Inspired by my recent reading of Jorgensen's How Audio Affects Player Action, I thought I might share a bit about my methodology for the "My Gaming Audio History" section of the blog. It's easy to read my writing about each game, but I wanted to explain what's involved behind creating an entry in the blog series.
A couple of months ago, when I first started getting the idea for writing about the music for games I'd played, I made a huge list of all the various games I could remember playing. At first, I just listed things I could think of off the top of my head, but then I consulted lists of games online, like this wiki list of Nintendo games to see if I'd missed any. Some games I haven't been able to identify or have had trouble deciding which version I knew. For example, one PC game I played in 3rd grade a lot was a game where you were a fish and swam around trying to avoid larger fish and eating smaller fish. Eventually you gained size. I don't remember much about it, most importantly the title, and would be curious to find what it was so I could listen the audio. I'm sure it'd come back to me, but I can't remember it well enough to find it now. There are also games that exist in various versions and where I played multiple versions (Number Munchers is one of these) and I've had to discern which version I know the best from watching gameplay videos. And then there are some games where I played them often and remember them well, but can't find any gameplay footage to hear what the audio was like, for instance, Chessmaster that ran on Win 95.
Once I had the master game list, which was initially organized by gameplay medium (Atari, Arcade, PC, NES, Gameboy, SNES, Playstation, etc) I added US release dates and organized them accordingly so that the blogging would be chronological and I could see/hear/re-experience the progression of audio development through my gaming life. Of course, that's not to say that's the order I played them in, but it could be the order I played them in. Also, it's a natural progression through game audio development for an average US gamer. I've had a few games on the list that I've decided not to feature because I didn't play enough of them to remember very well. Donkey Kong is one of these. I probably played it once with friends, but most of my memories of it are from watching The King of Kong recently and doing research for this blog. Likewise, some games I remember a bit from commercials, hearing friends talk about them, or reading about them in Nintendo Power, but I didn't really play myself. These, I've decided not to feature. I'm deciding as I go through the list and re-watch the gameplay as to if they were games I was actually invested in or not, though I'm eliminating very few.
I tried really hard not to miss anything, but I went into school to do some research one afternoon a few weeks ago and was browsing some Nintendo Power Magazines (yes, UM is awesome enough to have some issues of Nintendo Power in the library!) and found a few games that I definitely played or watched friends play and completely forgot. Mickey Mousecapade is one of these, but I haven't decided yet whether or not to feature the audio because I only watched a friend beat it one time.... and don't remember it well. So then it fits into the above category of, did I know this well enough to really be influenced by the audio? Paperboy on the NES is another game that I played a bit with a friend and remember a few minutes of, but I didn't own it or play it often, and when I re-watched the gameplay, there's so little audio that I decided to simply leave it out.
Once I've decided to work on a particular game, I often play a bit of it, or even play it all the way through, if I have it on a console I can play. Whether or not I have access to it now, I watch a video of gameplay online. I particularly enjoy non-perfect gameplay as this allows me to hear the sounds of injury, death, and possibly even a game over. I also listen through to the soundtracks and try to consider the lengths of the tracks versus the lengths that they're heard during gameplay. How do sound effects come into the gameplay? What roles do they play? What happens to the music during sound effects? At some point (sometimes separately from my listening/watching process, but perhaps during this watching/listening process which I can repeat multiple times) I search for information about the composers of the games, interviews with them, lists of games they worked on, who they worked for, when they were active, what they're doing now, if they have websites, etc. Basically, what comes up on the internet when digging around for the game composers. Does the composer appear in the credits of the game? What sound job person does? Is any music borrowed from another source? If so, I give that a listen to and follow up on those paths. In some cases I link to that information in the My Gaming Audio History entry; in others, I save the link for a new series I'm planning to start on game composers. I also sometimes just find links to sites I want to study more thoroughly that'll be released under Game Music Online when I've combed them more carefully.
Once I've seen how the gameplay and audio work together, I get serious about the blogging aspect: I start a blog with my initial reaction to thinking about the game and write my (currently four) questions for each game: Who created the audio experience? What is the audio experience? How does the audio draw the player more deeply into the game? and lastly make notes about the musical relationships of the tracks, their lengths, and my reactions to hearing to them. As I do this, I have the audio playing through one device (often my computer, but I might airplay it through my surround sound system at home) and get out my iPad and put on GarageBand and play along on the keyboard with the music. I used to play through the music at my piano, but the sound system is better in the other room and I more often study there. Plus the iPad/computer method is mobile and I can do it anywhere, versus needing a piano around. I play the melodies and bass lines, any inner voices that catch my attention, and think about the chords/ harmonic progression of the music. If the game exists in multiple versions, I listen to several of these to get a feel for what the change in system did to the audio. One reason I love these "Let's Compare" videos. This will also get interesting when I get to games like Final Fantasy, where I played the original as well as the remake, which has vastly updated (improved?) audio. While I'm doing this, I try to get into the mind of the composer. What was s/he thinking as this music was written? How is the music constructed?
This process can take 3-4 hours for just a short game with ten minutes of audio. It's a huge time commitment, but it's eye opening to hear these pieces now after all my formal training and really apply my musical ear and mind to them. At first I was thinking this would be a quick project that took a few weeks/months. Now I'm realizing that this audio history is a multi-year long term project. I'm all the more excited by it, but am just now taking in the scope. And the games will only get more complex and take more time to digest as the audio gets more complicated. So each entry will take more time to complete. Of course, I'm also getting more efficient with the process as I work as well, but that'll be well outweighed by the increase in music from 7 minutes per game to several hours per game. Hope you're enjoying, especially now that you know a little more about how I'm working!
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