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[Pete301]

Hello guys,

Here is the question...

Why is composition in games so over-saturated? Why aren't there a load of artists and designers that are struggling to find work in this industry? (maybe there are, I only see the music side of things )

Is it purely because most game projects only require 1 composer, when they require multiple of everyone else? Is it too costly to hire more than one composer for a project if there isn't going to be an improvement of quality?

Am I answering my own question? (maybe)

I would like to hear other peoples thoughts on it though.

I seem to be making a lot of threads, but i find this forum so useful, and wonderful

[rj]

a lot of reasons

part of it is overconfidence
part of it is fauxrchestra soundbanks
part of it is people think music is easier to get into than other stuff

etc

[ZackParrish]

^

[WittyNotes]

What's already been said, but I would add...

Part of it is a current low standard in industry music standards. Especially in the games industry, music tends to be thought of as purely background, definitely not as important as graphics, or art style.  Most game producers don't really have an ear for music, and something that just generally fits the theme of a level is easily considered "Good Enough".

Or... maybe I'm just crazy? Thoughts?

[ZackParrish]

In some cases I can agree with that... when they are using stock music or 'free' composers who are just trying to get a demo reel of actual projects lined up. The other stains in the industry are the 'friends' that get the gigs out of sheer convenience to the developer. They generally have no idea what they're doing, and it shows in the music they produce. Then voila... mediocre soundtrack for a game that deserves much more.

Then lastly you have the norm in AAA games which is over the top Hans Zimmer style hollywood orchestra sound... it's getting a bit stale. Tired of hearing it... seems like originality was thrown out the window in favor of redundant styles.

There is no real definitive answer to any of this, just lots of different factors that all contribute to it.

There is also the fact that people seem to think this is a field that makes lots of money because they hear how much some of us charge for full rights... and sure, yeah... one game MAY make you a lot if you do ALL of the music at those rates... but that's seldom the case and you usually wind up having to stack on project after project just to make ends meet sometimes. Fun times...

[Jasmine]

Then lastly you have the norm in AAA games which is over the top Hans Zimmer style hollywood orchestra sound... it's getting a bit stale. Tired of hearing it... seems like originality was thrown out the window in favor of redundant styles.

^ This.

Not that it happens to be a contributing factor, but I have a similar mentality towards the Hans Zimmers of our era (though the rant can be saved for another thread).

---

As far as oversaturation, I've also wondered this myself. A part of me thinks the reason for the overflow of game composers is an overflux of games.

I believe that there are just as many... amateur artists out there as is musicians, except musicians can get away with far more (in terms of quality).

It could also be the compositional dynamic. I have yet to come across a forum where an artist offers their services for free, in droves.

Also, agreeing with Witty, low standards.

Not going to lie, I was (and in a way, am) one of the bunch.

Perhaps we have put ourselves in a position to be thought of as disposable. In addition to game developers having little clue about how they want the music to help mold the game (as Zack said), they simply want to stick it in. To make matters worse, they are able to find composers with music that serves to do just that.
Since music is more akin to disposable boxers, it shouldn't be held to a high standard.

Therefore, anyone can create music, regardless of whether it is ill-fitting or no, and become a pokemon master John Williams.

But I mean... as composers, everyone thinks that what they make has potential. We all aspire to do great things, and create great music. Who am I, or anyone else for that matter, to tell someone they shouldn't compose game music, or to give up their dream and make room for someone more talented?

I have a small problem with saying some composers have "low-standards" because usually, when someone composes a piece of music, they are putting their heart into it. For them, they may not sound as professional as some of the higher ups, but compositionally, they are sound.

Does that set the standard?

Or, is a top-notch sound, despite a generic and stagnant style, the way to go?

If #2 serves as a standard for compositional "professionalism", and being a key ingredient to overriding the saturation, I might as well throw my computer out the window.

So I mean, what is the standard?

[Twin Cannibal]

A lot of people think they make great music that isn't actually that great and a lot of developers don't know the difference between the good, bad, or plain jane mediocre. If you have an excess of musicians that are good, but not exactly made for game audio, but they have the right connections, you'll typically get subpar game music.

