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A look at how game music can provide extra context to a game's story and world, in addition to supplementing player feedback.
Originally posted on the Team Junkfish blog.
This blog is based on an event that happened as part of Abertay’s Game Lab, loosely based on the topic of “story”, and how people from different disciplines tackled it in games. I was asked to provide an audio perspective, and given that I’m usually better at explaining things in written form than verbally I decided that I’d expand and clarify a few points I spoke about and why I think they’re important. There may be a few spoilers here and there, so heads up!
What is “Story” anyway?
The word “story” itself is a bit of a nebulous term. Most people would associate it with some form of narrative, such as the Hero’s Journey, that follows one main protagonist or group of people through their various trials and quests to some sort of resolution. But is that it? Is that everything that’s being told? Does the entire game world merely exist around the player character(s), with everything only being relevant them? What about everything else: the details, the history, even the context of the place and situations that you may be in. Going from A to B through C becomes much more engaging and involving if there are different forces, details and subtexts at play instead of “because that’s where you need to go”.
Basically, how do you “build the world“?
Worldbuilding is something I try to push a lot when it comes to audio, and there are a few different elements that I consider when doing so. There’s the obvious, how things sound, to slightly more subtle stuff like communication and providing information, and not necessarily though speech and voice acting either. Sound is one of those things that people will immediately proclaim “This is super important we must have it” but not really have a solid explanation at to why it is, often jumping on the cheapest/closest/first thing they get after their game is finished as they needed some random noises to finish up.
A game must “sound right”. This doesn’t mean that it should be a one-for-one replication of real life sounds that are dropped into the game using real life simulations to make sure that the game sounds SuperReal™. Realism isn’t always “right”, appropriate or even possible, as any designer will tell you. From a sound perspective: real guns sound nothing like guns from films and especially games, and I have some bad news for you if you’re into laser noises. But how do you determine what is right for your game? What sort of things do you need to consider when making those choices too?
Let’s start with how music is used first. If, again, we were going for “realism” then your player would probably need a set of headphones to hear all the music that’s going on. Alfred Hitchcock allegedly complained about the use of music for his film