MD DALIM #972617 07/05/08 CYAN MAG YELO BLK Game Sound Game Sound An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design KAREN COLLINS The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England ( 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, email [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Melior and MetaPlus on 3B2 by Asco Typesetters, Hong Kong, and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Collins, Karen, 1973–. Game sound : an introduction to the history, theory, and practice of video game music and sound design / Karen Collins. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-262-03378-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Video game music—History and criticism. I. Title. ML3540.7.C65 2008 781.504—dc22 2008008742 10987654321 TO MY GRANDMOTHER Contents Preface ix CHAPTER1 Introduction 1 GamesAreNotFilms!But... 5 CHAPTER 2 Push Start Button: The Rise of Video Games 7 InvadersinOurHomes:TheBirthofHomeConsoles 20 ‘‘Well It Needs Sound’’: The Birth of Personal Computers 28 Conclusion 34 CHAPTER 3 Insert Quarter to Continue: 16-Bit and the Death of the Arcade 37 Nintendo and Sega: The Home Console Wars 39 Personal Computers Get Musical 48 MIDI and the Creation of iMUSE 51 Amiga and the MOD Format 57 Conclusion 59 CHAPTER 4 Press Reset: Video Game Music Comes of Age 63 Home Console Audio Matures 68 Other Platforms: Rhythm-Action, Handhelds, and Online Games 73 Conclusion 81 CHAPTER 5 Game Audio Today: Technology, Process, and Aesthetic 85 The Process of Taking a Game to Market 86 The Audio Production Process 88 The Pre-Production Stage 89 The Production Stage 95 The Post-Production Stage 102 Conclusion 105 CHAPTER 6 Synergy in Game Audio: Film, Popular Music, and Intellectual Property 107 Popular Music and Video Games 111 The Impact of Popular Music on Games, and of Games on Popular Music 117 Conclusion 121 viii Contents CHAPTER 7 Gameplay, Genre, and the Functions of Game Audio 123 DegreesofPlayerInteractivityinDynamicAudio 125 The Functions of Game Audio 127 Immersion and the Construction of the ‘‘Real’’ 133 Conclusion 136 CHAPTER8 CompositionalApproachestoDynamicGameMusic 139 Nonlinearity in Games 142 Ten Approaches to Variability in Game Music 147 Conclusion 164 CHAPTER 9 Conclusion 167 Notes 173 Glossary 183 References 189 Index 197 Preface When I first began writing about video game audio in 2002, it seemed somehow necessary to preface each article with a series of facts and figures about the impor- tance of the game industry in terms of economic value, demographics, and cul- tural impact. It is a testament to the ubiquity of video games today that in such a short time it has become unnecessary to quote such statistics to legitimize or val- idate a study such as this. After all, major newspapers are reporting on the popu- larity of Nintendo’s Wii in retirement homes, Hollywood has been appropriating heavily from games (rather than the other way around), and many of us are pre- tending to check our email on our cell phone in a meeting when we are really playing Lumines. Attention to game audio among the general populace is also increasing. The efforts of industry groups such as the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IAsig), Project Bar-B-Q, and the Game Audio Network Guild (GANG) have in recent years been advancing the technology and tools, along with the rights and recognition, of composers, sound designers, voice actors, and audio pro- grammers. As public recognition rises, academia is slowly following: new courses in game audio are beginning to appear in universities and colleges (such as those at the University of Southern California and the Vancouver Film School), and new journals—such as MusicandtheMovingImagepublished by University of Illinois Press, and Music, Sound and the Moving Image published by the Univer- sity of Liverpool—are expanding the focus beyond film and television. In some ways, this book began when my Uncle Tom bought me one of the early forms of Pong gamessometimearound1980,andthusinfectedmewitha love for video games. I began thinking about game audio more seriously when I was completing my Ph.D. in music, and began my research the day after my dis- sertation had been submitted. The research for the book continued during my time as postdoctoral research fellow at Carleton University in Ottawa, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, under the su- pervision of Paul The´berge, who provided encouragement and insight. It was fin- ished in my current position as Canada Research Chair at the Canadian Centre of Arts and Technology at the University of Waterloo, where I enjoy support from the Government of Canada, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade. The years of research and writing could