Chapter 8

This reading was all about making music in games dynamic. This means not having the music being a static, background noise that just loops over and over. Instead, music in videogames should interact with and even help the immersion along and should respond to the narrative and what the player is doing. This is incredably difficult, though, because songs are supposed to be linear, and games definatly are not. I had never thought about how the many different choices in a game would effect the music but this reading brought up with a lot of different ways to deal with this.

Some of their ideas I recongized imediatly, like varying the tempo. This instantly made me think of Mario, and how the faster paced music could make my heart pound and suddenly the only important thing was getting to that flag. The fast paced music really put the timer in persepective for that game. Others made sense when I thought about them, such as the variable mix option. As I read that section I thought about many games that have many different places and cultures to explore, such as MMO's like World of Warcraft. Each area would have it's own kind of music that would be played. After playing Pokemon for so many years I can tell when I enter a battle because of the battle music. I don't actually have to be looking at the game.

Man, I wish I knew more about music after reading this. Some parts of this reading I had a hard time understanding (for instance I have no clue what DSP is). I'm looking forward to discussing this in class and hearing from people who may have a better understanding of music then me.