Game music most influential Comments by Robert Purchese

Wish they would stop assuming that all game players want to hear the rhythmic shit that passes off as music these days.

Still at least with the 360 I can listen to music I like instead :-)

Schnur addressed the topic in his keynote speech at the Games Convention Conference in Asia, where he pulled Franz Ferdinand and Avril Lavigne out of his hat as examples of musicians first discovered in videogames.

Suddenly I don't feel like celebrating gaming's influence any more...

For me music in games was always more important than graphics. (Still comes after gameplay of course). But that doesn't mean that I want that shit that comes in games nowadays. It feels all so damn generic - can't stand Burnout's music, can't stand Forza's and I certainly can't stand the music in Flatout.

Dear me. EA's musical output in most of its games has been shocking. It saddens me that they think sticking in a random sellection of current nu-metal acts counts as decent ingame music. It saddens me even more that that many people only discover new music through the over produced, corporate ass that makes it into EA games.

"...where he pulled Franz Ferdinand and Avril Lavigne out of his hat"

Arse surely?

WipeOut and WipeOut 2097 pretty much got me into electronic music like Orbital, Future Sound of London Underworld, Aphex Twin etc...

So I do think he has a point. Having said that, a lot of the licensed music in video games today (with the exception of the GTA series) is pretty terrible.

please say that the boss music for Blue Dragon isnt licenced and is completely made up and off the cuff!?

Good grief, Junkie XL????

Have EA heard the soundtrack to the first Forza? Some of the worst music in a videogame ever.

Not the shit that you put on your crappy games doesn't duuuude.

I have two words for this guy: Custom Soundtracks

One of the main reasons I love my 360 is because I only ever listen to my music. I cudn't tell u what EA's soundtracks have been like lately cos I never hear them :)

I myself always turn of the music from the game and play my own... I imagine quite a few of us do... These mouthpeices just make it up as they go I think.

In a game like burnout I normally listen to my own music, on the other hand Oblivion, Halo (SP not MP) I normally listen to the stuff that comes with the game,

Next they will claim they are bigger than Jesus

I heart Trax.

Actually, even though I knew about them, I didn't think much of CSS before playing Forza 2. The rest of the soundtrack is shite, mind.

I was going to bitch about the music for Tiger Woods so I looked up the lyrics to the title song. Now the fucking song is stuck in my head and I want to punch DMX in the face.

"Next they will claim they are bigger than Jesus"

You mean they aren't? I thought the States re-entered Iraq after playing through the Desert Strike re-release on the PSP.

The later games in the GTA series have contained superb soundtracks that compliment the period and setting of the game world.

The only games with "real" music that had songs i liked have been Tony Hawk, and even then it was still hit and miss, plus i knew most of the artists anyway. Oh, and if i ever heard Avril Lavigne whilst playing a game, that game would become a frisbee

I feel I must post a link to the latest EA Medal of Honour trailer..

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/24612...

Now lets talk appropriate use of music shall we EA ;)

They even have the track name at the beginning. Its WWII, not a skate video ffs.

Unbelievable.

souljacker2000, although I've only played a demo of Blue Dragon and haven't encountered any bosses, if the music you're referring to has cheesy metal vocals and some guitar soloing two thirds of the way through, then it's a song the composer Nobuo Uematsu made especially for the game and simply requested that Ian Gillan (ex Deep Purple singer) do the vocals. They didn't reuse an old song; it's new. Admittedly it sounds very 80s though!

As far as I know, the only songs ever used in any Square Enix games full stop which aren't composed by the games' composers are new singles by J-rock and pop artists like Gackt and Utada Hikaru. Also a few have been written by the composer and then offered to a popular artist to sing especially for a key scene in the game. But I don't think they've ever gotten the license for an old song and used that. Unless you count CALLING from the end credits in Advent Children.

"Imagine a world where 80 per cent of the global population is instantaneously exposed to music via videogames, with the power to purchase literally at their fingertips."

Apparently 16% of the "global population" is suffering of hunger, I guess thats who he left out...


Sorry for being a goddamn hippy...

Personally, whilst I think some mainstream music in games has been good, I also always enjoyed videogame specific music, created solely for a game by a composer. For example, Rockstar use mainstream music for their GTA games which is great given that it adds some authenticity to a 'semi-real world' or specific timeline like Vice City, but I also thoroughly enjoyed the music in their other title Bully [aka Canis Canem Edit] - music which really enriched this titles sense of mischief and fun of being a teenage tearaway and overall felt like a really intricate part of the makeup of Bully, rather than just tacked on mainstream tat.

"Good grief, Junkie XL????

Have EA heard the soundtrack to the first Forza? Some of the worst music in a videogame ever."

Too bloody right.

I've always thought the music in most of EA's games was awful. Though I suppose it suits their target audience of chavs :P

Rockstar on the other hand know how use real music properly in their games.

I can't even think of any game which I've left the music ON. A few maybe, but the majority just seem to be some producers power-trip, a mish-mash of the same sounding tunes with frantic head-nodding and "rawk" written all over it. Just trash really.

Sure, it's pandering to the US market where this kind of music seems to be prevalent, but what's cool for skool doesn't make it good for games. A soundtrack that sounds all the same multiplied by the repetative nature of the playlist makes the experience ever so tedious and messy.

Repitition and 7 second memory for the kids, playlists or the Music = 0 option for the adults.

You know what would be really useful?
A way to see what damn song is currently playing in the game, on the pause screen. I mean, in games like Burnout 3, it tells you what's playing once the song *starts*, but you don't know if it's good or not at that point, so you don't read it... and then you realise it is good, and you don't know what it's called.

Goddamn, is that irritating.

Oh, and while we're at it, let's have the track/artist name displayed on adverts as well.

Once a game is loaded for the first time, I configure controls while the title music plays. Then, 90% of the time, I go to sound options and turn off the music. About 1% of the time I leave it on. The other 9% is when I can't bear the music after 5 seconds and turn it off before doing anything else. This 9% usually includes things with EA Traxxxxx in them.

God, if there's one thing that bores me more than a lifeless, random cacophony of instruments that people call an "orchestral soundtrack", it would be that horrible licensed crap in racing games and skate games and stuff.

EA doesn't really have a right to comment on game music - most of the stuff they produce for their games is generic shite.

They should look at games like LOTRO, BioShock [yeah yeah - whatever you think it's got awesome music] and Guild Wars before being so cocky as to comment on game music.

@sharky_ob:
Yeah, but his soundtrack for Quantum Redshift is reasonably good.

@MuTaunt

True!