Game Music Connect: The Next Generation – Microsoft and Sony Talk About Platforms and Music

Despite the war between XBox One and PlayStation 4 heating up, inaugural international video game music symposium Game Music Connect brought representatives from Microsoft and Sony together on stage to talk about a platform’s role in nurturing game music. Audio Directors (AD) Paul Lipson (Microsoft Studios) and Alastair Lindsay (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) continued to talk about their roles as ADs from the previous session, but also about what responsibilities they have working for two companies that specifically push gaming technology.

This evolving technology, to them, gives upwards opportunities to express things musically, as narrative in games is already doing so.

Scoring the Standard

As Sony and Microsoft are both at the forefront of advancing video games technology, means that there’s a standard of quality that needs to be maintained. Both Lipson and Lindsay are the guardians of such standards concerning video game music, working directly with titles being released exclusively through their platform.

Being able to compose their own top class music is essential background for their roles. Indeed, both Lipson and Lindsay still work as composers for both studios, with Lipson in particular having recently broken the record for most original amount of music in a video game, composing and recording 400 minutes of unique original music for upcoming Kinect title, Disneyland Adventures.

Middle Eight Middle Men

Being active composers as well as ADs, gives them the empathy needed when acting as middle men between the directors of the title being developed and hired composers. Having direct experience of composing for video games themselves means they know what issues to expect and how to deal with them. Lindsay, for example, is working with Moonbot Studios and jazz composer, Jim Fowler, on the Wonderbook fairytale noir title Diggs Nightcrawler.

But as well with working directly on titles coming out on their respective platforms, Lipson and Lindsay also work with games brought onboard later in development to ensure their quality. Lipson readily admits that in these cases, if music quality isn’t up to scratch, he’ll send away for the entire game to be re-scored.

Audio Director Alastair Lindsay and composer Jim Fowler on the music for Diggs Nightcrawler.

Whilst this may seem harsh and a world away from the ethos of the increasing impact of indie games, Lindsay supports such an approach because they’re a big brand. He feels that, because their already pushing technology, there’s no reason why the shouldn’t also push music quality, making such actions unfortunate but necessary.

Because of this, both stress the importance of working closely with titles from a very early stage, to avoid such action being taken.

A Score For All TV Seasons

As the concerns about big name film composers being brought in had already been raised by composers previously, chair, John Broomhall, took the opportunities to gauge the opinion of these two ADs on the issue, and whether they would allow it to happen.

As a video game’s longitudinal narrative is not unlike that of a TV series, this may well be the medium that games might soon look to for musical inspiration.

Lindsay is not wholly against the idea, but would only want to work with the likes of Danny Elfman or Hans Zimmer if it actually added value to the game. Otherwise he’s against getting a big name involved just for the sake of it.

On the other hand, both Lindsay and Lipson agree that working with TV composers, which they already do in some cases, might actually be the way forward. This is because they’re already adept at expressing the same theme or music style in various ways across a long period of time, i.e. the length of a season, or a show’s entire run. As a video game’s longitudinal narrative is not unlike that of a TV series, this may well be the medium that games might soon look to for musical inspiration.