. they put out a box set for cryin out loud. if regionally known bands could get on a big game it would be huge for them. is that even a possibility? or is it more of a business deal with specific labels?

 

I've got some friends who have gotten their music into games... and in every single case, they were signed to major labels, and the game deal was handled by their publishing companies.

 

I don't know the probability of an unsigned band being able to pull off getting their music into a major game product, but IMO, the chances are probably pretty low... but you ARE correct that it's incredibly good exposure.

[EngineGuitarist]

of course! the publishing companies. should've known.

 

that makes complete sense about the labels and publishing co.'s. And I can also fully understand why known bands would be preferred, but....

 

take a look at warped tour. they have multiple stages where kids can go see rancid 1 minute and turn around and go to a smaller stage and watch a few unknown bands before the next biggie comes on. these bands build their fan bases by getting fans of the other named bands. pretty basic but bear with me.

 

take a game like tony hawk's pro skater or whatever its called now and apply the same model. that game has pretty much nothing but bands on warped. If they took 2 or 3 unknowns that would be on a small stage at warped tour the summer after the game comes out, by the next year they'd be on mtv and back on a bigger stage. or even on tony hawk's concert thing he does. of course they gotta be good:D

 

i just don't fully understand how having a few songs from relatively unknown up&coming bands could hurt a games sale. has anyone ever done a study to see if bad music hurts game sales? There would be alot of variables but i wonder. if it did, would great music increase game sales? i mean afterall, people are buying it for the game. I know that when i used to play video games (back when i had time:rolleyes: ) some games would get the mute while others didnt.

 

maybe someone will come out with a vespa racing game full of indie tunes

[Chris Groegler]

I do think it's a great idea, but when you have to go through so much legal stuff it's sometimes easier to get everything from one place. Espesially if under a time constraint. I'm not trying to come up with excuses, I'm just thinking of it from the development side.

 

Some of the bands that I would liked to have I couldn't get because I wasn't making the final decision. In my case all the info goes up to our main office in Paris.

 

Chris

[EngineGuitarist]

 

Originally posted by Chris Groegler I do think it's a great idea, but when you have to go through so much legal stuff it's sometimes easier to get everything from one place. Espesially if under a time constraint. I'm not trying to come up with excuses, I'm just thinking of it from the development side.

 

 

ah yes, the bureaucracy of it all. those are completely valid points chris, not excuses. I didn't mean to come off as a preachy know-it-all in my last post, if i did i apologize.

 

I don't know if sony makes video games, sure there's playstation, but the actual games. if they did, I'd think it would be easier for them legally and time wise to use their big name artists and/or new artists. sure there would still be bureaucracy because its different divisions/subsidiaries of sony but if one of the really high up dudes decided to do this, it would be done quick. possibly a farfetched scenario but I've got worse:D

 

like the next gen. consoles with hard drives having specific albums or collections of music on them. the U2 XBox....hehe.

[gsHarmony]

 

Do some research and see how many time the Seatle Symphony has recorded music for games.

 

 

Very cool, I didn't realize so many games had a budget that would allow for live musicians.

 

Here's a few more questions:

 

How do game companies find composers that would be appropriate for a particular game?

 

Also, from the opposite point of view, how does a composer go about getting hired to score a game? Is most of this typically done through an agent? Obviously if a composer has some serious previous work, this is probably easier, but what would be a potential roadmap for a composer with a limited resume?

[Dylan Walters]

Hey Chris,

 

Thanks for getting this thread moved over from the old forum! I have a ton of questions for you, but they

[DJDM]

I'm glad to see that this thread is back! I found Chris's info and the general timbre of the MP thread exceptional as well as a remarkable source of info regarding the game industry.

 

Incidentally I had a chance to meet Chris at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and I can say he is one great guy! Super friendly and a lot of fun to hang out with.

 

Thanks to some good information I got out of the thread at MP and some hustling on my part I was able to land a game title project of my own recently. I posted thread about it over at Craigs SSS board and Phil asked me to come over here and do a little write up on my experieces working on Gem Shop.

 

So here it is.

 

I've spent a little time writing a blog about some of my experices with this project over at my 1UP page. Here are some excerpts:

You never forget your first game soundrack...

 

So this has been an interesting journey. When I put in my first music/sound designer bid for a new game in development back in May I thought there was a very good chance that I would come up empty handed. You always get a little nervous when you bid for a job but this one was different.

I had never scored a game before.

 

Despite having written and produced music for projects by top names in the industry over the last five of years I was pretty certain that my move into games would take a little longer than a couple of months.

Well I was wrong. Or lucky. Or both.

