You’ve nailed the perfect heist. You’ve stormed the villain’s lair and decimated a horde of henchmen. You’ve suffered the loss of a beloved character. When it comes to the components of a good video game, alongside fantastic graphics, involving plots and stellar characters, is there something that you’re not paying as much attention to?
Movies can be taken up a whole level by a brilliant soundtrack, and the music for games is equally important. Why is music so powerful in video games? Read on for our deep dive on the effect of music in video games, and some of its most celebrated composers.
Regular gamer? Bet you can hum composer Koji Kondo’s chirpy theme for Super Mario Bros, or recognise the cinematic score for Medal of Honour (composer Michael Giacchino later won an Oscar for his score for Up). Want a blockbuster feel? Look to the Halo franchise – its soundtrack is still the best-selling video game soundtrack of all time. The NFL’s Madden soundtracks have even become an annual event, with artists clamouring to be featured and often releasing tracks only available in-game.
But what would the gaming experience be like without these iconic soundtracks? They’d definitely be a lot less engaging and fun to play.
Early Video Games
During the 8-bit era, developers brought in composers to score the games – however, they were pretty simple (as were the games themselves, to be fair.) The move to 16-bit meant that games music could be more than catchy little jingles and use better quality music, with many using full orchestral arrangements.
Soundtracks changed forever, though, in the 64-bit era, when new tech capabilities enabled game designers to be more influenced by the movie industry. Game music emerged from the background and was used to drive forward the experience, by being integrated with each part of a game’s story and play.
In this new era, music could turn games into unforgettable experiences – and transport gamers to somewhere else entirely, immersing them fully into the world.
Music + Games = Global Success
When it comes to games with good music, Madden NFL has been building its reputation for a long time. And the President of EA Music, Steve Schnur, told EA.com that no-one should underestimate the impact of its soundtracks: ‘Over the past decades, Madden NFL has become a platform for fans to discover new music, launching new stars and establishing trends that have changed the way players play the game and how they experience NFL football itself.’ The soundtracks are innovative and, ‘connect gaming, football and music culture for the next generation.’
For their ground-breaking 2022 album, EA worked hand-in-hand with Interscope and their artists to create 11 custom songs from scratch, conceptualising, writing and ensuring the tracks worked on every level to fit – and elevate – the vibe of Madden NFL 22, which promises fresh experiences with every kick-off.
Good game music has to fit in with gameplay, as well as connecting with the visuals. When the two come together, it can really contribute to a game’s overall success. Video games composer Winifred Philips, who created the soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed: Liberations, and the original God of War, revealed that the energy levels and rhythm of the gameplay are particularly important to lock into:
‘Gameplay is, for a composer, very much a structure that we wrap our music around. There is an inherent energy level and a visual kinetic rhythm to gameplay that as a composer I try to pay very close attention to. If I’m doing my job correctly, my music is going to kind of jigsaw well into the overall visual rhythm of gameplay, it’s going to feel like it really marries well to the energy level and promotes the players’ immersion and involvement.’
How to Make Music for Video Games
When you’re watching a film, the story is linear. Shots are edited into a set order, accompanied by pre-defined musical cues. Within a game, however, the player is, to varying degrees, much more in control of how the story plays out. So the music needs to adapt to the player’s choices within the narrative.
Music in games, much like music in films, acts as a guide to the player. You’re not just watching out for visual cues, but also listening to the sound and music to see if there’s danger approaching. Are you in fight or flight mode? Is there time to just enjoy the world you’re in and wander around, as in Animal Crossing, guided by the sound of bees, or apples falling from trees?
A games music composer talks to the game’s developers about what emotions they want to evoke from the player and also, where possible, they play the latest version of the game to get a feel for it. Video game composer Grant Kirkhope told Mashable that, ‘the images tell the story, but the music tells you how to feel.’
Gareth Coker composed the soundtrack for 2020’s Ori and the Will of Wisps and stresses the importance of creating defined ‘moments’ for games players, when thinking about video game background music: ‘Having that differentiation between combat music and boss fight music and then regular gameplay music – and there being quite a wide dynamic range between all three of them – is the key to building an emotional experience. If you have everything at ten all the time, it’s just not going to register.’
With platform games, where you may have to try, try and try again to make it through each level, the music also provides an encouraging backdrop to keep players motivated. Games music can create the subliminal messages that you’re on the right track, or that something is about to change – i.e. that you’re progressing.
This is where it helps if a composer can play the game; a level may need far more music than you think, if it’s going to take hours to complete. The gamer doesn’t want to be hearing the same thing over and over, leading to a sense of monotony.