not have been possible without the support of family and friends (special thanks to Damian Kastbauer, Jennifer Nichol, Tanya Collison, Christina Sutcliffe, Parm and Paul Gill, Peter Taillon, Ruth Dockwray, Holly Tessler, Lee Ann Fullington, and my brother James): Your kindness and generosity are not forgotten. The Interactive Audio Special Interest xPreface Group and the folks at Project Bar-B-Q provided guidance, thought-provoking conversation, and friendship (special thanks to Brad Fuller, Peter Drescher, Simon Ashby, D. B. Cooper, Guy Whitmore, and Tom White), as did the Game Audio Network Guild. My ‘‘unofficial editors’’ for portions of the book were Kenneth Young (sound designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe), Damian Kastbauer (sound designer at Bay Area Sound), and Chung Ming Tam (2Peer), who volunteered to proofread and fact check without any hope of reward. Thanks also to Doug Sery at MIT Press and to the book’s anonymous reviewers, who gave valuable feedback. Appreciation to all who have provided academic challenge and support, including my colleagues at Waterloo, Philip Tagg and his students at Universite´ de Montre´al, Anahid Kassabian (Liverpool), John Richard- son (Jyva¨skyla¨), and Ron Sadoff and Gillian Anderson at New York University. Elements of this book were previously published, including parts of chapter 2 in Twentieth Century Music, Soundscapes: Journal of Media Culture,andPopular Musicology Online,mostofchapter6inMusicandtheMovingImage, and parts of chapter 7 in the book Essays on Sound and Vision,editedbyJohnRichardson and Stan Hawkins (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press). Game Sound CHAPTER1 Introduction San Jose, California, March 2006: I am in line to a sold-out concert, standing in front of Mario and Samus. Mario is a short Italian man, with sparkling eyes and a thick wide moustache, wearing blue overalls and a floppy red cap, while his fe- male companion, Samus, is part Chozo, part human, and wears a sleek blue suit and large space helmet. They get their picture taken with Link, a young elflike Hylian boy in green felt, and we are slowly pushed into the Civic Auditorium. In thedarknessthatfollowsourentrancefromtheCaliforniasunshine,themurmur of the crowd is building. It is the first time I have seen so many people turn up for an orchestra; every seat is filled as the show begins. This was, however, no ordi- nary performance: the orchestra would be playing classics, but these were clas- sics of an entirely new variety—the songs from ‘‘classic’’ video games, including Pong, Super Mario Bros.,andHalo. The power of video game music to attract such an enthusiastic crowd— many of whom dressed up in costumes for the occasion—was in many ways remarkable. After all, symphony orchestras have for years been struggling to sur- vive financially amid dwindling attendance and increasing costs. Video Games Live, along with Play! and other symphonic performances of game music, how- ever, have been bringing the orchestra to younger people, and bringing game mu- sictotheirparents.Whilesomeoftheoldercrowdwasclearlybemusedaswe entered the auditorium, many left afterward exclaiming how good the music was. I expect that after that night, some of them began to see (or hear) the sounds emanating from the video games at home in an entirely different light.1 Video games offer a new and rather unique field of study that, as I will show throughout this book, requires a radical revision of older theories and approaches 2Chapter1 toward sound in media. However, I would argue that at this stage, games are so new to academic study that we are not yet able to develop truly useful theories without basic, substantial empirical research into their practice, production and consumption. As Aphra Kerr (2006, p. 2) argues in her study of the games indus- try, ‘‘How can we talk with authority about the effects of digital games when we are only beginning to understand the game/user relationship and the degree to which it gives more creative freedom and agency to users?’’ Twenty years ago, Charles Eidsvik wrote of film a phrase that may be equally appropriate for games at this early stage: The basic problem in theorizing about technical change . is that accurate histories of the production community and its perspectives, as well as of the technological options . must precede the attempt to theorize. It is not that we do not need theory that can help us understand the relationships between larger social and cul- tural developments, ideology, technical practice, and the history of cinema. Rather it is that whatever we do in our attempts to theorize, we need to welcome all the avail- able sources of information, from all available perspectives, tainted or not, and try to put them in balance.