Parappa Creator Disses Game Music
The designer behind PaRappa the Rapper, Masaya Matsuura claims that games and music are devoid of ingenuity and imagination. He spoke yesterday at the Nordic Game Conference and said that SingStar and Guitar Hero have advanced the genre, and there have been some high-quality game scores out there that he has enjoyed. Although he said that mostly game music is unimaginative and lacks the connection between humans and music.
Examples of the relationship between music and games are rather shallow,” he said. “There has been a lot of neglect and apathy. There are many incompetent music directors who cannot truly be described as musicians, since they do not have their own style, they are merely involved in production.”
Now he is working on a music game for cell phones called Rhythmica. He basically called out to the industry to be more experimental when addressing music and gameplay. If you look at his catalog of games, they are pretty wild in comparison to the rest of the music-based genre of games, specifically the Vib-Ribbon series. I understand his point that there should be more experimentation in the approach to music and games, but I don’t think that the whole genre lacks ingenuity. Look at the work of Tetsuya Mizuguchi for example. His games are bursting with expression and experimentation. His style is distinct and his ability to adhere the music strictly to the gameplay, while painting the visual canvas in tune to the music is incomparable. He delivers a full package. That’s just one developer, there are many other creative minds in the field. But hey, they can always strive further for greatness.
PaRappa Creator: Game Music “Incompetent” [Next Generation]
Toots
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 16 May 2007
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: Masaya Matsuura, Rhythmica
I agree with him on some level that many games have lackluster music and soundtracks. Of course the games that lack quality music are also usually lacking quality of any sort. However, I think that music has always been a very important part of gaming and has become more popular recently. Also, there are some games with truly awesome composers and musicians. Two that I think of off the top of my head are the Silent Hill and Final Fantasy franchises. Both have really revolutionized the use of sound and music in gaming.
I don't think he's saying *all* VGM [video game music] is generic and unimaginative -- just pointing out that there are a lot of composers who don't go anywhere beyond the basic expectancies (This is a battle theme: we need a fast track with a beat). Of course there are exceptions to this rule; it just so happens that these exceptions are the VGM artists we know and love: Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo, Akira Yakamoto. It's the composers we don't know by name -- the one's who haven't distinguished themselves -- that Matsuura is criticizing. As well he should! I'm all for anything that will make VGM a more diverse, more innovative genre, considering how much space it occupies on my iPod.
[Rereading the post, it also seems like he's referring less to composers of original scores, and more to music directors of rhythm games and the like. But I stand by my statement.]
I completely agree with him. There are some incredible composers, but for the most part video games really lack imaginative scores. The only two composers I can think of who have truly distinguished themselves are Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda. Yoko Shimomura has done some excellent work on Kingdom Hearts, but I think she still has some untapped potential.
He *did* rhyme "rocky" and "cocky" after all...
Yeah...I've read many articles for the distinction amongst music composers vs. publishers. The one detail that keeps coming up over and over is the major split (and this split is most commonly caused by the publishers/directors): Preplanned publishers/directors who know exactly what they want and the other half are the opposite extremity (where the music composer is told "We want a sorrowful tune. Ready, set, go!". I think he's doing something Tommy Tallarico has been trying to do and encourage more freedom for more music composers so that the creativity he seeks will be able to come out (which I think it will with the uprising indie movement).
Also, I have to point out my personal favorite game he has made, Mojib-Ribbon.