The Last of Us Soundscape
Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla has become famous worldwide for his distinctive soundtracks for The Last of Us games. For the second game, as well as the ronroco (an Andean instrument like a mandolin) and the Fender bass and acoustic guitar he’d used to create the themes for the first part, he brought in a banjo to create a new element, tying into the game’s American setting.
He discusses the similarities between composing for games and movies (he took home an Oscar for his original score for Brokeback Mountain) and the thinking behind his choice of instruments for The Last of Us.
Santaolalla highlights the fact that, as a games music composer, you’re tasked with creating many hours of music – not all of which may be used.
Plus, as Gramophone highlights, ‘compositions today are primarily interactive: composers cannot know in advance how players will react – each will have a different approach. This entails complex work with audio tracks; whether it’s menacing layers of strings that glide into the soundtrack when players put themselves in danger, or brass fanfares when they’re successful.’
Lorne Balfe is one of the most prolific video games composers. The Grammy Award winner earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Original Music for his soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed: Revelations while Assassin’s Creed III earned him his second. Together with Beyond: Two Souls and Skylanders: Swap Force, Balfe has also made his mark with Call of Duty:Modern Warfare 2.
Balfe, who composes for TV (His Dark Materials) and films as well (including last year’s all-conquering Top Gun: Maverick) told PCPlayerHub.com that if you want to try your hand as a composer, you don’t necessarily need to be a hardcore gamer:
‘A lot of people think you’ve got to be a gamer to do game music, but I have worked on a lot of games and I know a lot of the guys who make them and they don’t have free time to play them. Just like I know people who act and don’t have TVs. I don’t think it makes a difference, as long as you understand the technical points of what it has to do. I don’t think anyone wants me to write game music, they want me to write music that matches the game.’
He also flags that games and movie music have diverged in recent years: ‘When I first started, games used to reference film. Music was a reference from films. Now, in the last year or two, I haven’t gone into a meeting with a game company where they’ve referenced a film. They want their own identity. Now it’s a role reversal.’
Licensed Music for Video Games
However, if you’re looking to create atmosphere, then you can also use licensed music, rather than getting music composed from scratch, which can be an advantage if you’re dealing with a smaller budget.
Games such as Crazy Taxi, Gran Turismo and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater used licensed songs. As well as tapping into pop culture, licensed music has been used in innovative ways in games. The Grand Theft Auto franchise is widely regarded as one of the greatest ever game series. Its in-game radio stations let players choose the songs they wanted to listen to as they drove around, making the whole scenario feel even more ‘real world’.
Saints Row 2 took this even further: you have the option to create your own mixtapes.
If you need music to license for a game you’re developing, then look no further than the Audio Network catalogue. We have literally hundreds of thousands of tracks to choose from – and a ton of specially-chosen playlists for inspiration and to get you started. From blockbusters to action, whimsical comedy to otherworldly fantasy, you’ll be levelling up in no time.
Using our original, high-quality music will make your games stand out from the crowd. Plus, we’ve got a variety of different subscriptions, depending on how much music you need. Why not have a free trial of our Essential Edit?
Discovering Music Through Gaming
Games can be an entry point for discovering all kinds of music. According to YPulse.com, two in five Gen Z-ers say video games influence the music they listen to – and with 96% of them playing video games in some capacity, that’s a huge opportunity to introduce them to music.
With its mix of artists on the cusp of huge success and globally established names, NFL’s Madden soundtracks are almost as eagerly anticipated as the annual game release itself. FIFA also got in on the action last year, showcasing their music from video games by collaborating with Spotify to release a playlist of players’ favourite songs from their soundtracks over the past 25 years.
Gen Z gamers spend an average of five to seven hours a week playing games and 30% of them overall say they use video games to listen to music. Fortnite and League of Legends have joined Madden NFL in collaborating with major artists for game songs and events.
A poll by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra suggested that computer games are an important ‘access point’ for young people to experience classical music for the first time, as the orchestra’s managing director James Williams told the Telegraph:
‘It is encouraging to hear that there are platforms and opportunities for young people to engage with orchestral music, albeit in different mediums. It is about sparking their interest. What we are finding is once we have lit that fire there is a real desire to carry that journey on and explore. If [computer games] are the trigger and the catalyst that can only be a really positive thing.’
Children aged six to 16 were asked about how they experience classical music; around one in six said they listened to it, ‘when it’s part of a computer game I’m playing.’
