We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Well, I started a study in an attempt to refute with a degree of statistical certainty, but then I calculated the scope of the work involved, and it was not trivial in the least. It’d take weeks. Ain’t nobody got time for that (okay, someone out there surely does, but I’m not getting paid for this).

Then I started a different approach by conducting a literature survey, particularly looking at what various game music-related people said at various times. In context, a lot of these things they said were partly what they might have considered important to share with would-be game musicians. I do have a few sources with a number of such statements over the years*, but the scope was still too great and the gaps in materials even greater. To make matters more complicated, I got plenty of reminders that professional music people frequently outright contradict each other when it comes to opinions and interpretation of the exact same evidence. I mean, not that I need a reminder. I have Jeremy Soule as a “friend” on Facebook and that means I’m subscribed to the occasional (vague) commentary on actual pieces he did or YouTube link of inspiring classical music. But also to wacky trollposts and open letters to the DPRK to please not use his music for bad ends. Sometimes I notice other game industry composers commenting on these statuses, like when they don’t agree. Anyway, it was an interesting exercise in comparison and contrast, but to fully explore this and share the results would involve pasting an uncomfortable amount of text verbatim, which I don’t think the publishers/authors would necessarily appreciate. Plus some of them didn’t even give much of a hint about their own philosophy of integrating music with other kinds of sound.

Then I just sat down in a corner sucking my thumb because I have a fragile ego and I’m out of my depth anyway. Okay, actually I was glued to Fallen London and also dealing with a lot of bad shit at home, but it’s not a completely inaccurate way of expressing my sentiments.

* Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus (1994, Sams Publishing) ch. 10 by John W. Ratcliff, which is mostly concerned with how to code working MIDI playback, which was kind of a disaster to get working in DOS, but it also contains an amount of speculation and pontification on matters of why and how to use music in games, and a short part where The Fat Man (George Sanger) discusses his take on the same, which section was sneakily taken from a part of a Dr. Dobb’s Journal article Ratcliff did and is now available online [url=]thanks to the Canadian government; Game Design: Secrets of the Sages Second Edition (2000, Brady Publishing) ch. 14 has short distillations of interviews with Chance Thomas, The Fat Man, Tommy Tallarico, Bobby Prince, Michael Land, Kelly Bailey, Ellen Meijers–Gabriel, and Andrew Barnabas; Keeping Score: Interviews with Today's Top Film, Television, and Game Music Composers (2009, Course Technology PTR) has interviews with Marty O’Donnell, Winifred Phillips, Inon Zur, Chris Velasco, Jesper Kyd, and Jason Graves but the focus seemed more for fans of soundtrack music rather than advice. Despite the differences in approaches, all of these were very present-focused and would be good things to read and compare to each other for anyone interested in the history of video game music.