Many leading composers and sound designers now straddle the game and film industries. Is this a sign that games are now considered an equally valid medium, or are there any remaining stereotypes to overcome?
Dennis Weinreich The reality is that we’re all seeking to create an entertainment, and there is a fusion of those entertainments.
James Hannigan I think it’s largely because games have become more and more filmic over the last ten years or so, so they’re borrowing more from the film language.
Dan Bardino And also production values have gone up across the industry as well, which is a big driver. But I think we need to be honest that games aren’t films or TV shows and they have their own language.
Alex Joseph There’s a lot we can learn in films from games. 3D sound is something that was developed in games, essentially.
JH Maybe it’s that films are becoming more immersive? They’re trying to put you there, rather than treat you as the audience.
DB Perhaps it’s because the audience has grown up with games.
From left to right: Dan Bardino, Jerry Ibbotson, Richard Jacques (not in this interview, but look out for one with him tomorrow), James Hannigan and Jon Vincent
To what extent has the game industry benefited from the film industry’s long term experience?
Jerry Ibbotson Some of the ways that I’ve seen in which games are being made has now changed. I’ve found that there have been times when game directors haven’t got that ultimate power that a film director would have. As games get bigger and bigger, they’re more and more being made by committee.
JH It’s very democratic, the whole process of developing games.
DW I’d like to just say though, I think the concept of the director as auteur is actually a fairly recent one, and I think one of the strengths of games is that it isn’t there.
JI There have been games that have been beautiful, but they have been made from the outset to make money, which I think says a lot about where games are coming from.
AJ I think a lot of films are made for the same reason, not necessarily to make a good film.
JH When the film industry was evolving, there wasn’t that kind of commercial pressure, the ground rules were being created, and games have just come into this climate of business…
So perhaps the games industry has skipped an evolutionary stage?
AJ That’s something I found when I worked with Dan [Bardino]. With films we have a definite hierarchical structure and pecking order. When I went in on EyePet, it was immediately obvious that there wasn’t such a pecking order going on there, and that actually allowed me to be a bit more creative with things.
DB I try and pair up the team with a sound designer right from the very inception, especially with our internal titles.
Would say that it is generally the case within the games industry that the sound comes in as early as possible, while film sound is more post-production?
AJ It’s more post-production I’d say, yeah. We’ve got certain conventions that we’ve stupidly set in the film industry that we’re bound to go with now. With extreme panning, you can do some wonderful things, but people just aren’t used to it so you can’t just throw that upon people, because they don’t understand it yet. I think because the game industry is younger, there is huge area of possibilities that we don’t really have at the moment in film. I think it will probably develop more in games, and then bounce back into films.
DB Yeah, it goes back to audience conversion. You’re talking about that language which you’ve set up which is very difficult to break out of, but if people are unlearning those rules in games then the same audience can migrate into films.
AJ It sometimes almost comes across that there’s one side and then there’s the other side, but I don’t actually believe that is the case. I think the longer this goes on, the more the two are going to merge and the more we’re going to end up learning from each other.
Killzone 2's orchestral recording session
Last year, the team behind Killzone 2's music, Jon Williams, Marc Canham and composer Joris de Man, believed the average game audio budget to be six per cent, and they felt that this was a lot smaller than the percentage afforded to films. Is there still an imbalance between the budgets afforded to game and film soundtracks?
AJ Film audio budgets are actually very small as well, and 80 per cent of films in this country are less than £10m.
?JI What percentage of the budget for films is given to the audio production? I remember once asking somebody at Sony what percentage they would give to me (not for the music, as that was already licenced), and I was told two per cent.
AJ It’s usually 10 per cent.
JI What we’ve found is that developers expect so much, but when you ask what the budget is, it’s so low. You still have to work to it though, because you don’t want to piss off the person who’s paying you proper money.
AJ We did some Nikitova games and for the DS games you get £500 for the entire job, now I did few of these and Jon Hare was the game designer, because he’s a friend of mine I’ll happily work for him but after three of these games I had to say, “I can’t do this anymore; I’m losing money just by doing this”. But yeah, for a lower budget game you have to give it a higher budget for the sound.
JI Within the game industry, sound has been ignored. There is the classic example of a writer in a print magazine who reviewed Resident Evil, and when they got to the end, realised that they hadn’t had the sound on at all...I think the thing that has helped sound design this generation is that you can do really great things with the technology.
Jon Vincent I prided myself on fitting a great sounding game into 2mb of memory on a PS2.