Can Video Games Make You a Rock Star?
Movies make bad video games, video games make even worse movies, but what about video games making rock stars? No, I don't mean some hidden talent scouting feature in Rock Band or Guitar Hero ("Hey, you can sure tap buttons swell! You've got your choice of data entry, or playing finger bongos during happy hour at the local cantina!"). I just found this interview with Electronic Arts game audio exec Steve Schnur by way of MSN and read the sentence "Avril Lavigne was first introduced to European audiences through FIFA 2003," followed by "Ozomatli, a band that has existed for years with minimal sales and exposure, got an iPod commercial, a career-changing sales jump, and a Grammy nomination based on their exposure in Madden 2005," both at least mildly surprising.
Schnur goes on to claim success for a whole list of international acts:
Within the past two years, we've seen major international breakthroughs from acts that include Robyn, Mando Diao, Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Bloc Party, LCD Soundsystem, Dúné, Tribalista, Go Team, Bullet for My Valentine, The Caesars, Kasabian, Lupe Fiasco, MIA, Wolfmother, Hawthorne Heights, and others. That's just a small sampling of what we've helped make happen. It's all real and exciting proof that video games are a critical component of the new industry paradigm.
Three things. First, I couldn't name, hum, or frankly recognize an Avril Lavigne song if my life depended on it (which of course means absolutely nothing, but there you go anyway). Second, it's not like Lavigne was a total unknown in Europe before FIFA 2003 -- still, given the FIFA series' popularity in Europe, where it's sold millions, I'm sure the exposure helped. Third, and the only question I really care about, is whether it's really a good thing that video game studios are simply becoming the new "15 minute" musical popularity kingmakers. I despise celebrity rock today with a passion only equalled inversely by my youthful love of moonwalking, silver sequins on thin white gloves, and laying out flat sheets of cardboard in the garage to do you-know-what while listening to Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me.
Says Schnur: "The key aspect of every soundtrack must always be for the music to fit with a game's theme, lifestyle, and emotional heart." And that's exactly right if, as he points out, your game is The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or James Bond. Where the music's incontrovertibly part of the total product, give me all the Howard Shore and John Williams and John Barry I can handle. But if it's a musically headless series like FIFA whatever (or frankly any of EA's sports games) where the soundtrack's all studio-selected pop hooks, I want the option to throw out the game's soundtrack and build my own, and by build my own, I mean using my own personal library, not EA's, and not some pay-per Rock Band-style download service.
Of course failing that, there's always the "disable in-game music" and "stream an MP3 or whatever audio file from your stereo in tandem" workaround.
Replay
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Hey Matt,
Actually, I can back up some of this statement because I, for one, get turned onto new music through games. It's been that way for me since I played Road Rash on the 3DO. Back then, they even had videos of the bands...but I went out and picked up Swervedriver's Mezcal Head and Jesse's Paw after I heard their music piped in-game.
Would I go out and buy a game soundtrack? Not likely, but at least It'd make me want to google a band I'd never heard of before playing a game. And that was all happening way before game soundtracks became some huge blow-out deal with major artists like they have today.
Good points Darren, and since we're sharing memories, I'd like to add that Jeremy Soule's Total Annihilation soundtrack was a glorious good fun, and great for making heads turn ("That's coming from a *video* game?!?"). Sure, he totally ripped Goldsmith and Horner off (who in turn have been ripping Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky off forever) and I was never frankly all the crazy about Total Annihilation's gameplay, but oh what fun with a passable pair of desktop Labtecs.
And...uh...I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I have pretty much everything Nobuo Uematsu's released. His solo piano renditions of the soundtracks are amazing, and I mean as serious compositions.
But back to the post, I was just sort of wondering out loud whether the notion of "kingmaking" in terms of studios is in the process of dying a long, protracted death. I kind of hope it is in the sense that Chris Anderson (Wired) means when he and others talk about content as "build to one."