 

Perhaps a little history is in order:

 

I'd been working in audio and composing professionally for about 20 years. I ran several bands and a home studio through most of the 90s and had work played extensively on the radio, got a few tracks into films. In 2001 Warner Brothers contacted me via my MP3.com site about contributing music to the upcoming Matrix special "The Animatrix" and since then I've been focused almost full time as a composer. It's been a blast and I've been able to do some great work for projects you may have seen on TV, at stadiums or in theaters around the world.

 

But as a huge gamer I really wanted to get into interactive media. So off I went to GDC this past spring and had a blast, made a few connections and learned a lot about the industry.

Once I got back I gave myself a year to get a game under my belt as this was a new area for me and my contacts were a little limited.

 

I got in touch with HipSoft in May after getting back from GDC in early April. Next thing I knew I was picked over four other studios for the gig based on a short demo track I included with my bid as an example of how my work could meld with the themes they were creating for their latest title "Gem Shop".

Fast forward to now and Gem Shop is going into its first beta next week and I couldn't be happier with the final.

 

Project Notes:

 

As expected the sound design has been a particular challenge and the longest term time commitment but well worth it and I'm very proud of the work that I've done for the game. The vast majority of sound design has been produced from scratch and I had more damn fun creating synthesis sounds and tools primarily in Reason for this project. Lots of organic sounds were used as well. I wanted a mix of orchestral sounds to blend in with the small ensemble score I had created for the project. It's been handy being the composer and sound designer from a continuity standpoint. It makes creating very natural and score compatible effects for the game immensely easy. I worked with the same keys and approximate tempos as the score for maximum flow and minimum incongruity throughout.

 

The score was a blast to write. It consists of several basic elements; a fanfare, body, secondary theme and a couple of transitions as well as an intro theme. I composed the basic melody and bassline while thinking of classic game soundtracks, figuring that the music needed to propel the player forward without getting too busy or distracting as well as conveying a sense of the game's theme and a memorable tune. In the end it sounds something like a piece arranged for small symphonic ensemble with a disco bassline. Pretty straight forward but I worked hard to avoid too much repetition and I think the final result is both exciting and fun to have bouncing around as you toil away to match gems and keep a fickle customer happy.

 

Casual Thoughts:

 

On a side note I know some composers and sound designers who don't believe that casual game development is a worthwhile avenue as it is relatively small sector of the overall industry. But I believe that as web technology develops so do the opportunities for full rich game experiences that can be downloaded. Additionally I would argue that the ability to work on short but exciting projects with a vast amount of creative control is a great thing.

 

So if you aren't already then keep an eye on casual as its quickly growing as a channel. Hmmm... much like gaming in general.

Cheers

[Chris Groegler]

Sorry guys. I've been pretty busy here trying to get ready to show our progress.

 

gs, when I get more time I'll describe how I pick/picked composers for our project. Hopefully I'll get to that tomorrow morning.

 

Everyone!! Dylan is the dude. He helped me out in gathering info for building a new machine and without his help I wouldn't have a smokin' machine right now. I did ask a friend to help me, but it was a pretty painless operation. Thanks again for helping me out. Sorry I haven't updated you sooner. It's been crazy around here.

 

Great work Lance! Another person that I have failed to get back to. I think it's very awesome to hear your story and it's great testimony that people can actually get work in the gaming industry. Nice job! How was your gig last week? I want to hear about that as well.

 

Thanks guys for sharing your stories and asking questions. I have no doubt that this will be a cool learning experience.

 

Chris

[DJDM]

Originally posted by Chris Groegler Great work Lance! Another person that I have failed to get back to. I think it's very awesome to hear your story and it's great testimony that people can actually get work in the gaming industry. Nice job!

 

Thanks Chris! I've had a lot of fun on this project and we are already talking about the next one. Looks like I may have a good thing brewing.

 

Originally posted by Chris Groegler How was your gig last week? I want to hear about that as well.

 

The shows have a big hit thanks for asking.

(FYI I have been DJ'ing my own stuff a couple of days a month at a local club)

Since the club asked me to come out and DJ I decided to do just that. Normally I wouldn't since I prefer to play live instruments but I really like ToST and they wanted a longer set than I had prepared for a solo show. So I made an exception and picked up Live 5. The entire music program (comprised of my electronica catalog ranging from ambient to dnb with some of my remixes in there as well) ran 2.5 hours. Basically it was mostly jukebox style DJ work but I was able to shake things up a bit and remix some of my work on the fly. Live 5 kicks it hard and is fun to use. The response was good as was the turnout.

[The Chinese]

Game audio is a ton of fun, if a {censored}load of work. when I was working for Technicolor, we had a large gaming division...

 

I worked on a game called "Crash Nitro Kart" Holy sheep {censored} it was a lot of work- Imagine 5,000 Loop lines, several thousand efx, Lots of music...And then do it is 26 Languages!!!

