There are many different types of video games, but at the end of the day, they all have two things in common: they are interactive and musical.
Sounds in video games, such as BGM and sound effects, are often easily overlooked.
Because the music in the game should be as close to the picture as possible and not obtrusive.
At this time, someone must say, "Wouldn't it be abrupt to remove BGM?"
It seems that the absence of BGM itself is very abrupt......
A good BGM should exist without being too presence, which seems contradictory but is not.
To understand this setting, we first need to talk about what BGM is.
What is BGM?
BGM is the abbreviation of Background Music, which translates to the meaning of background music.
Background music is a classification of soundtracks, and in addition to games, soundtracks for movies, anime, and TV series are also a must-have.
Other film and television works and game soundtracks are actually plausible.
Film and television soundtrack is music tailored for a fixed content, and only the content of the opening and ending of film and television is fixed and within a controllable range;
Therefore, the soundtrack can be made according to the ups and downs of the plot of the film and television to drive the audience's emotions.
Although the game soundtrack is roughly the same, the game soundtrack is the music designed for an environment or scene.
In video games, due to the interactivity, most game producers cannot predict the player's behavior, so it is only natural that the music producers of video games make the music into a loopable song.
In addition to matching the game environment, this piece of music must also match the player's current actions.
Of course, it's hard to do this amount of work, so you have to switch music when the music doesn't fit the situation.
For example, the player enters a different scene, triggers an event, and so on.
However, the game producer has no way of predicting when the BGM will be switched, so a fixed "sound effect" design is required.
For example, strikes, opening doors, warning sounds detected by the enemy, etc., these are some of the more old-fashioned methods.
Now the means of switching soundtracks in various games are more clever, but these are all side stories, and we will talk about it next time, and today we will mainly talk about the development process of game music.
The development of game BGM
At the end of the 70s, arcades entered the prime period of development.
Due to the limited capacity of gaming equipment at the time, it was difficult to record sound and then store it in the game as it is now, and it had to be played in real time with old-fashioned circuits and chips, and every note had to be programmed to be slowly fed into the chip.
In this case, it would be a dreamer to include a full soundtrack in the game.
Fortunately, in the 80s and 90s, the data capacity of various game devices increased, and electronic synthesizers also appeared in people's field of vision;
The game's music began to become richer and richer, and 8-bit music was born.
In the 90s, the most successful CD console, the Sony PS1, was introduced, and storage technology was taken to the next level, greatly affecting the entire game music production industry.
When CD technology is applied to consoles, it is easy to store real-life recordings of sounds into the game.
For example, "Eyes on me" sung by Faye Wong in "Final Fantasy 8" is a good example.
After 2000, with the improvement of music file compression technology and the improvement of device performance, the restrictions on game music have become less and less, and technologies such as electronic synthesized music have gradually become mainstream.
Today, we can even enjoy the "full release of the sound", and the current limit of the game's music is basically only the level of the producer and the budget of the team.
Today's game music, whether in terms of composition, recording, or cooperation with games, has long been on an equal footing with movie soundtracks.
With the advancement of science and technology, game music is becoming more and more diverse, in this dizzying era, how many "golden songs" can always flow in your heart?