Is game design songwriting or performance?
My wife and I used to joke about making a mixtape of nothing but versions of “All Along the Watchtower,” with the Michael Hedges version, the Hendrix version, the Indigo Girls version, the Richie Havens version… (I know, I know, the very notion of a “mixtape” dates us… sorry!)
It’s hard to come up with many covers of Michael Jackson songs. It’s something that has been on my mind since he died; after all, there’s all these encomiums calling him the most significant musical artist of the last 40 years. And yet when you think back on it, it’s a very different sort of significance from someone like Bob Dylan, whose songs have taken on a life of their own well beyond the performances of the original artist.
Oh, there’s the few “Billie Jean” versions, of course, and a few others scattered here and there. But by and large, there’s a paucity of great Michael Jackson covers. Maybe it’s attributable to nobody being able to do it better than he did, but I suspect that’s not the reason. To me suggests that there’s a paucity of great Michael Jackson songs. And yet, the original music is still incredibly compelling.
The right production on a s0ng can make a tremendous difference, and changing the tone of the bass guitar could make the difference between an enduring hit record and one that fades away. Several times on this blog, I have mentioned the song analysis stuff done by both for-profit companies and audio engineers as they look for the sonic characteristics of hits. All of this leads towards optimizing music recording towards a particular goal.
A recording is of course the capturing of a specific performance, and with the rise of the recording industry we got the notion of “studio bands,” musical performers whose goal it was to create a specific performance in the studio, rather than a piece of music to be reinterpreted. When we look back at the work of Michael Jackson, the comments that come up are always about what an amazing performer he was, about the collaboration with Quincy Jones, about the Eddie Van Halen guitar solo in “Beat It,” about the videos. It was about the shaping of the music, not the music itself.
This makes me think that most of the game industry is about music production, not about songwriting.
I usually use the analogy of the salad and the dressing, and say that the game design is the salad: the interplay of mechanics and rules, the mathematical structure that makes a game a game, and not an interactive story or a movie. There are relatively few games on the market, if we ignore the dressing. We could regard Far Cry 2 and Half-Life 2 as being different performances of the narrative first-person shooter, for example, ones stamped with the particular performance qualities brought to them by their bands, er, teams.
This isn’t a bad thing. I’ve always advocated for more attention given to the “songwriting,” because, well, it’d be nice to hear some new music from time to time. But the art of a great cover, a great performance, is an art nonetheless. And we can spot a “karaoke” version a mile away, can’t we?
15 Responses to “Is game design songwriting or performance?”
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Before getting past the second line in your post, I need to say I have made that mixtape. (Ipod playlist, really. But you roll with the times.) Dylan, Hendrix, Prince, XTC, INdigo Girls, Greatful Dead, Dave Matthews, U2, a bluegrass version, a Greek version, a punk version…
That is an awesome song to make a mix of.
On to the rest of the post…
Sounds like what EEDAR does for games.
When I studied art history sometime ago, one instructor characterized Raphael Sanzio as a great counterfeiter. By that he meant Sanzio’s real talent was in emulating the brush strokes, etc., of other painters.
I have no idea if that’s true, and whether that’s true isn’t the point. That story about Sanzio’s talent is similar to the stories of all of those developers out there borrowing “brush strokes” to create their “karaoke” games.
But, yes, we tend to better appreciate the Leonardo da Vincis who illustrate helicopters some 400 years before they’re remotely possible.
“It’s not a Mario clone, it’s a cover!”
Man, I wish I’d thought of that back in the eight-bit days. You may be very right, and that’s a cool point of view. There’s certainly a tremendous ability to extend the analogy. (Not that there aren’t knock-offs and such in music, of course… this band ripping off that band’s sound, or trying to ride their coattails, etc.) They really do have a lot in common.
You are right. Because this is much on my mind, let me tell a tale.
My son asked why I was not mourning MJ. I told him that to my generation, Jackson is the avatar of the destruction of the music business. His $50 million deals for records he had yet to record eviscerated the business. The damage done by disco, he completed. He asked about his legacy. I said, a bad image and danceable tunes. Nothing more. I asked him to hum a Michael Jackson tune for me (Daniel is a serious trained musician) and he couldn’t. I asked how many people he knew who can? He said, “zero”. I said, now hum “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” and he could. I repeated the same question and he said, “All of them.” I said that is his legacy. Compare him to Elvis Presley and Elvis was a true king of rock and roll and the legacy proves it. MJ was the king of his publicity fantasies. Not that he wasn’t a good dancer or musician: he simply isn’t a legend.
