The Sims music
Now Playing: If The Walls Could Talk
Topic: Game Music
Okay, so I didn't get back here in time to make good on my promise to explain why I took Freshmen 4 Ever down. It's a long and complex story which really has nothing to do with today's entry, so I'll just say this about it. I had to compress it too much to make it fit into my Tripod account's 20 MB of storage space, making it sound just... not the way I wanted it to. All muddy and difficult to listen to is not how it should sound. Anyway, onto the point for today.
Although I've already mentioned this on Of Carbon and Silicon, I wanted to talk about it again here because some new stuff has come up and this is where I talk about music nowadays.
The Sims is just about the niftiest game of all time. Notice I said "The Sims"... not The Sims 2 or The Sims 3. Why? First, a tale is required...
I played The Sims (or The Sims Classic) for the first time when I was 12. Although the game, itself, was frustrating at first -- "§20,000? That's not enough to build a mansion!" -- I did enjoy making Sims, because A) it's nifty to play God if given the opportunity and B) I liked the neighbourhood music and using Create-a-Sim Mode ad nauseam was more acceptable to me than just leaving the game running to listen to the score. It wasn't until I really started to pay more attention to music in high school that I did some research into the game's musical score. The majority of it was written by Jerry Martin, Marc Russo, and Robi Kauker. Further, it wasn't until I discovered my ability to improvise on the piano that I discovered the Build Mode piano solos were improvised. Finally, it wasn't until I started to do research for my side-project, The Mind's Rubbish Bin (a compendium of largely worthless information to clutter one's brain) that I discovered the precise reason why The Sims Classic's score was so different from its sequels.
Ever since Will Wright first approached Broderbund with the idea for a people simulator in 1990, no one thought it would work. In fact, Broderbund didn't like the idea, either... hence why it wasn't released until 2000. For that matter, Electronic Arts needed some convincing as well. They greenlit development of Wright's people simulator in 1997, fully anticipating market failure, just like the majority of the other simulators Maxis had been making since the advent of SimCity in 1989 (ever heard of Streets of SimCity, SimAnt, SimTower? No? Of course not, because they weren't particularly popular). EA's trepidation showed through in the project... critics had noted, upon the game's release, that even for computers of the time, The Sims AI was not as advanced as it should have been. This was mainly EA trying to save as much money as possible on a game they were convinced would fail. This modus operandi also explains the distinctiveness of the game's music. Most of the music and sound crew had worked on Maxis games in the past -- Jerry Martin and Robi Kauker had worked on SimCopter. Marc Russo got into the project because of his working relationship with Jerry Martin. Russo almost singlehandedly composed the entire neighbourhood score, with which I had been so enamoured when I first played The Sims.
The surprise success of The Sims led EA to spend quite a bit more money on development of The Sims 2, which included the musical score. Rather than hiring back Jerry Martin with his extensive connections with live orchestras and soloists, they chose to hire TV and film composing team Mutato Muzika (headed by Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh, ex-Devo)... for some reason, even though most of the team worked on the game's score, only Mark Mothersbaugh is given in-game credit.
In The Sims 2, the stereo object came into play. More significant was it in The Sims 2 than it ever was in The Sims Classic. Fundamentally, the stereo is an object in the Electronics category of Buy Mode. It plays music from one of several available "stations" (really, folders in the game's Music directory). The user can have their Sim activate it, change songs, change stations, dance to the music being played, and deactivate it. At first, EA hired local bands who, whilst not being household names, did have a number of posters stuck to bulletin boards and lampposts around L.A. Then, around the time the Nightlife expansion pack was released, Rod Humble was made vice-president of EA's new The Sims division (created from EA's own development studios and bits of what used to be Maxis) and was authorised to, in effect, "spend money to make money". Under Humble's Sims division, the stereo object began to feature "Simlish" renditions of popular radio songs, done by the artists who originally recorded them. Suddenly, recognisable names began showing up in the music menu... Skye Sweetnam, Natasha Bedingfield, The Pussycat Dolls, among others (and also male artists).
Now, here comes The Sims 3 in 2009. When it finally gets released, after being held back for what EA CEO, John Riccitiello, called "publicity reasons", I find that the game has started out with the background score taking a backseat to the big-name artists they have doing the "music" for the stereo object.
