From early synthesizer technology, which generated a form of music known as ‘chiptunes’ — electronic music made from sound chips of vintage arcade machines to incorporating symphonic orchestral pieces in the games, music in gaming has come a long way. Previously considered to be a trivial component, gaming music is now a flourishing industry in itself. It has seen a tremendous rise in the complexity and details of the soundtrack along with the gameplay, narrative and visual effects.
While providing an enthralling gaming experience, music plays a huge role in establishing the mood and atmosphere of the game, and building emotions. It subconsciously grows on you, subtly drawing you in till you’re completely immersed in the game!
Take, for instance, the recent Doom game. This first-person shooter game was a huge boom amongst players, much credited to its amazing soundtrack. There is perhaps no other sensation bigger than the adrenaline rush one experiences when Mick Gordon’s ‘Rip and Tear’ blasts in the background while he’s running around trying to escape from the infernal demons. Apart from the hard metal, the music that follows the aftermath of violence contrastingly, induces a sense of calm that’s much-needed for the player! Another example is The Last of Us soundtrack which sparks deep and raw emotions within us, as we experience and feel the lives of the fictional characters.
Tracing the origins of video games, we reach back to the 1970s when there were a plethora of people rushing towards amusement arcades. It was here that Koji Kondo, one of the most prominent Japanese musical composers, found his inspiration to create the iconic soundtracks of Nintendo domestic console games such as Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda. From the primitive bleeps and bloops heard in games like Pong, he took it several steps further by creating interactive gaming music whose instrumentation changed according to the changes in the surroundings of the game, elevating music to an unprecedented level in video game design! Even now, whenever the Mario game series is brought into the conversation, a lot of you surely start humming the theme song almost instantly. Such was its appeal and reach!
As technology progressed, the 8-bit era paved the way for the advent of 16-bit and 32-bit era and so on. In the 1990s, consoles grew in power and capacity so they could accommodate large-scale synthesized scores with symphonic power and sweep, like Nobuo Uematsu’s epic soundtracks for the Final Fantasy series. And by the turn of the 21st century, consoles could cope with samples and recordings of orchestral instruments as well as electronics, so that video game composers could write music on as ambitious a scale as any Hollywood film! From Halo to Assassin’s Creed – or Kristofer Maddigan’s music for Cuphead — a delicious 1930s-style jazz and cartoon-music confection that brings the game’s visuals, based on early animation, to surreally vivid life; the evolution, when traced back, seems unreal!
But the evolution of video game music isn’t just to do with improved technology. Another significant development is the creation of a new kind of interactive art-form, in which the score responds to what we do as players. An especially resonant example is Jessica Curry’s melancholic, pastoral score for Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, in which no two players experience the same music. Not only are parts of the score cued at different times, according to the player’s decisions, but at some places in the game, the music generates itself! This effectively means that the player’s actions determine the sequence of sounds they hear: the player becomes the composer!
Renowned composers like Hans Zimmer, who created the main themes for Modern Warfare 2, lent their name and talent to this growing genre of music too! With many award shows including a category for video game soundtrack and established artists featuring their work in games such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and FIFA, its popularity is surely on the rise.
From being merely an add-on in the whole process of creating a game to taking center stage in the gaming industry, soundtracks have indeed emerged to define the idea of modern gaming!
Written by Tulika Somani & Tanishk Thilakan
Chords & Co. 