I just finished editing a pure black label bootleg DVD of Arlo Guthrie’s performance with a local symphony. I used a small cheap hand held video recorder, got behind and shot through the board and despite the black clad dudes going through the audience slapping old ladies on the back of the head to tell them to quit filming with their cellphones, got raw footage that once edited, resulted in a 40 minute performance that is excellent far past what I expected. Understand I went to film Arlo’s left hand so I could cop some chops. Only when I got home did I realize that from 150 yards out, that zoom and cheap mic captured magic. Right place. Right device and willing.
Though a separate thread, I’ve come to believe that those black clad dudes are the modern extension of what started with MJ: so much greed they ruin the night. IP, copyrights and all that aside, had I not filmed, an incredibly moving and passionate performance would have been lost. Arlo said to us on his list, “If the sound at the back is the same as the sound two feet in front of the guitar, that’s frikkin great.” And you know what? He is frikkin right.
The Shakies (as I call them), those cheap YouTube videos, often reveal where the talent is. In a studio, I can make your grandmother sound great. I can tune her voice, create new perfect harmonies out of them, and lay down tracks that sizzle. But put her in front of a mic with one cable from the guitar straight to the board (no preamps, no filters, no digiPoop), and let me film a Shakie and well, the truth is out.
I’m not against tech. I love it. But Arlo got it done that night because he tours, plays and tells story almost every night of the year. He gets it done because he does it.
BTW: no, I won’t put that up on YouTube. IMO, the only people with the right to let Google profit off that are Arlo and Jackie Guthrie. Will it go into the hands of the Bootleg Queen in his small close community and some friends who I know are desperate Folkslinger fans? Don’t even question it. In the end, that is about the Tribe. The other is about respect for the rights of the artist. Arlo issued his response to the mullahs in Tehran this weekend. It blisters. You can read it on my blog or at arlo.net. I’ve much respect for Guthrie where I just don’t for Dylan. Dylan is to folk music what MJ is to pop: the ultimate sell out and he knows it. Guthrie refused, founded his own label, runs his own sites, is managed by his family and never lets the old songs and spirit die. He hoes to the end of the row.
That’s the real thing, Raph.
Why do it? Because it is a bigger crime if I have the only copy and because I despise seeing old ladies who paid the ticket price and want that souvenir keepsake to be harassed because a symphony director wants to control his image and the artist doesn’t care. Artists who do should start putting a clause in their contracts that declare the performance a ‘personal media friendly event’.
OTW, ARRRGG! MATEY!!! Kumbayah anyway. It’s time to tear the guts out of the black shirts so the music can escape and live. Why do it? Because I have forty minutes of magic that would have died in the real time soup, because I can edit it, polish it, share it and then the cause and the comfort go on. I’ll take the risks gladly for that.
Why I am not mourning MJ? Because he could never get me to care. Whatever there was there of Michael the cute boy who sang and danced well was sacrificed so the King Of Pop could hang his kid over a balcony. Don’t tell me about abuse. I was raised with a belt too. I wasn’t made famous by one and that is the single place where I feel sorry for MJ. Chain pleasure to pain and you’ll get a neurotic every time. Give them great wealth also and you get a monster.
personally, i’m on the side of design is like songwriting where players are the performing artists.
when you create the piece, you have a particular production in mind. a particular set. a particular way you see it playing out. then, along comes a different, yet awesome performance and it makes you proud. (heh. or probably one that just makes your eyes bleed… whichever.)
m3mnoch.
To your question: I suspect game design is songwriting wrapped up by orchestration. Programmers are the A-Team. If game play is performance, it is more like acting than singing and more like architecture than building violins. Or movie making. They say Kubrick’s technique was to build a blob at a time, and when he had about six big blobs, he would put them together, edit the transitions and that was his movie. That is a lot like modern studio work.
