2023-05-08 04:31:58
Recently the film adaptation of Super Mario Bros it took most fans back to the time when coming home from school and playing Nintendo was an inescapable routine, a nostalgic effect achieved thanks to the presence of the plumbers, of course, but above all to the fact that the soundtrack of the film, composed by Brian Tyler, included the original music of the video game, composed by Kôji Kondô, who for this opportunity worked hand in hand with Tyler.
And it is that, although it is true that the first video games did not have sound, it is also true that very soon the developers understood that this form of entertainment had the power to excite not only vision and touch, but also hearing, because With it they began to give the players feedback on what was happening during each game, generating sensations of victory or defeat, trying to allude a bit to what happened in the film industry when a scene was sad and deep down. a melody appeared that sought to generate the same emotion or create similar associations among the spectators.
However, according to Miguel Sierra, audio producer and musical creative at PolygonUs, when this new element appeared in video games, the consoles or cartridges in which they were stored limited them, since they could only hold up to one megabyte of information, In other words, both the image and the sound arose within a code that, together, did not exceed that weight, which with respect to music shortened all the possibilities since it was generally monophonic, cyclical or was used only at the beginning or at the end of each game.
As technology advanced and the capacity of storage and processing devices increased, composers had more options: they were able to include orchestrations, formats and sound effects where several instruments flowed at the same time, because at one point they intersected the barrier between electronic music programmed by code and the music that is currently consumed, recorded on cassettes, CDs or LPs, allowing everything to be done in terms of style, capacity, size, instruments, formats and genres to accompany a video game
“Those stages can be categorized from different eras: the one-bit era, in the early days of computing exploration, with Pong, which had a single rudimentary sound, very similar to the famous “error” sound; the 8-bit one with the iconic sounds of Super Mario Bros; the 16-bit one with Super Nintendo and the legendary Final Fantasy soundtrack; and the one of 24 and 32 bits, which is the current one, with soundtracks like that of Ori o la de God of War”, explain the sound engineer Juan Pablo Montoya Correa from Zenith Infinitive and the musician from the Colombian School of Audio and Sound Ronald Eduardo Acevedo.
At this point it is important to clarify that music for videogames is not a genre but a classification, a category called “nonlinear audio” that in its nature is for advanced thinking and that, without exception, is aligned to the development of software. In addition, among its most notable characteristics is that it cannot tire the player and that it must have a sophisticated randomization intelligent enough to evolve within the story, capturing the attention and immersing the player in the narrative, which is achieved through some middleware that promote the fusion between digital linear audio workstations and programming.
Now, music in video games shares exactly the same technical, quality and stylistic characteristics of a Hollywood production for a movie or for a super artist who wants to win a Grammy or who wants to fill stadiums. It must be approached in the same way, and depending on the budget, you will achieve the best sound result possible, recording instruments, voices, sound effects and environments, which are the elements that make up your soundtracks, which in themselves have two characteristics. main ones: interactivity and adaptability.
“A song you listen to on Spotify by artist X is the same from start to finish,” says Sierra. As a user of the song, you can vary the volume or stop it and that will not alter its content at all. In video games we have many moments happening, victories, defeats, places, emotions that are happening on the screen and that the user is the one that is triggering them through their decisions, well, the composers and the programmers managed to find a bridge where the music it’s reactive to that kind of thing. That’s where interactivity is evident.”
On the other hand, adaptability happens when, for example, you are playing Mario Kart on a track that contains sand and water, and when the car enters the water, the song that was playing on the sand surface undergoes a sound change and is heard as if it were actually underwater. This has a lot to do with the creative decisions of the art and audio directors, because those decisions establish the feedback that they are going to give to the user and what will be the best resource to maximize the emotion that is happening at that moment in screen.
How do you make music for a video game?
There are two industries that are dedicated to it: the AAA industry and the indie industry, which differ in budget, time and freedom of expression, however, the processes are quite similar to each other, as detailed by Montoya and Acevedo:
Preproduction: Here the game is conceptualized, script studies, budgets, scopes are made, the required documentation regarding copyright is generated, the creative pillars are defined, the GDD (Game Design Document) is studied and established, defines the organology according to history, the period, the software, the instruments and the technology to be used, the sound levels and platforms are clarified, and scores are composed and created for both linear scenes and interactive gameplay.
Production of the material: The recordings are started, they are edited, the structures are sequenced and they are prepared and encoded in order to deliver all the sound material to the producers, to the gamer designer and to the programmers or to the technical personnel of audio programming (Technical Sound Designer ).
Hardware integration: Everything that was done in the previous phase is programmed and captured within the videogame, and the mixing process is carried out, which consists of volume leveling, the organization of the panorama and the reaction to the user interface and the controls of the player.
Quality assurance and room design: It is played to detect errors and to verify compatibility with other audio families (voices, effects), bugs, technical needs and production requirements are also corrected.
Closing of the project: Final documentation, behind the scenes, and post mortem documents (lessons learned documents) are organized.
“Music in video games helps to maximize feelings, reinforces the narrative, enhances the story being told, makes visible what is not seen, what is off the screen, awakens emotions through a tray of infinite possibilities, yes de transports us to different and unimaginable spaces: a world of crystal, another of fire or an arcane one, which is the concept of combining magic with technology, antiquity and mysticism. For us it is 50% of the experience: what would a horror scene be without sound?
In other words, the power of music in video games is a narrative and evocative power that brings emotions to the experience. “Right now there is a very strong boom with the film of Super Mario Bros because it is super evocative from music, and I think that is the greatest power it has, that it takes you back 30 years in time, to when you listened to those melodies and were happy”, concludes the PolygonUs audio producer.
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