 

I mixed all the interstitials in 5.1 for XBOX, then a LtRt Crashdown for PS2 (in PLII...). I tliterally took 4 weeks to mix all of this. It was great fun, if one coul dignore the fire in one's hair and the hot poker up one's ass!!!!

 

he he he.

 

-Todd A.

[the_tonto]

 

Originally posted by Chris Groegler Hi EngineGuitarist. Glad to have you being a part of this thread. This is a great question and something that I'm pretty familiar with. My most recent project, Rainbow Six: Lockdown for PS2, just came out last week and we had some licensed music that we used for the shell music and some in-game environmental music. I'll start with the process (at least for this project) and explain the steps used to get to the final music selection. I met with our Lead Game Designer and discussed with him his vision for the game. Within this discussion it was apparent that we wanted to go with a more edgy soundtrack than the previous versions of the franchise. If any of you are aware of the Rainbow games, Bill Brown wrote a great orchestral theme for the original Rainbow Six titles. At a very early stage in development I took his theme and recorded a guitar/drums based version of this theme to show how this music would fit into our shell screens. We felt it fit well within the game and decided this would be our direction. So along with another designer we put together a proposal of what music we wanted in the game and where it would be used. So now that we had our style we submitted our proposal to our management and then in turn to the head of UbiMusic. This was a new experience for me and let me just say that we didn't get who we initially had proposed. We did get some great music, but it was a little heavier than we wanted. UbiMusic deals with licensing music and has some relationships with many publishers. This was a great way to deal with it as I/we didn't have to deal directly with the publisher. So to answer you question about how to get licensed music in a game, I think you'll find that it's mostly dealing with publishers/labels. It's sometimes easier to go with a label or publisher because they have a great library to choose from. You could strike a deal individually with separate bands too, but I'm not sure if that'll be more expensive. You could probably get a better deal from one publisher than from ten different ones. I think it would be great for local bands to get the exposer of being in a game. I guess a lot would depend on if their music fits into the realm of that game and how music they would charge for their music. Also, what benefit would it be to have their music in-game when one could license Jessica Simpson (just an example!!). There's something to be said about having named bands in your game! Soundtracks for games are becoming more common too so that's another way to promote music in games. Chris

 

 

personally if i was playing a game and everytime a certain thing happened a jessica simpson song started playing, i would probably stop playing the game. honestly, I realize you were just going for a popular name to throw out there, but really people that play games a lot are normally guys in their teens or 20's and a lot of those people have a sort of mainstream stigma. a lot of them pride themselves on knowing the band that is even better and lesser known. so i think putting better quality more-underground bands would be a much better thing for you than going with the seemingly more cost effective approach of putting a bunch of mainstream acts on. I mean sure it seems like its better because its cheaper, but how do you really know that? have you ever made a game that was going be a good game with or without the music and put completely unknown but really good indie bands on? no, because thats not the safe choice. thats what its all about, and its stupid. what i mean i guess is that sure it seems money wise a better bet to go with something cost effective that won't lose. but honestly, if your taste isn't incredibly bad, why not try to put better music on there and take that chance that maybe you'll lose a little bit of money on the overhead but make up in the fact that the game is a little better because the music is better. i realize the answer is again money, because stupid people will take what you give them, but thats exactly the point, why not give them something better and maybe they'll like it a whole lot more. i don't play games much anymore because it distracts from making music, but i know when i do and i'm going to be playing it for a long time the first thing i do is check to see if there's an option to edit the songs played and take out all the horribly stupid commercial songs i've already heard 5000 times to many on the radio unwillingly while i'm standing in line at the convenience store. I know you're obviously a pro and you apparently get things done and keep your job, and you can obviously tell that i'm more about the art and quality apsect of things rather than the money reaped from it, but you can still see my point right?

[Chris Groegler]

Hi tonto. Licensed music can be used in many different ways. For my last project I didn't want music to happen while you were playing the game so our music went towards our cinematics, shell screens, environmental, credits, and intro/outro portions. I'm totally with you about getting music that appeals to both the game and the fan base. It's a hard thing to do, but look at most sports games....Madden for example. They have great music that most mainstream audiences haven't heard.

 

Music is very subjective, and I think the future gaming systems will give you the freedom to listen to what you want to while playing. 360 will give you that with their playlists. It's giving the user the freedom to plop in whatever they want.

 

In my situation it was easier (and fit our time frame) to go with one publisher. We possibly could have fought for lesser known bands, but when you're making a game for someone else you have to take the direction that they are giving you. That's part of any bussiness that has a parent company. I take it as part of the challenge and try to get creative with it.