On the other hand, there are patient professionals who still write out the complete score, hire the performers and drive it all straight to two studio mics stereo. These are the cats that make a mindblowing shakie.
Kind of a bizarre question, Raph. We don’t ask, “Is a great novel more like cooking a good meal or growing the great veg?” Or, “Is making a great movie more like dancing or choreography.” I think that great game-making probably falls into a variety of artistic metaphors.
For example, Tetris, when it first came out, felt to me like an entirely new instrument or musical style being invented. Like when I first heard rap and hip-hop… yeah, there was music (graphics) and words (controls), but they were used in such a novel way.
On the other hand, I love Desktop Tower Defense… but it feels like a great cover of an old favorite. Nothing really new there… just executed really well.
I’d also caution away from the musical analogy too closely, as the pop music industry (at least in the US) has been governed more by marketing laws than artistic ones for the last 50 years or so. The goal is not (necessarily) to create great songs, but to create hits. Go back and look at the charts [http://www.popculturemadness.com/Music/ is a great resource for that] and see how many of the top 25 songs from 1950 you recognize. “Cry of the Wild Goose” by Frankie Laine? “Rag Mop” by the Ames Brothers? Lordy.
I agree with some of the other comments here; I don’t think MJ was a great songwriter. I’m not even sure he was a great musician. He was a fantastic performer and marketer. He broke some important color barriers, had a great voice, could dance like nobody’s business, and was (arguably) the first true star of the music video format. Nothing wrong with any of that… but Jonathan Coulton (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA) has written 10x as many good songs as MJ.
If MJ was a game, I think he’d be Everquest. A big deal, yes. Very shiny. Very pretty. Very fun. Not a ton of substance, and along comes WoW… and…
That would be an interesting survey, Raph… “What video game best embodies Michael Jackson?”
I think this is a good analogy, properly framed. Execution is more of the work and often more of the important work compared with simply coming up with new ideas (i.e. songs or game types). One could argue World of Warcraft is a well performed cover-medley of many MMOs that came before it!
(Which isn’t to say Blizzard doesn’t innovate.)
“The goal is not (necessarily) to create great songs, but to create hits.”
This is different than much of the game industry?
If nothing else, Michael Jackson was a genius at writing pop hooks. I’m reminded of a phrase used to describe modern food design: hyper-palatable. Exploiting modern biological knowledge to make foods that are simply more compelling than they “should” be. Jackson made hyper-palatable music, while perhaps also contributing to the reputation pop music (as a genre) had for being hollow, shallow fluff. Empty calories, if you want to extend the analogy.
Still, studio-based or not, he did have that knack.
Well, you have a fantastic analogy going right there, Raph 🙂
I think (if you read my recent bit about Jackson) his success was almost entirely in the production. I didn’t want to understate how important Jackson was in my little ‘homage’ though, but really it was Quincy Jones that nailed Jackson’s career.
And that’s why I love, above all other types, orchestral music; complex salad. There is a space for simple music, simple games, but I think there’s much more for the player (listener!) to TASTE in a complex arrangement of ingredients!
It’s like Jackson was a beautifully rich soil that simply needed the right person to plant the right seeds.
Anyway, it’s 4am and I’m rambling. RIP, Michael!
My perspective on the comparison between games and music currently claims that the art of game creation within a game production is best mirrored by the craftsmanship of instrument making.
The math behind games and music quantify according to different principles but in an abstract sense they share the relationship to the players of both games and music. Since the borders of where the term “game” ends is diffuse we can also consider games to contain large structures, kind of as equivalents to pipe organs where each pipe may be considered as an instrument of sorts and the keyboard is some kind of master instrument.
How music production relates to game production is a lot easier. Both are about making sure that the people who are working on the product are competent and performing their best as domain experts. Game design is one of the domains in a game production, one which has a lot of influence over every other domain. To “prove the point” so to speak I present this plastica production: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdgUCZtqTd8
Since the format of games, in comparison to music, is rather non-standard there is a lack of the metaphorical musician to play on the instruments. The designer needs to scores for his own instrument to fill that lack. Where standards have emerged the designer appears to separate from the “musician” and for these cases the metaphorical musicians become what we are familiar with as “level designers”, “weapon designers”, “quest designers” etc.
