Music Production for Games: How Does it Work?

These days, it would be hard to imagine life without games, and anyone who’s ever played a game will know that the music is an essential part of the whole experience. But how do you ‘score’ the soundtrack of a whole video game? What does the process look like? And is it any different from writing an album or a movie soundtrack? Guestblogger and composer Jonathan van den Wijngaarden gives us a look behind the scenes of this relatively new branch of the music industry.

Gameplay is king

First, it’s a good idea to make it clear why there’s any music in games at all. Normally, music is about entertainment (when you’re listening to an album or going to a gig), or it’s functional and about conveying a specific emotion (like in films). But music can also play a third and very different role that is actually unique to games and is also a little bit more active and involved, since in the gaming world, it actually serves to support the gameplay. Gameplay or game-feel is the element that ensures the player doesn’t want to stop – the thing that keeps them playing. This ‘supportive’ aspect is exactly what makes writing music for games so fascinating.

Music Production for Games: How Does it Work?

Supporting and influencing

So, the music in any game needs to support the gameplay as much as possible (of course, this is also the job of a lot of other aspects within a game, like the sound effects and the visuals), but the music can also have a driving role. You could write a brilliant up-beat track, but if at the moment the game is presenting elements designed to make the player think, then that track is likely to only hinder the process. Games also have a very direct influence on the player themselves. A good example is when you find yourself empathising with the emotional state of the character you’re playing. It’s these kinds of things that you always need to be thinking about when writing the music, so pay attention to where the player is being directed and what the game-makers want them to feel at that moment.

Super Mario 3D World – The beeps and bloops heavily depend on the vibe of the level you’re on

Adaptive music

There is one thing that’s absolutely indivisible from music and that’s time. Normal musical arrangements are usually based on fixed timing. Even a musician who’s playing an improvised piece responds to their own ‘count’ and timing. In a game, this has to work differently since the player has the control and dictates the course, so the music needs to be able to ‘move’ in response to that course. With the previous paragraph in mind, this can sometimes cause some pretty complex situations. As a result, most game scores are ‘adaptive’: they have been written in such a way that they can actually adapt in response to whatever choice the player makes. Is the player just exploring? Then the music needs to reflect and underline that feeling. But the moment that the player encounters something more exciting, then the music needs to respond in kind – preferably with a feel that matches the sudden change in atmosphere. The arrangement, therefore, can never stand still – it can never be fixed.

Arizona Sunshine – A little exploration, a battle and then back to exploring

Transcend Genre

Just like a film score composer, a game composer needs to be really flexible in terms of both the style and the arrangement. The game dictates what’s needed and this often already determines your boundaries, making the process entirely different from working on an album, which is driven by pure inspiration and your own style. Of course, there’s still plenty of room to play around for the game composer, mainly because a lot of game developers often want to veer away from the well-trodden path, giving you the freedom to combine genres and start experimenting. Over the years, I’ve combined things like synthesizers with Morricone-style spaghetti western sounds; I’ve blended funk with punk; symphonic orchestras with EDM and so on. As a composer, I can’t stress enough how exciting it is to be able to mould and create entirely new styles, discover styles you’ve never heard of and even re-discover old and long-forgotten styles.

Have any favourite video game soundtracks? How have they impacted your experience of the game?

In practise: The VR game ‘After the Fall’

On the 9th of December, 2021, the VR game After the Fall was released on PC VR, Playstation VR and Meta Quest 2. For this game, most of what I composed was an electronic adaptive soundtrack. Above, I’ve explained what music in a game needs to do and how you can go about doing it. Now, I’ll give you a little look behind the scenes of After the Fall and take you through some of the stages that went into developing the soundtrack.

After the Fall is a first person shooter (a first-person action game) for virtual reality headsets. The game is set on a fictional alternative timeline where, in the eighties, civilisation collapsed and in the present (2005 in the game), the only remaining survivors are forced to battle it out with the ‘Snowbreed’: a race of mutated humanoid monsters.