Also, many developers aren't willing to take risks, musically, in this medium. I've had "oh, just make something that sounds like

• " a LOT of times. I've actually never heard anyone say "make whatever you want and we'll take it from there."

Anybody can write a song, but not everyone can write a film score.

[Pete301]

Also, many developers aren't willing to take risks, musically, in this medium. I've had "oh, just make something that sounds like

• " a LOT of times.

This is very disappointing to hear, I feel like there is an urgent need for developers to start investing more time and effort into finding the correct sound. Maybe this is also a contributing factor to why we have so many 'Hans Zimmer' over the top soundtracks.

I really enjoy a lot of Indie game soundtracks, because they seem to have a lot of passion in them and they often suit the game, the likes of Reus, and Sword and Sworcery have great original soundtracks that fit the games wonderfully. I feel like the over the top orchestral scores that are prevalent in a lot (not all) of AAA games are a bad habit picked up from film scores.

I know that some big developers/publishers have positions dedicated to finding the correct music for a game, and I think this needs to be praised and encouraged.



What are your thoughts on what the public perceive as a good soundtrack? I know I really enjoy games with great soundtracks, but is there a factor that developers know a game won't need an incredibly original soundtrack because the public have already bought into the franchise or they think the music won't contribute to many sales. Therefore they don't spend a lot of money if they don't think they will get a reasonable return on it?

Cases that I would mention are the likes of sequels (maybe Call Of Duty). If a game has as much of a franchise and following as CoD, would it make business sense to hire a great composer and spend a lot of time trying to make a great soundtrack to accompany the game, or will 'just another FPS' get the same amount of sales?

I guess in my eyes it could come to a point where a game has a big following and the developers have two options. They could try to make as much money from the franchise and spend as little effort as possible, or they could spend a lot of time trying to create new IP and be creative but it may not work out. Because a lot of higher ups in big businesses aren't developers any more, from their point of view they will want to go with the easier option of, less effort, guaranteed money.

EDIT:

Sorry I went a bit off-topic, the point I wanted to make is that if the developers don't believe the game requires a great soundtrack, can they just re-use the original composer for sequels, or worse, re-use music from previous games? Throwing less money into the music is obviously going to have a knock-on effect to mean composers need to be involved in more games to earn their living.

[Jasmine]

What are your thoughts on what the public perceive as a good soundtrack? I know I really enjoy games with great soundtracks, but is there a factor that developers know a game won't need an incredibly original soundtrack because the public have already bought into the franchise or they think the music won't contribute to many sales. Therefore they don't spend a lot of money if they don't think they will get a reasonable return on it?

Well, I feel as if that would be hard to gauge since music is subjective. There are certain soundtracks that people believe are "Meh", while another person may think it's downright ingenious. Take, for example, the Earthbound soundtrack. I think that soundtrack is highly innovative and thoroughly original but, there are many people that would otherwise say that ... it's crap.

But, in response to what majority of people prefer, I think they respond to what is generally accepted in popular culture. Anything tonal, syncopated, easy to follow. Make a soundtrack with dubstep, despite it fitting the scene of the game, and it's a win.

Now, as far as "original" soundtracks vs affordability, I would definitely take your point into account. If someone is developing a FPS, they may think that music is the least important facet of the game anyway, since many people may not listen to music while they play CoD.

I mean, if a CoD clone did put effort into the music, I wonder how much it would effect sales.

Take NeoTokyo for instance:

AHMAZING SOUNDTRACK.
I tried searching for playthroughs that showcased the music whilst in game and almost had a fit.
(or, I could just be horrible at interneting)

I have yet to hear someone say...

"Dude, did you hear that Halo score? TOTES BUYING THE GAME NOW."

The thing about game music, though, is that we can't, or rather it shouldn't be, our focus to create music to appease the crowd. It should be music that moves and gives a voice, another color, to the game.

Well, what I believe, anyway!

[Oguz]

I agree with many of the comments above. It seems like this over saturation is a combination of distinct problems.

On the one hand we have the issue where usually only one composer works in a project, no matter how big, and usually there are several people of every other duty (although in very big projects the composer usually ends up hiring other people for help). This means that for all composers to find work, there should be a multitude of projects per composer.