This leave the songwriter somewhere along the roadside. The songwriters role fits with several slots in the game production puzzle, which commonly is a lot larger than the music production puzzle.
Game design is songwriting, orchestration and choreography; playing a game is the performance. It’s a collaboration. Without players, the greatest game in the world is nothing but notes on a page, waiting to come to life.
And then there are titles like Metaplace, Second Life, City of Heroes Mission Architect and Spore Galatic Adventures, where they give you a piano and a stack of blank staff paper and say, “okay, hot shot, show us what you can do”. I like that 🙂
Michael Jackson’s work reminds me of any number of titles with excellent production values, visually stunning, executed with a slick dazzling brilliance, and it’s only when you start playing that you realize that they skimped on the writing, and the story behind all the flash is a little threadbare and shallow.
That’s a good description, Yukon. I actually have performed some of MJ’s music over the years. There is considerable brilliance in the rhythm section but to whom is that attributable, MJ, Quincy? Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough is a bass pattern essentially with layered licks, squeals, etc. It has great momentum but if you open it up chordally, it’s a redux of Who Do You Love with a snappy synth break.
We’ve all got a bag of orchestral tricks, production tricks, etc., and they are vital to making a hit dance number, but the guys in Nashville have it right because they force you to sit and play it on the guitar with a dry vocal. If that works, then it is a good song.
Where I think Raph is going here and it’s been said many times before, there is a difference in a good song and a hit. The trick is to become a ‘standard’, a classic, to last past the summer cycle and become a permanent fixture in The Real Book (a famous compendium of jazz standards), the song has to be both. And possibly with the exception of Billy Jean, that is where MJ doesn’t make the grade in my opinion.
Interesting post, intersections of music and game design will always have my attention immediately. 🙂
Someone above almost hints at my initial response to the concept — shouldn’t we be instrument-makers? To me, especially in the online context, the game environment is an instrument with which other people should be able to create their own stories. My barometer for the success of an online world is whether, and how many, people are inspired to create their own stories with the material. This is one of the ways in which game worlds — or worlds of any kind, for fiction, visual art, music (there are world-creators in all art forms — Hemingway’s Spain, for instance, is not my Spain or your Spain) — elevate above the existence of a single piece of art. Games are, or can be, especially apt at creating worlds because they necessarily simulate across four or more dimensions of our perception of reality.
But I think a lot of this is noise in the wake of MJ, too, and it isn’t terribly useful to speak specifically about him yet. I think he is both drastically overhyped and drastically underappreciated, paradoxically — to the poster above, there are a number of MJ tunes I can hum, but they are not the ones most people are aware of (“You Are Not Alone” comes to mind — and “I’ll Be There” has been covered numerous times, if you’d count that) — these simpler songs of his are buried beneath the juggernaut of his incredible performances. The problem is precisely that he was such a fantastic performer that he could pull off in performance something that is utterly mediocre — but that doesn’t mean his stuff IS inherently mediocre. It’s also surprisingly complex (lots of key changes, big range), which means it’s difficult to perform, and not everyone can do it. But I just got done watching the repeat of the Michael Jackson “night” from American Idol, rerun last night (a high school acquaintance of mine was the 2nd place guy, so I’ll sit through rubbish to watch him perform), and it’s a strong illustration of his musical legacy, and what can and doesn’t work in repeat performances. (David Cook’s performance of “Billy Jean”, if I dare bring up another AI performance, is a stunner, and gets to the heart of that song very well while being nothing at all like MJ’s performance of it.) It will take a long time for these alternate interpretations of his music to move out from under the shadow of his stage presence.
But, to close off this already too long-winded post, it’s an interesting question, and certainly much of the mainstream industry, like any popular art business, has a “music production” element to it — the honed capturing of an easy and moving moment without requiring the work the performer took to get there — but games themselves, when explored for the essence of what a ‘game’ is, express through active simulation a distillation of pure experience, and this itself is what music does in its way, so I don’t think it can be confined to being either music production OR songwriting, though both are involved in the creation of excellent examples of the craft.
It will be interesting to see what becomes of his music, but I think it won’t be long until we read about miracle cures. Deification of celebrities is one of the minor ailments of the always on culture.
By the examples given, Google is an instrument, a comparison with which I agree.