When I met with Vertigo Games in 2017 to talk about plans for a new VR game, what I’ve just told you is roughly the same amount of information that they had. However, even with as little information as that, as well as some concept artwork (see the promo shot included below) I already had a pretty clear idea of the direction and feel of the game.

Muziek-productie voor games - Hoe gaat dat in zijn werk?
Promotion shot that gives the feel of the game

Following the first meeting, the scope of the soundtrack was mapped out. Because games often go through multiple changes and reworkings during development, I tend to view the initial ‘map’ as a first estimate rather than a concrete pathway. Making a game is ultimately a creative process, which is exactly why it’s so hard to capture it fully during the first stages. You need to make a game that’s actually fun to play and, while ideas can look brilliant on paper, in practice they might actually be less than brilliant, so changes will always need to be made along the way.

The concept: pre-production and prototypes

With the paperwork out of the way, the next step comes into sight: figuring out the musical atmosphere and style of the soundtrack. The term synthwave (‘80s inspired music that’s made using synthesizers) immediately came onto the table. In action, (as explained above) the music needed to respond to the status of the game: players would be exploring an apocalyptic landscape in search of weapons, encountering Snowbreeders and battling it out as they go. The soundtrack, therefore, needed to be able to seamlessly connect with everything that’s happening, so the intensity of the music needed to be able to ramp up at the right moment. After talking through all of our ideas, the team started work on the first concept phase. During this phase, the first prototype of the game was also built, for which I wrote an adaptive track with synthwave influences.

Music Production for Games: How Does it Work?
A shot from the prototype

Concept evaluation

After some successful showcases of the prototype at various big events, the team started production on the full game. Functionally speaking, the music was working, but I felt that something was missing: the action music didn’t feel as grand and threatening compared to what was actually happening on the screen. During the exploration sequences, the music had exactly the right atmosphere, but the impact when the action hit wasn’t big enough. I decided to experiment a bit with adding other elements, also outside of the synthwave genre and, slowly but surely, the game developed its own style, where the use of cinematic percussion and drum beats created a combo of the retro and the new. I also gave the synthesizer sound a more modern edge by using more current filter techniques or articulations.

Music production

With the concept phase completed, the focus now lay on the overall production of the music for the game. The locations for the different levels had been finalised and the broad outline of the story was finished, so I could now start work on the tracks that would emphasise the atmosphere and feel of the different levels. Besides the level tracks, I also wrote things like a special theme for The Line (the multiplayer lobby where players can upgrade their weapons) and special themes for the bigger enemies in the game. Elements of these themes also make a subtle return elsewhere in the game to tie everything together.

Music Production for Games: How Does it Work?
The main theme was built around a sequence I wrote on the ARP2600 FS (reissue)

Post-production

In the final development phase the focus is on testing the music in the game, updating mixes and the production of a digital soundtrack for release. Mixing the music specifically for VR platforms is a more complex task, because a lot of standalone VR consoles (like the Meta Quest 2) have built-in speakers. These speakers are often not that great at handling louder content or really low frequencies, so the challenge is to retain all of the essential elements and the full impact of the music within the limitations set by the hardware. On top of that, the music needs to work with the sound of gunfire, the screams of the enemies and the yells of the other characters without getting in the way.

Music Production for Games: How Does it Work?

Because the music in the game is adaptive, it doesn’t have a fixed arrangement, so it’s not exactly possible to release it as an album as is (on streaming platforms like Spotify, for example). For the album-form of the soundtrack, I had to go back to the tracks and write a more linear arrangement for them. In the game, the music is dictated by the gameplay, but when you’re arranging for an album, it’s important that the music is more logical. After that, everything needs to be mastered to make sure that the levels and dynamics of the various tracks don’t vary too much compared to one another. The whole process took around two weeks to complete and in the end, resulted in a full album version of the music from the game.

Music Production for Games: How Does it Work?
The soundtrack is available on the STEAM platform

After The Fall is now available on all big platforms.