next »

[rewgs]

Professional composer here. I've contributed to a number of games, from indie to AAA, as well as many movies, TV shows, ads, music libraries, etc. Over the past couple of years I've focused more and more on scoring for games, while excluding other mediums. It's my favorite medium to compose for, and game developers are, as a general group, some of the coolest people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting and working with.

But unless a dev has worked with a composer on multiple shipped titles, I've found that generally there's a huge knowledge gap in regards to what a composer even does and how they make it happen. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I'm always more than happy to educate them on the subject so that we can collaborate a little more smoothly--I don't know plenty of stuff that they know, and if they haven't worked with a composer before I can't expect them to know how these things work--so I'm not coming at this from a cocky "jeez you idiots" sort of standpoint at all.

But there's a few things that I simply don't understand, and are proving to be serious road blocks. I'm having trouble getting through to devs on these few points and would like to talk to others about why these things happen.

1) Why do devs want multiple composers?
I'd say that a solid 50% of the time that I start working with a new dev/dev team, they want multiple composers for their game. I thought that maybe it's because they're used to needing multiple people for other positions/departments (multiple programmers, artists, etc), but every time I've asked, I haven't really gotten a clear answer.

Frankly, I absolutely hate collaborating with other composers unless it's one of my close composer friends. We can drive to each other's studio and collaborate in real time. But even then, it doesn't really work well--like most game composers, I'd rather collaborate with writers, programmers, artists. That's the meat of the challenge and the fun--working with others, skilled in other disciplines, in order to create a piece of work that is greater than the sum of its parts. If I wanted to collaborate with other musicians during the writing process, I'd start a band.

Over the internet and/or with people I don't even know, collaboration just isn't really possible or even desirable if your goal is to make a really great score. Often a dev will say (usually after a lot of other discussions and negotations), "Here's ___, the other composer on the game. Get to it!" At this point I just politely decline, unfortunately. I've tried working it out before but it just doesn't work.

We all use different synths, sample libraries, plugins. We have different voices and musical tendencies--sure, other sound designers and artists do too, but those mediums tend to "mask" differences between contributors a little better. And passing a Photoshop or Unity or Visual Studio project between team members is much less of a headache than passing a DAW file over to someone, only to realize you'll need to either invest in a bunch of new gear or print everything to audio (making the flexibility of MIDI pointless).

In order to keep the music consistent (both musically and sonically), as well as emotionally impactful, an effective score needs a singular voice at the wheel, even if it's just a lead composer with multiple composers working under him or her (a totally valid way of organizing multiple composers, and one I'm happy to be a part of, either as the lead or not).

9 times out of 10, the dev wants me to collaborate with their friend who is a far less experienced or even completely inexperienced composer. Why wouldn't they just hire their friend, or just hire the more experienced composer--why try to get both to work together? I understand trying to work with your friend, even if he or she is inexperienced. I also understand foregoing a friend in favor of working with a pro. But how anyone can think that those two people could ever collaborate is beyond me.

I end up turning down a lot of projects due to this phenomenon. Yes, I've tried doing it and approaching it with an open mind, but it just never works. At this point it's just a red flag, but I'm running into a lot of these red flags. Hence this post.

2) Why do you look at a game's score as just a collection of tracks, rather than as a singular body of work?
Along the same lines, I'm often asked to write a track. Just one track. And then multiple other composers will do the same. And then the music will just be thrown in there, stereo mixes, looping. This, to me, is not a game score I'm interested in being a part of--it's more like a compilation album that has been licensed for use in a game. Again, totally fine and valid--tons of great games have had great music like this--but that's the exception, not the rule, and tends to only support games in which story is either unimportant or nonexistent (racing and sports games come to mind).

When the tracks are made not just by multiple people, but also made without the goal of serving as a cohesive score, this only ends up seriously exaggerating the issues I outlined in question 1, and it also completely the negates the reason why so many composers have dedicated their lives to composing music for games:

We're excited about writing interactive music!

I can only speak for myself here, but I'm sure I'm not alone: the reason I enjoy writing music for games is because it's endlessly interesting. I can dig in to a project for months or even years at a time (as opposed to maybe two months at a time, max, on a feature film--it goes with the territory, but being able to spend more time on a body of work is always more appealing), develop interactive concepts unique to that game, kill two birds with one stone by implementing the music myself (stone 1: I can deliver a more fully-realized score with highly sophisticated interactivity, tailor-designed for the game; stone 2: devs don't have to deal with it and can focus on other stuff that they care more about), and step away knowing that I've done my best and done my part to make the devs and the audience happy--at least with regard to the small part that I've contributed to a project that's bigger than me. It's humbling, intellectually and emotionally stimulating, always-evolving, challenging, and fun.

If I just wanted to write singular tracks, I'd be writing standalone albums, "music for music's sake," starting a band, writing concert music, even scoring ads. There's a reason that I'm in games, and I know that many, many other composers feel the same way.

3) In line with the last question: why work with so many different composers to score your gameplay trailers/dev vlogs/etc, only to end up hiring a single one for the game itself?
One could argue that they're trying out different composers--I've never heard it put this way, but I suppose it's possible and definitely a smart thing to do if they're transparent about it--but usually only ever licensing tracks, not commissioning original music. The way I see it, these early showcases could be used as a time to experiment, and to  hone in on the sound of the score before the composer truly begins writing what will end up being the final score. At best, this practice is not-so-great use of time, and at worst, very dishonest.

To be clear, this is not a jab at anyone and I don't mean to be insulting in any way. It's just that this is a problem I've been running into more and more, and unlike the "usual" problems of scoring games, these are issues I just can't get around and can't figure out where they come from.

Thanks for reading all, and hopefully this can lead to a productive discussion