Winifred Phillips thinks that games music is, ‘essentially a form of contemporary classical music, but it has a connection with a more immediate contemporary culture, so that it’s more identifiable, accessible to a more mainstream audience.’ Her music for Assassin’s Creed, for example, has a definite baroque feel to it.
West Australian Symphony Orchestra ex-principal conductor Paul Daniel believes that the best video game scores, ‘reference great symphonic composers like Wagner, Mahler, Shostakovich, Holst and John Williams’.
Similarly, many of the most celebrated Japanese video games composers have revealed that they’ve been influenced by classical composers in the same way. Pokemon’s Junichi Masuda, who cites Stravinsky and Shostakovich as inspirations, to, ‘the Beethoven of video game music’, Nobuo Uematsu, who based the lyrics for the intro to ‘One-Winged Angel’ from Final Fantasy VII on the medieval poetry Carl Orff used for Carmina Burana.
Awards for Video Game Music
In 2012 Journey became the first ever video game to be nominated for a Grammy for its score, proving that game music is now celebrated for its quality and popularity outside of the games industry. The Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Videogames and Other Interactive Media was first presented at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards in 2023. This award was introduced to recognise the impact of music specifically written for video games (it’s a sister category to the Grammy for Best Score soundtrack for Visual Media, which covered film, TV and video games).
The winner of this inaugural Grammy was Stephanie Economou’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarok.
At the 2022 Game Awards, Bear McCreary won Best Score and Music for God of War Ragnarok. Clearly there was something about Norse mythology that caught the judges’ ear this year.
McCreary’s work for the God of War saga brings in an Icelandic choir, Nordic instruments like the nyckelharpa and hurdy gurdy, together with plenty of orchestral bass to create an epic feel that’s also tied to its Norse roots.
The 2022 BAFTA Games Award for best music was taken home by the night’s big winner, Playstation 5’s Returnal. The soundtrack was written by British composer Bobby Krlic, aka The Haxan Cloak. Krlic has worked with Björk, Father John Misty and Goldfrapp, and composed the soundtracks for horror film Midsommar and TV series Snowpiercer.
On the Playstation blog, Krlic explained his approach to Returnal’s soundtrack:
‘[The game] is really about one person’s determination to get to the bottom of this mystery that’s surrounding her. There are so many different things to speak to: there’s determination. There’s sadness, confusion. An ever-lingering threat and horror that never really subsides through the game. It’s figuring out how to then have all these things complement each other and theoretically have them be a bit like a liquid jigsaw; everything tessellating together but also keep moving along.
Building things, custom synths, using a theme, then breaking that theme down to its DNA and reassembling it… there’s so many musical elements to this that I’ve just found really stimulating. I think it made something that – for me – sounds really fresh to my ears, in terms of my catalogue.’
Live Music
As well as games music being showcased by awards ceremonies, its importance as an art form is demonstrated by the fact that live performances, staged in concert halls around the world, have become hugely popular over the last couple of decades. Video Games Live is an immersive event featuring music from the most popular video games of all time. Top orchestras and choirs perform along with exclusive video footage and music arrangements, live action and unique interactive segments.
Japanese conductor and composer Koichi Sugiyama kick-started the trend with his first Family Classic Concert in Tokyo in 1987. He wanted to bring families to classical music, so took the unusual approach of combining music from Camille Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals with his own work – the music from the Dragon Quest video games series.
In Europe, a 2003 performance at the Leipzig Gewandhaus launched a series of world tours with renowned orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
Plus, artists are seeing the value of connecting with games audiences, creating even more of a crossover. In 2019, electronic musician Marshmello played his set to 10 million people in the multiplayer battle royale game Fortnite, and Lil Nas X has performed live in Roblox.
Level Up
Find out more about the wonderful world of games music with our deep dive articles on iconic Japanese composers, NFL’s Madden soundtracks and different types of animation.
Or check out our music for games for inspiration:
Plus, listen to acclaimed Call of Duty-composer Lorne Balfe’s new tracks for Audio Network.
The Lorne Balfe Collection of hybrid orchestral music brings you the real sound of Hollywood, produced and curated for production music use. Whether you need a track for an epic trailer, a huge action set piece, music to create a world of fantasy or adventure, this is the collection that consistently delivers, creating an impact as well as setting the scene. Check it out below.
Need Music for Your Project?
At Audio Network we create original music, of the highest quality, for broadcasters, brands, creators, agencies and music fans everywhere. Through clear and simple licensing, we can offer you a huge variety of the best quality music across every conceivable mood and genre. Find out how we can connect you with the perfect collaborator today by clicking the button below!
