As with film, television, and other primarily visual
mediums, sound and music are often the forgotten elements in video game
design. That may be because sound affects you with more subtly than do
splashy visuals or hyperspeedy gameplay. In fact, oftentimes the mark of
superior sound design is that you don't consciously notice it at all.
Instead, it goes to work on you subconsciously--heightening tension,
manipulating the mood, and drawing you into the gameworld faintly but
inexorably.
Consider the ominous ambient sounds of Resident Evil, the effects of
which compound the tension and horror as you happen upon those relentless
zombies chewing up your Alpha Team comrades. Even early games like Space
Invaders earned much of their addictive appeal by getting into your head
with thumping, repetitive sound schemes. As the aliens got faster and
closer, the music got faster and louder. Properly designed, sound and
visual cues work together to produce an experience greater than the sum of
their parts.
Dedicated gamers have come to appreciate just how integral good sound
and music can be to the overall gameplay experience. Early arcade classics
such as Pac-Man and Defender relied on superb digital sound schemes to
provide us with ditties, melodies, beeps, and buzzes we'd never heard
before. With the introduction of the 16-bit and 32-bit eras and with the
expanded storage capabilities of CD-ROM, video game music moved into the
realm of true composition. Video game soundtracks now constitute their own
category in music outlets both online and off. Mainstream
cross-pollination continues as well, from "Pac-Man Fever" to the recent
phenomenon of techno and rock artists who contribute to game soundtracks.
In 2000, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS)
decided to let interactive games compete in the annual Grammy awards.
Individual proponents within the game music industry are lobbying for a
video game-specific category in the future. So far, however, no organized
lobbying group has come forward, according to a NARAS spokesperson. As it
stands now, individual composers or record labels can submit video game
soundtrack music independently in one of three general categories: Best
Soundtrack Album; Best Song; or Best Instrumental Composition for a Motion
Picture, Television, or Other Visual Media.
As technology progresses and as overall game design continues to
evolve, video game music promises to be a fertile area of development and
growth.
The
very first video games, alas, had no sound component whatsoever. In 1958,
William Higinbotham, an engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a US
nuclear research facility, fashioned a crude tennis-type game on an
oscilloscope. Five years later, Spacewar--MIT student Steve Russell's
protogame--featured two dueling spaceships controlled by toggle switches.
It was created on the hulking PDP-1 computer, a $120,000 mainframe the
size of a Buick. Both, however, were silent.
Eventually, things started getting interesting. So join us now for a
leisurely "scroll" down a Brief Timeline of Video Game Sound and Music.
Special thanks to Steven Kent, author of The First Quarter: A
25-Year History of Video Games and Donald A. Thomas, Webmaster of the
online video game museum I.C. When (www.icwhen.com.)