Allow me to reiterate the functions of the stereo in The Sims series... it is a furnishing object found in the Electronics category of Buy Mode. Once placed into a Sim's home the user can direct their Sim to activate it, change songs, change stations, dance to the music being played, and deactivate it. These options haven't changed since The Sims Classic. They're not likely to change in the future... really, what else can one do with a stereo? Apart from throwing it out a window, not much... nothing that would make a great deal of difference in The Sims, anyway.
Although I understand the capitalist viewpoint that you need to spend money to make money, I rather think EA have placed their priorities in the wrong area. Whilst I do like to see music, as a concept, get more recognition from the videogame industry, I don't like to see it being exploited for purposes of profit. As a composer, however, I find this emphasis on big-name artists to be a proverbial slap in the face. Not just to me, but to the music staff of The Sims Classic and, really, Steve Jablonsky, himself (the game's composer). Real composers, who slave over musical scores, day in and day out, until they get every note just right can't help but be insulted when a game designer calls for an unassuming underscore that won't outshine their all-star lineup of radio songwriters -- people who rarely if ever compose their own music or lyrics. The typical record label nowadays has a staff of composers and lyricists who write the material for which credit is usurped by some so-called "artist". The only art involved in radio songs is the art of the swindle.
Why does a stereo object in the fantastical world of The Sims, where money grows on trees and aging can stop long enough for one to become a police chief and a criminal mastermind, need to contain songs by actual, real-world people? There's a thing called the suspension of disbelief. Essentially, suspension of disbelief is the subtle science of fooling people into believing that what they are seeing is real (you, personally, are frequently under the suspension of disbelief, simply by playing games and watching television). This kind of mental trickery was present in The Sims Classic, thanks to the completely original stereo songs composed by Robi Kauker. The fact that Sims have different music than we do rounded out the illusion of the microcosm -- a miniature society with its own taste in music. Perhaps the singer says "glargo" here because to say "flardo" would be profane.
If the real world enters the microcosm too far, then the suspension is dissolved and the illusion starts to encroach into the uncanny valley. You begin to realise that these are electronically-created automatons that strive to look and act as humanlike as technologically possible.
I don't claim to be an expert on the mental processes, but to say that music is a huge part of this process would be a drastic understatement. There are no words that can sufficiently describe the effects that music has on the human psyche. Since music is purely auditory, it tends to carry more of an emotional response than something that is seen. A prime example of this is silent films. Since the movie, itself, has no audio of any kind, a piano or organ score was packaged with the film for a musician to play in synchronisation with playback. The sole purpose for this was that filmmakers discovered very early on that music plays a sizeable part in human emotion and, since they had no means of recording a musical score to play along with the film, they required a more hands-on approach, involving local musicians to play the film's score live.
Need more proof? Try playing a videogame with the music off -- not a simulator, but a game with a plot. Perhaps, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Mute the sound before you enter a dungeon. Are you as edgy as you would be with the sound enabled?
If EA continues down this path, I predict that the fourth installment of The Sims will contain no background score at all, with the big names completely taking over the soundtrack. The microcosm illusion will disappear entirely, making players realise that Sims aren't real, which will decimate the game's appeal. Those who do not completely abandon the series will begin to look to the past and see precisely where EA made their fatal mistake. The musical score.
At this juncture, I would like to shamelessly point out that I am always available at low rates... not that money is much of an issue for EA anymore. Plus, I've been improvising Sims Classic-like piano solos ever since I discovered the key of C7. It's one of the precipitating factors which led me to become a composer (one of several others, but this one more so than most).
Imagine if The Sims 4 got back to basics, being just an enhanced version of The Sims Classic... in gameplay and in music. I ask you... would this song not work in Build Mode?
If The Walls Could Talk
Of course, this is a bit more... shall we say, saccharine than others that I have devised, but it's the shortest one, which is good when you only have 20 MB of storage space on a server.
If nothing else, think on the science of music for a bit.
Posted by jsebastianperry
at 13:00 CDT
Updated: Saturday, 30 July 2011 11:26 CDT