 |
| Fuck the police. "Why disrespect authority? And why such foul language, young man?" you might ask. Read on to find out. |
For the last set of opening activities, I had to play the online demo of the award-winning indie game
Machinarium while listening to one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time:
Straight Outta Compton by N.W.A. While N.W.A.'s tracks were fantastic by themselves, they did not entirely work in the world of the game. The 80's style beats along with the gangster rhetoric clashed with the industrial environment that
Machinarium attempts to immerse you in. I will admit, though, that when
Fuck the Police started playing, Josef (the player character) was being denied entrance to
Machinarium's eponymous city by the police, and tried to sneak himself in. This disdain for authority really shined through both the music and the player character's actions. This was a neat and unexpected treat for me. The song's theme of resistance also reflects the main plot of the game, which is resistance to a bona-fide police state brought about by a criminal organization. Other than
Fuck the Police, I did not find the rest of the music to fit the game's dreary, mechanical mythos. This is very similar to the way many of my friends play their video games: over their own soundtracks. One reason why video games (and movies, by extension) have the capability to be so immersive is because of their sound design. The music and sound effects are meticulously crafted and fit into their game worlds like pieces of a puzzle. Playing
Straight Outta Compton while playing
Machinarium is like completing a puzzle with a slice of pie. While the pie itself is delicious, and the puzzle appealing, you do
not want to put both of them in your mouth at the same time. This is why I decided to stop listening to N.W.A and turn up
Machinarium's volume in my second playthrough of the demo. Instead of late-20th century gangster rap, I heard an ambient, mechanized soundtrack, with a dash of chiptune for good measure. The game's music sounded desolate, in a way that could only work in this game. The oily water, the yellow sky, and the squeaks of the protagonist's limbs all seemed to fit into the grand puzzle of the game's sound design, alongside the ambient music.
Machinarium is not the only video game that excels in sound design. The
Left 4 Dead series employs an intelligent engine called the
Director that not only controls the amount of zombies attacking the players at once, but finely tunes the music and sound to the experience of each player. Small musical motifs play before each of the "special infected" enemies spawn, which serves a dual purpose: to immerse the player by adding tenseness, and alert more cognizant players of what's to come. The Director may also add special musical tracks depending on certain events in the game, such as fighting hordes of zombies, or being attacked by a special infected (Side note: Although L4D isn't a particularly scary game, being unexpectedly jumped by a Hunter while hearing shrill strings shrieking in your ears is enough for me to rocket out of my seat). As discussed by NPR in their podcast
Tech Team: Inside Video Games and Gaming, NBA 2K14 is another excellent example of sound design in video games. After months of playing the PC version with my roommate, I was never impressed by the graphics, yet, I was blown away by the sound effects. If you closed your eyes, you'd believe you were in the middle of an actual, real-life NBA game. Every game you play in
2K14 feels radically different from each other, thanks to the thousands of lines of dialogue recorded by actual NBA commentators. They seem to have something new to say each time I play the game, and when it's connected to the Internet, the game pulls actual statistics in the current NBA season and references them in game. For example, I was once playing as the Denver Nuggets and was surprised to hear from one of the commentators that Nate Robinson was on a hot streak in his last few games. Then, you look him up online and find that, yes, #10 is hot in the paint! Muting all of that over your own music seems like an insult to all of the sound designers of the game.
NBA 2K14 immersed me in the game like no other game has, and I would never have expected to say that about a basketball game!
 |
NBA 2K14 has some of the best sound design I've
ever heard in a video game. This can be credited to
the developer's mind-boggling attention to detail
in recreating every sound in a real-life basketball
game. |
As Walter Murch demonstrates in his interview about Hollywood sound design, there are many facets of sound that can be implemented in a particular scene. In his example of
Apocalypse Now, he showed the dialog track, the helicopter track, and the musical track. In total, there were six layers of tracks that he had to mix together for just one scene. This is similar to what the sound designers of
NBA 2K14 had to do, but they had it a little rougher. While Murch had to perfect the sound of one particular scene, the designers at 2K Sports had to visualize many different situations, and build an algorithm that blends the multifaceted sound design of the game in a custom fashion that personalizes it to the in-game action. In a game of
NBA 2K14, you hear all of the sounds you'd expect to hear at any basketball game. You hear the roaring of the crowd. You hear the squeaking of the player's sneakers, and you hear the basket flare as a ball sinks through it. You hear the jeers of the players as they foul, and you even hear the silence as the star player attempts that game-winning shot. It's fascinating that we have the technology to not only look realistic, but make them
sound realistic as well. It's even more fascinating that we have the technology to virtualize not only a picturesque basketball game, but one that sounds true to the game, from the court to the crowd. You don't have to be a basketball fan to appreciate that.