On the other hand, like others have said above, there is the loss of meritocracy in game composing, or media composing in general since anyone with a laptop can practically call themselves a composer nowadays. This becomes painfully problematic in the case of game music because it's not really a genre in itself; in comparison, a "film composer" is more expected to work, or at least be familiar with the orchestral vocabulary, and expected to produce scores that is possible to be performed by real orchestras (not always, of course, but in general), whereas in game music, the content of "orchestral" music can vary greatly. I'm not saying that every game soundtrack should be orchestral, far from it, it's just that there seems to be less specialisation and more of a jack-of-all-trades approach where a musician is expected to do just anything (even including fx), instead of being very good at one thing and doing that.

Additionally, there is the art of music that is constantly bleeding compared to other (usually more visual) art forms, which shows that music is becoming less and less important in general. A couple of examples:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/nov/28/alex-ross-modern-classical-music
http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2014/aug/18/future-new-music-composers-report-pay
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/03/five-lessons-the-faltering-music-industry-could-learn-from-tv.html

And of course the mobius strip of "working for free to get experience" that everyone surprisingly believes to be true, which becomes an endless, destructive loop.

So, in my opinion, the combination of all these amplify the problem in an exponential way.

[ArnoldSavary]

Then lastly you have the norm in AAA games which is over the top Hans Zimmer style hollywood orchestra sound... it's getting a bit stale. Tired of hearing it... seems like originality was thrown out the window in favor of redundant styles.

Not that it happens to be a contributing factor, but I have a similar mentality towards the Hans Zimmers of our era (though the rant can be saved for another thread).

This is very disappointing to hear, I feel like there is an urgent need for developers to start investing more time and effort into finding the correct sound. Maybe this is also a contributing factor to why we have so many 'Hans Zimmer' over the top soundtracks.

So much Hans Zimmer bashing ITT. 
I'm not sure why you'd pick so versatile a composer to talk about lack of originality. Usually when talking about a Hans Zimmer-like soundtrack people are referring to the Dark Knight / Inception era, and both scores were the result of a lot of experimentation and research, and frankly quite new and provocative (take the "one-note theme" the Joker has in the Dark Knight. I don't think many composers would have had the balls to say to Nolan "okay, so the Joker's theme will be this one note" [insert slow glissando screech]). True, some of his scores have been way less imaginative (Crysis 2 particularly striked me as self-parodic) but if the amateur composers you're talking about actually did compose and produce like Zimmer the world of video games music would be a much better place.

I know y'all didn't mean it like that though.

Also, chiptune is the new fauxrchestra. 

[Jasmine]

I'm not sure why you'd pick so versatile a composer to talk about lack of originality.

No, not at all! Hans Zimmer is a fantastic composer - There's a reason why he scores almost every movie known to man.
I grow tired of composers feeling as though emulating his style for trailers, or orchestral soundtracks, is... well... mandatory!
There are more ways to emphasize tension outside of glissandos and deep, earth shattering hits.

Plus, I don't know -- it makes me feel as though, rather than trying to discover their own style, they are opting to copy someone else's.

Ultimately, it's kind of like a song on the radio.

Despite it being a great tune, if it's played over and over, it will lose its appeal.

I'm not at all bashing Hans, though. I mean, the music he wrote for 12 Years a Slave was fantastic! I'm just tired of the clones.

[ZackParrish]

I wrote a response, and then deleted it. Tired of all the clashing opinions that lead to endless debates. I think I'm going to make this my official retirement from chiming in with my opinion.

[rj]

Also, chiptune is the new fauxrchestra. 

gonna single this out because i strongly don't agree!

chiptune totally 100% forces your composition to be front and center. by the nature of the beast you can't bullshit around with production to fake people out into thinking your badly-arranged fake orchestra sounds good; chiptunes are naked music. as a result, it's way easier to tell if someone knows what the fuck they're doing or not

just my two cents

[Sik]

I think that was more in reference to how that style is being overused (and seriously, most indie games use NES-styled chiptunes even in cases where it would not fit the game aesthetics at all).

