Hey y'all. Today, I'm going to talk about musical games. I've talked a lot about the technology of
music and games, including adaptive music, and about the importance that music has in our gaming experience. Today, though, I want to focus on the genre of music games, games where music is one of the primary gameplay elements. Now there's no possible way for this to be a comprehensive video
on musical games. That's not the goal here.
Instead, let's talk about some examples and some general ideas
we can think about in approaching these musical games . First, of course, this integration of music and
games isn't new to digital games. We've all played games like musical chairs. And in the 18th century, there were Musikalisches Würfelspiel,
musical dice games, where players would roll dice and create pieces
based off of sets of pre-composed options. Now, a discussion of what exactly the definition
of a game is is bigger than what I can handle in this video, and so of course in these dice games,
there are no winners or losers, but the players are interactively
creating and playing this music.
Similarly in the 20th and 21st century,
some composers created "game pieces," aleatoric pieces, where musical
performers were given a set of rules, and then based off of that set of rules,
a real piece was created in live performance. A famous example of this is John Zorn's "Cobra" from 1984. Now, before we transition into talking about digital games, it's worth taking a quick stop to mention
Milton Bradley's 1978 game, "Simon." Again, we might not consider this
a videogame, but this idea of hearing a pattern and having
to repeat that pattern back serves as the model for several famous
digital games, including "Parappa the Rapper"…
"Um Jammer Lammy." and "Space Channel 5," to name a few. The difference between "Simon" and these games though, Is that in "Parappa" and these other examples, pressing
the correct pattern in rhythm was how gameplay was ranked. One step away from these games where you
repeat patterns, are games like "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band," where instead of repeating things back,
you need to anticipate the patterns and press buttons at the right time.
This time now on unique controllers. While this type of game that focuses
on rhythmic performance–"rhythm games" are perhaps the most common type of
musical games, they're not the only kind. "Otocky" was a 1987 game for the Japanese Famicom that blended the ideas of a side-scrolling
shoot-em-up and musical games. This game was created by Toshio Iwai, who later went on to design a 2005 game
for the DS, "Electroplankton." But here again there are no win or lose conditions. "Electroplankton" is just an interactive
platform of musical exploration. Hopping over to examples that might be more familiar, the 2012 game "Sound Shapes", which is for the most part a
platforming game, where, as players progress to the level, they collect items
that help develop the accompanying soundtrack.
What was interesting about "Sound Shapes",
though, was the possibility to design your own levels. So, using the musical options built into the game,
players could compose their own songs using this level editor. What's interesting about this music creation,
is now we're focused on a different aspect of music. With "Parappa" and "Guitar Hero",
we're focused on performance– doing the right thing at the right time. With "Sound Shapes" and similar games,
now we're focused on composition. The game engaging with the creation of original music. An interesting musical game that I think was particularly novel
was "Crypt of the Necrodancer" from 2015, which blended a roguelike game with a rhythm game, rewarding players for moving the main
character in rhythm with the music. In 2019, this was turned into a
crossover game with the Legend of Zelda in the switch game, "Cadence of Hyrule." Now of course with the explosion of interesting
indie games over the last few years, there are far more examples than I could go into.
But just for one final interesting example, I want to talk about
Joost Van Dongen's "Cello Fortress" from 2012. This game involves players on controllers
playing against a live cello player. The cello player plays patterns and notes
to generate defenses against the tanks, while the tanks try to progress as far as they can in the game. I've seen this piece live in concert.
I've played as one of the tanks. And I love how this game integrates aspects of
musical performance and improvisation for the cellist, while also allowing audience members to participate in
the performance in their driving of tanks. So rhythm games are great and innovative.
just keep in mind that they're not the only musical games, and performance is not the only musical
element that we have to bring into gameplay. [If you're watching this then they've taken over.] [It's up to you now.
Find our car and stop the New Order.] [Remember: music is a weapon.].