 

Chris

[Chris Groegler]

The Chinese in the house!!! Hey Todd. Thanks for posting here. I've learned many things from you, my friend, from your posts on the DUC. Actually I think you even helped me out sync'ing a DA88 to my PT TDM rig a few years back. If I rememebr correctly you even called me to help me out.

 

Great quote about the poker!!!! Hahaha. How true.

 

I hope you continue to monitor this thread and share any stories or experiences. It would be great to hear them.

 

Chris

[RaGe]

Hey guys, glad to see this thread has been transported.

Congrats on your good fortune DJDM, this is awesome.

[DJDM]

Thanks RaGe! Glad you made it over.

[The Chinese]

 

Originally posted by Chris Groegler The Chinese in the house!!! Hey Todd. Thanks for posting here. I've learned many things from you, my friend, from your posts on the DUC. Actually I think you even helped me out sync'ing a DA88 to my PT TDM rig a few years back. If I rememebr correctly you even called me to help me out. Great quote about the poker!!!! Hahaha. How true. I hope you continue to monitor this thread and share any stories or experiences. It would be great to hear them. Chris

 

 

Chris -

 

How funny. I was looking at your name and going "...damn that name looks familiar...." Anyway, i'm glad I've been able to help out. I recently left Technicolor and went to a MUCH smaller house called SPG Studios in Burbank. I believe we do a bunch of ADR work for Gaming in Foreign Languages, Like Latin American Spanish, etc. What's interesting is the translation and then adaptation- Our slang doesn't translate to any other language, and so the proper slang has to get used after the literal translation is done. Gaming is a HUGE industry now, and there will be work for decades to come, so get on teh bandwagon now and make money!!!!!!

 

-Todd A.

[Chris Groegler]

Good to see you RaGe! Maybe we can do some more musical exercises like last time. I hope you participate again.

 

Todd, you're right about this industry growing. I'm glad I got in when I did (1994) and had the experiences working at different places. It really helped working with 8 bit 11k files.

 

This is a good transition to talk about work on the PS2. In the thread on MP I talked about how we only had 1.2MB of RAM available for sound and the different ways to deal with that. One way is to downsample certain sounds that don't have much high frequency information. I would take a low drone, HVAC unit, or whatever low frequency sound and resample to about 8kHz. I would always have 16 bit sounds, but would frequently resample to make the file as small as possible. I did this with almost all my environmental sounds with the exception of sounds like birds, crickets, etc. Once in the game you wouldn't even notice that the sample was only at 8k or 12k.

 

This is the same practice we are using on the Xbox 360 using XMA. You can dial in the amount of compression, just like mp3, so some of the sounds we have compressed pretty hard and others we hardly have any at all. This gives us the flexibility to take all our sounds, or a group of sounds, and compress to the desired quality. When working on a game we are always concerned about file size. That's one of the benefits with working on films or TV. You can have all your sounds/music at 48k without worry. We have lto oad sounds into memory or play off disc and need to be aware of how much space we are taking.

 

Chris

[Chris Groegler]

Question for you guys. What games are you currently playing and on what platform? When you're playing a game do you pay attention to the audio and try and figure how they do stuff. Do you pay attention to the music?

 

I'm currently playing BF2 on PC. We have a group of guys that play every Friday night and it's been a lot of fun.

 

So what are you spending time playing?

[DJDM]

Funny you should mention BF 2 Chris, I have it and love it! Great sound design and music. If anyone is interested there is a thread here at NSS with Tobias the composer for the project. Not a lot of detail and more of a congratulatory note but fun none the less.

 

In the last year I've also been playing:

Halo 2 Xb

Half-Life 2 PC

Star Wars Battle Front Xb

Project Gotham Racing II Xb

Fable Xb

Ghost Recon 2 Xb

Gem Shop PC

 

Also checked out demos at PAX in August for:

 

F.E.A.R. PC

Hulk Ultimate Destruction Xb

RB6: Lockdown PS2

 

 

I've been pretty busy this summer but I'm trying to get back into the swing with a little more gaming.

 

I'm considering picking up Fable: The Lost Chapters for the PC. I was going to wait for the Xbox version but I really want to experience both of the ports to see how they differ.

 

I do spend a bit of time listening to the audio and music. I love it when you can't tell that a sound event or music is being triggered. I've noticed with some titles that's a problem and can distract you from game play. Fable had some issues like that. Mostly with the music. You'd get to a certain point in a level and a dramatic music bed would kick in alerting you to danger. It was fun for the first couple of times but got repetitive and eventually almost annoying. Also killed any sense of surprise. A small qualm though as most of the sound design on the game was spectacular and I enjoyed both Danny Elfman's contribution as well as Russell Shaw's music very much.