A Musical Experience -- Part 2

I've done a great deal of thinking about music in games. I would very much enjoy someday making a game that stars a player in their own musical, meaning:

1. The player influences the music that is played, not the other way around; 
2. the environment responds to the player much in the way it would in a musical, such as other characters joining into song and dance;
3. the player can use music as a way to advance the game's narrative, such as solving puzzles or combating enemies (this is by far the most game-y part of the idea, since most musicals don't really involve this, but there are obvious connections to the way a musical works).

I understand this is a huge undertaking, so before I ever try my hand at such a project, I'm going to spend a lot of time getting better at designing games. One way I can help this idea along, though, is by breaking it down into smaller components to solve the individual design problems. Interestingly enough, the three features I listed are so intricately connected to each other that one can only be attempted after the one before it has been solved.

collaborating with other design-thinkers on reddit, I began formulating a system that stayed as true as possible to my idea--allowing players (most likely with no musical experience) to inform the way music in the game sounds, and how those sounds in turn inform the player's future actions. I've made a terrible flow chart to describe it here:

You can see there's a feedback loop going on. In order to represent this in the purest form, I then designed an interface in order to experiment with ways to make this concept the most fun and game-like:

I depicted a simple image of two people singing to each other, one being the player, the other being the game; but this could be played with to see how two players might work together. The bars on the side measure success, meaning depending on how well the player can manipulate the music, the higher the bar rises, and when they are both full, the game is won. I put in two bars so the player focuses on getting them both up; seeing as how there are no antagonists or enemies here, this forces the player to try some different combinations in order to succeed. The bottom bar allows the player to see their input in response to the game. This part probably requires the most work, because the way it looks now resembles a rhythm game too much--but the bar can be easily changed and played around with. For now, there's a single background song playing, and the player creates the melody.

This is the design problem I'm going to be focusing on for the next year or so. With this setup, I can already picture lots of iterations to play with--I'm excited to try it out!

I obviously don't mind whether or not somebody starts using these ideas and working with them on their own, otherwise I wouldn't write about it. There are lots of creative ways to go about this, I think, and it is such a challenging problem that anyone who could pull these features off in a game successfully deserves some props.

A Musical Experience-- Part 1

I'd been meaning to write this post for a while, but over time the thoughts and ideas have been growing and changingso fast I can hardly keep up with them.
It all began with a chance encounter, the day I stumbled upon this little clip:

I didn't know what it was, or where it came from, but it moved me in such an unbelievable way. The subtle way the song builds from the beginning until it finally explodes in a single moment when the two voices unite. After watching the entire movie shortly after , I realized that this was by far the best part of the film.
A while ago, I received a great piece of advice from one of my instructors: find things that inspired me or got me excited, and try to make a game of them. Try to put them into an experience to share with a player. I thought to myself, "how spectacular would it be to do something like this is a game? to play as a character who brings a song into a crescendo with their own actions?"
From then on, I got hooked. Obsessed with figuring it out how to design a system around this idea---here's the thing; I did a whole lot of head scratching and late night Googling, but as far as I knew, I had yet to discover a game that tried this; that is, put the player in the role of the star of a musical. There'd been a slew of rhythm games in the past, but I wanted to get the player to create their own music.

I went to Reddit to ask for more advice, and the ensuing discussion spawned some fantastic new material for me to work with.

It was suggested that I take a look at a game called Proteus, which came very close to the sort of thing I was looking for. Proteus is a game where the player  navigates a randomly generated landscape, interacting with objects by standing near them. Each object creates its own sound, and so depending on where the player is standing, they can create different kinds of music that flow seamlessly into each other.
I also learned a new term, "aleatoric music" which is music that is left up to a certain player to complete; not entirely random, but still very much changeable and open for interpretation. I wanted to use this term to fuel the idea behind future designs.

Overall, I find it so interesting that music is a relatively unexplored territory in games, considering how influential it can be to a human being's experience. If a single song can bring a person to feel apprehension, sadness, joy, or elation, imagine all the damage it could do working within the right kind of game. I don't think its a question of nobody thinking of it before, but I do think it requires an awful lot of effort and knowledge on the subject to pull off well. However, I'm becoming more and more convinced that music holds a treasure trove of gaming gems to be discovered. On thing is for sure; if I want to go digging there, I first need to start thinking like a musician.
Time to go dust off the piano!

Sour Taste

I've just about had it with "Pop Culture" movies nowadays, honestly.

WARNING: this post exclusively talks about film, which is not the focus of my life's calling but indeed one of many  things I'm really passionate about. If you've interest in something about video games, I'd advise you to read another post--for those of you who feel the need to read this: beware, dear viewer, beware the spew of rantyness that is to follow!

It all started with a conversation I had not too long ago with some classmates. The topic was a frequent and popular one; the upcoming summer blockbusters. No matter how many times I tried to direct the discussion towards the newer intellectual properties, such as Epic or Now You See Me, it consistently returned to such well-worn franchises as Iron Man 3, Fast and Furious 6, The Hangover part 3, and Star Trek: Into Darkness. These classmates who were in the conversation with me were actually looking forward to seeing these movies more. It dawned upon me that this was what was considered interesting and worth watching. This was considered "cool". Is this the future that awaited me? People who were obsessed with seeing the same characters revived again and again?

Does this make me one of those hip-sters people talk about in hushed tones, never said aloud in polite conversation? I'm not upset that these things are mainstream, because I genuinely enjoy lots of the aforementioned franchises...and yet...I'm rather tired of seeing it again and again and again, as though it had never been thought of before. Some might argue that this exercise introduces new audiences to an intellectual property, but to that I simply say, so would just showing them the original. Things can be loved no matter how old you are, or how old it is, but for one to feel the need to drag a beloved franchise into the modern day so that they can continue to enjoy it is unsettling. Sick, even.

I'm dying for something fresh for folks to get passionate about. It can't be too hard to accomplish, can it? This trend perpetuates a future in which any creative mind out there will never be able to present her or his ideas without hiding behind the mask of a familiar face.

I'm probably--no, most certainly going to regret having ever posted this on the internet. I know, I know, how dare I feel upset about what people like! I'm not proud of the fact that this upsets me, but the more I think about it the more frightened I become. If people refuse to openly and passionately enjoy something new, I feel creators aren't going to bother investing in it, and and an unnerving cycle would be set in motion; a cycle motivated by pure fear of the fresh, the progressive, the original.

I'm making a promise to myself not to support any movie associated with an established franchise, not to give my money to any film which reboots or remakes, no sequel or prequel or rehash or rebrand or new look or new twist or update or downgrade or return or rebirth or anything like that. I've been consistently disappointed, and it won't stand any more.

Back in the Saddle!

If anyone follows this blog with half the interest in which I write it, they may have noticed that some entries which lack an illustration to accompany them are suddenly getting a nice update. This can only mean one thing of course, and that is that my computer is finally back amongst the living. After toiling and troubling over it for weeks and weeks, I at last saved up enough money to buy it a proper Operating System. Lo and behold, all of the problems it was having before are completely cleared up! It may be a week more before all of my suspended projects get back in motion, but I am far too happy to worry about them now.