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After a few decades of playing video games on a regular basis, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are essentially three elements that make a great solo video game.  The reason I highlight “solo” is that in multi-player land, there are some additional elements that I think make the game work and that may weigh differently against the elements I present below.

The three elements, in equal weight, but in ORDER of impact are production value, mechanic, balance.

Production Value here refers to the overall look, sound and feel of the game.  It is that glossy look that says “I’m a state of the art game and not something made in 1996″ (which, really, was not that long ago… but remember that some land mark games came out around then such as Quake 1 (1996) or Myst (1993) or 007: Goldeneye (1997) )  This “production value” however, goes far beyond the graphics engine to also the audio production (my department!) and the games performance.  This last bit is something I often see overlooked in that the game may create great still screenshots, but if it doesn’t run consistently smoothly in frame rate, audio cues, etc, the player will quickly tire of waiting for the game to “catch up” to them.

I recently played a fantastic time-management casual game called “Ranch Rush 2″ on the Mac.  I found later than an iPad version had come out and since the game was mostly a click-click-click type of game as you direct your character around your ranch to harvest bananas, sheer llamas and so on, this seemed like a perfect game to port to the iPad.  Unfortunately, this led quickly to frustration as I found the rapid tapping required that was simple with the mouse on the PC was hugely frustrating because of how the game would strangely allow you to click “in between” objects, which would allow your character to travel there… but then do absolutely nothing.  This quickly diminished the fun of the game as it no longer was a matter of the players skill in “time management” but of “how precisely can you point your fingers on the screen?”  Oy.

Animation should also not be overlooked, as should a balance between very capable 2D and 3D artists.  I realize that is becoming more and more common for game makers to save costs by purchasing pre-build 2D or 3D “sets” to build their games on.  This is perfectly fine, so long as you can be sure to match them very, very well to resemble a game built from scratch.  Make sure to get a second set of eyes to look at your finished product to see what they think about the art.  Although we are all taught never to judge a book by its cover (or a game by its screenshots) we all do, and so the investment and effort is very worthwhile in this department.

Once the art and animation have been absorbed by a player, the audio component, almost invisibly, will make or break the next impression.  Good game audio is similar to good film audio in that is should help immerse the player in the game without drawing unwanted attention to itself.  It should be a driver of emotion and not used as a highlight on its own (exception, of course, for so-called “music games” like Rock Band, Guitar Hero, etc.).  Horrible voice over, cheesy or low-fi or misplaced music can ruin an other wise promising game before it begins.  Even sound effects placement, a job taken on by some indie developers, is not as trivial as it sounds as it often needs to be subtly shaped to match exactly the animation that is present in the game.  This is not always a trivial task.

Mechanic. Many game developers associate game mechanic with very simple casual games, but this applies to ALL games – its just that larger and more sophisticated games may have multiple mechanics.  Take a recent favorite of mine – the Gears of War series on XBOX 360. At first blush, this game looks like “oh, another first person shooter”, but it introduced a few very interesting game mechanics that will surely (if they have not already) be copied by others.  One of the coolest is the way that the player can press a button to dash towards cover and essentially crouch in order to reload and so forth and then press another button to come out of the crouch and then fire on the enemy.  Then, when done firing, the player goes back into a crouch.  Similar types of strategy had been used by FPS players for years, but Gears of War created a way to make this process less cumbersome and more precise thereby introducing a new mechanic to this common move and thereby greatly improving the enjoyment of the game.

If the mechanics you are asking your player to perform are cumbersome or too repetitive, you will hopefully notice quickly.  The mechanic has to be easy… but varied.  No matter how gorgeous your graphics and music are, if the player has to click in a circle the whole game, things will get boring quickly.  So think about what you are asking the player to do.

Balance This element is also sometimes overlooked.  Game makers who put together a cool mechanic with terrific production values are there saying  - “hey!  It looks like a game and feels like a game!  Whip up some levels and let’s ship this thing!”.  The problem, is that without rigorous play testing to ensure proper balance, you will NOT present a challenge to your player.  Although some folks play games to have something mindless to do, most of us play games as a mental (and sometimes, physical!) challenge.  Having us BARELY win or loose by a little our first go at it is much more preferable than making it so easy that you are just “going through the motions”.  Even more challenging is making the balance such that it PROGRESSIVELY gets more difficult as you work through the game.  Nonetheless, this is a valuable addition and once the game is completed, it gives the players a keen sense of accomplishment and they remember why they started playing video games in the first place.

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Seguin Sound Studios is pleased to announce the addition of Pro Tools 9 to our software arsenal enabling the output of industry-standard Pro Tools sessions for easy importation to your projects.  Pro Tools will, for the most part, sit at the end of the workflow, after Logic Pro Studio which will remain our primary writing system.

