I think... wait... yes....
BEHOLD! I HAVE CREATED A NEW WORD.. "Overcrowditation!"
Over·crowd·it·ation
n. 1. The cause of being agitated because of overcrowding. 2. Extreme emotional disturbance amongst crowds of people.
Use of the word includes (but is not limited to): The trains in India suffer from Overcrowditation, as do shopping malls around the holidays and the pages of a "Where's Waldo" book. Overcrowditation.
note: not trying to sound negative... just tell it how it is sans sugar coating. This is just how this post and handful of my future posts will most likely be.
As it turns out, the word is also a damn fine description of the current state of composers in the game industry... they're a dime a dozen and all of you who are wanting to do this for a living need to know that you're not special... there are TONS of us out there doing exactly what you're doing, and some of us are doing it better. We're all sending the same sounding emails to game companies, leaving the same messages on the voicemails of auido leads, and you also need to know that this overcrowding is agitating as many gigs will slip right through your fingers thanks to it. Never give up, never surrender... this is something that I have only recently adpoted and am glad that I have. This industry has surged so much in the last decade that it takes some serious patience to get work. You WILL lose gigs to other composers, and you WILL have tons of stiff competition... get over it... move on... and keep sending out said canned emails.
Email Template 1A-ninerblah
Hello... my name is.. blah blah... I have worked on blabbity blah, blah, blah and can cover any genre you need... blah. Please visit my webpage at blah blah.gov.org.
Yes... we all send the same emails and I'm proud to admit it!
Overcrowditation also applies to certain recent game scores. Why is it that game developers feel the need to hire 5 plus composers for a game project? It seems a little strange, unwarranted, and non cost effective to me. I mean, I can do around 30 minutes of pretty damn high quality music over the course of a week be it adaptive or static... so surely this isn't a time issue. My theory is that the audio lead may not be able to figure out who he wants to work with, wants to work with a slew of A list composers for the sake of working with them, or has made deals (over a beer... or six) with said composers at separate conferences and can't bring themselves to "break up" with them.
Or maybe it's just plain bad planning. Still, I find it strange. Borderlands has done this (5!!!! Composers), as has Modern Warfare 2 (which due to Massive Internal Overcrowditation.. or M.I.O.... is going to merit it's own post later on for sure).
This for some reason bothers me, as when I score a game... I like to do it with my own workflow and not have to worry about the workflow of others or mastering my music like the other composers.
Maybe it's just me, but Overcrowditation is a disturbing and annoying trend as of late and can lead to the wrong people getting top billing for the game score even though they were just responsible for the "themes" and not much of the music legwork.
Note to any game devs reading... just because you hire an A list composer... this DOES NOT mean he is doing your music.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Brother I hear you and agree. Audio in general is always over looked in the industry. Whether it is film work or games. It just always seems to be the last thing thought about. And when it is, then the producers expect perfection with little or no resources. I recently worked on a "AAA" game - which you hear that phrase dropped too many times...what exacty does it mean? -- I couldn't tell you other than to say I guess it is the goal of the studio to make a game that lives up to the biggest selling titles of all time. So you would think with a dream that big they would pour in every possible resource to make it happen...no, they don't. Instead it is a constant game of what can we live with out and what is the bare minimum you need to succeed. I was a lone sound designer, or "Audio Cordinator" a mish-mash of lead, sound designer and composer for a FPS game. But the studio had no audio equipment when I was hired. So I recieved a $2000 budget to get any production software, monitoring setup, audio card, and canned SFX...yes, my budget for a 10 million dollar title for audio was $2000...geesh! And when it came time for music, I got all fo those emails from other composers, but myself being one too I attacked the job...using my own setup no less...but in the end the expectations for creating the audio with so little resources was too much. I left the job. The guy after me finished the game and left too, just as stressed out. The problem now is that audio goes out to the lowest bidder and is often outsourced. Level designers implement most of the sounds. So the smaller studios, in an effort ot trim down costs, forego the sound position all together. I believe that is what the studio I worked for ended up doing. So with that, there are now an "Overcrowditation" of freelance audio guys. It's less about what you can do and more of who you know. The highend sound liraries are too accessible, and it seems like everyone is a composer. I think that the game industry is going through what the film industry is, where it less about making a great product and more about marketing to make a profit for investors. if it looks pretty it will sell...forget about audio and story...by the time the enduser figure those things suck they would have already paid their $60.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that Ed! All DAMN GOOD points my friend.. damn good. Now that I think of it, you should totally be a guest ranter here on the blog! It's a great way for us to let our aggressions toward the industry out, and I know tons of peeps could also benefit from your knowledge as well.
ReplyDelete