[rj]

"overuse" is non-existent

nothing is ever "overused"

something might be used poorly or done poorly

but an aesthetic or genre is never inherently over or underused

making an indie pixel puzzle platformer with a gimmick mechanic does not inherently mean that the game is bad or that the idea is bad. you can't overdo something.

you can do something badly.

fauxrchestra (the bane of my existence) can even be done well

but it usually is not because most of the people that do it don't know how to arrange compositions for orchestra at all

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

the main thing is time. generally, it takes more time to make a game's code or its graphics than to make its soundtrack.

e.g. take a 3 year game project. the coding might take 3 years. the art might take 2 and a half years or 2 years. but the music? you can do the music for a 3 year game project in 3 months.

that means even if there were an *equal* number of programmers, artists, and musicians, the musicians will be oversaturated, because there's not much demand for their time

or to put it another way:

in a 10 year span of time, a programmer can code maybe 5 big games. an artist can do the art for maybe 7 game projects. but a musician, during that time, can do the soundtracks for 40 to 50 games.

[rj]

this is also accurate

[Tyler]

Another point to consider, technology has allowed anyone with the right tools to be a "composer". How many of these so called composers understand orchestration or have actually written real sheet music for these instruments? Samples allow you to write anything and DAWs erase the need to understand notation or have your music performed by real people playing instruments.

I've even seen the effects of this in real life sessions. One session I played on in Nashville consisted of music entirely composed in a DAW and the midi data exported into sheet music. Firstly, there was no dynamics or articulation. Also, the music was completely unplayable. But it probably sounded ok in the Logic playback.

[Kyle Preston]

DAWs erase the need to understand notation or have your music performed by real people playing instruments

I couldn't disagree more. There will probably always be a need for real people playing instruments; music is a very primal thing for us and until we taught ourselves how to read and write (recent in terms of our evolution), it was solely preserved through live playing, much like how stories were passed down orally. A lot of people, maybe not the average listener, but a lot of people I interact with can tell the difference, sonically speaking, between a John Williams recording with a live orchestra and a series of midi file-driven plugins assembled in a clever way.

I seriously doubt that I'm a rare case, but based on my own experience, I'm living proof that several of your statements are totally false. Until recently, I never properly learned how to write music; I played trumpet in high school (mostly played off of those around me and didn't read the music), piano as well and have been in bands all of my life; I've 'written' and recorded music primarily by my ears, memory and taste. A few months ago, I started realizing the limits of my abilities due to my lack of proper music education.  Because of this, it became a serious goal of mine to remove this ignorance and learn as much theory as my will power allows.  I've read some helpful books (Norton Manual of Music Notation, Composer's Guide To Game Music), spent a lot of time on great sites (Dave Conservatoire, Khan Academy, Coursera) and have learned a lot about my limitations and how to work through them.  Not being able to write wasn't a barrier for me for to tell the difference between what happens when a room full of professional musicians play a piece of music together from the way a talented music school composer wonderfully crafts a song through software.  There are countless examples of both of these methods executed beautifully. I have always appreciated and valued what 3 live Cellists can do over my silly plugins, which is part of the reason why I get excited to see live orchestral performances. But as a counter-example to your comment, DAWs have helped and inspired me to properly learn how to authentically read and write music on the staff (and I'm not alone) because it is SO much more fun to write notes on a staff using common terminology and symbols (crescendos, slurs, etc) then drawing notes on a midi-excel sheet and calling it written music, although to be fair, I've met several people who do it this way and make fantastic music.

technology has allowed anyone with the right tools to be a "composer"

You say this like it's a bad thing.  If anything, it forces us as composers to be better and more creative. I think it was Austin Wintory I heard in an interview saying that 'cream will always rise' and he's right. The tools are just tools (which are amazing in and of themselves), but it's what we do with them that makes them interesting. If it's true that more musicians having tools to write music with makes it harder for you and I to get a job, then so be it.  If the person hiring can't tell the difference, then are you sure you want to work for them?

Anyway, this was one personal anecdote. But you've made a lot of distorted assumptions in your comment, and you've also implied that 'real' composers all require the skills of a group of live session players, which isn't always the case. I only hope that the sessions you witnessed were used as learning experiences for the composers involved.  Either way, mistakes happen and it doesn't make them incapable of writing music for games or film.