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Many aspiring composers and sound designers have encountered this situation before: they decide to take on an independent film or game project (that has a picture-locked element to it) only to find that the video they receive does not have any time code on the screen.  This makes it difficult to communicate back with the other creative team about particular “hit points” in your score.  This is particularly useful if you are working from a distance.

Many editors have the technical capability and experience, of course, to do this with their available tools.  But… what if they don’t?  It turns out that if you have Logic Pro Studio, you have a nifty tool called Compressor that also comes with Final Cut Pro.  It’s MAIN function is to take a video and encode it to a multitude of different formats for quick distribution over the web, to DVD, to cell phones, etc.  You can even batch big video jobs and distribute the processing across multiple computers.  Nifty.  But, for our purposes in music land…. largely unnecessary.

However, in the video below I explain how you can re-encode the video so that it gets time code attached!

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I recently had the opportunity to work on a short film project and though not my first film, I was reminded of how different working with a film director is from working with a video game producer.  Though both need music, the approach that they take in achieving this goal is quite different and can be jarring for the composer used to working with one or another.

In general, film folks are often on a more intense deadline.  This is because, with rare exception, a film maker regards music as truly a “post production” problem, and thus it waits until the end to get resolved.  Often at a point where there is almost no time left to think sanely about the music as the director is working closely with the editor and other post crew to wrap things up as quickly as possible!

Here, however, I’ll present a couple of bulleted tips about what composers find useful (and point out some things that are NOT helpful!)

1. Do a Spotting Session.  No, this is not optional, no matter how busy you are.  It is critical for the composer and director to have a time to talk about the film’s total artistic vision.  An equal number of scores have ruined a film as well as saved it.  It’s important to hear from the director the different moods he was trying to achieve for a particular scene as well as for the overall piece.  A shortcoming in acting, sets, lighting, and other blunders can often be smoothed over by well crafter music playing an additional “character” in the film.  However, without knowing these things, a composer may mistake a scene for comedy when in fact it was meant to be dead serious.  (!)

2. Understand what SMPTE/Frame Rate, BITC, STEMS, BIT RATES and other technical audio things are before chatting with your composer.  They will want to know these technical audio questions about your film and how you want your audio delivered.  Not understanding these things just wastes time as you composer is required to explain these things to you.  If you have a film editor besides yourself or (gasp!) a music editor – these people would be good folks to introduce to your composer and can probably answer all these questions.

3. Your composer will likely produce a rough pass for you of a cue or maybe your whole film. This is a rough take – to make sure they are getting the “feel” of things.  So don’t get too hung up on timing how “real” it sounds and so forth.  If you are “auditioning” a composer and they are doing a cue for free, make sure you ask them to make a “final” version of this cue before agreeing to pay them.  For their sake, don’t make this a LONG cue.  You want to basically test the skills.  They are confident that they have what it takes or they wouldn’t be doing this for free for you.  However, it is certainly your choice if you want to ultimately hire them, so don’t make them work for free for long before making your decision!  If you have the budget to have your composer hire live instruments, they will likely not waste time on a good “mock up” for you since the live will sound infinitely better anyways.

4. Another note on live orchestra/players. Be sure to discuss this early on.  Some composers write scores in a way that makes it very, very difficult to translate their score to printed music that could be recorded.  Others (like me) write this way all the time so that its relatively easy to output to a fixed click and so forth.  It’s good to check with your composer to see if this is even a possibility and a skill they possess.  It is a unique set of skills to translate what on one side could be improvising (however well) at the keyboard to your movie and on the other hand being able to translate these doodles into real scores that other humans can interpret and play in perfect sync together.

5. When you get your drafts from your composer speak to them in emotional language. It is certainly okay to say “Oh, I don’t like that timpani there” or something specific like that, but most of the time, we are more interested in knowing WHY you don’t like it there.  It is very easy to misconstrue a comment about an instrument and think its the timbre of that instrument when REALLY you feel it wrecks the MOOD of the moment.  In fact, that instrument may be fine, but perhaps a different register or rhythm is called for, or maybe its too loud.  Your composer should be a good artistic collaborator and may have some genuinely interesting solutions to the problem at hand to help you achieve your vision, so give them the benefit of the doubt about how to fix something.

6. Be realistic on fixes. For many of us, it takes about 2-4 hour (depending on style, orchestration and many other factors) to write and produce about 1 *MINUTE* of quality music.  So, if you decide, all of a sudden, that you ARE after all going to include those extra four minutes of the kids swimming with dolphins and want an awesome montage sequence that will be fully scored and oh, could we do that by tomorrow because we premiere in three days… well… no.  That’s crazy.  Sure, it can be done, but it will be very rushed and your composer will be very grumpy.  Unless, of course, you are paying them lots and lots of money.  In which case it will be rushed, but people will probably not be (as) grumpy.

So, to all my film director friends, I hope you find these couple of pointers helpful.  If any other composers want to comment and add to this list.  Please do so!

Blog Post, How To