Article One - Noise Art.

Sound and Music in Videogames.

Music is an integral part of videogames, without it they wouldn’t be the same. We have been given the task of researching the theory of sound, psychology of sound and the legal issues.

Psychology of sound.

Sound plays a huge part in videogames, for me a game without sound is like a picture without colour. We have a few different senses and hearing is a vital one, in everyday life we never really hear true silence that’s why I think in videogames you can capture some emotions perfectly.

Everybody has heard the catchy Mario theme tune, you associate the music of that game with the gameplay. Later games with more intricate and integral stories music evolved in games, cinematic aspects were added into the sound design. Today music, sound tracks and sound effects immerse the player into ever growing videogames.

Simple things can change the feel of a videogame; this can be making a game happy by using major chords. This is a great way to tell a player they are on the right track (this is better if it isn’t verbally because most games are international). 

Adaptive music, this is an important way that sound is used in videogames which shows the player that something is happening or a objective is unfolding as you progress. We see this in many games, such as metal gear solid as the tempo of the music indicates the change of pace in game, this tells the player how to approach things subliminally.

Examples of this are when games like Wii sports, are more family orientated game uses a more elevated, overly happy style of music in the game, because the aim of the game is to be happy and to bond with the family and this coherently does just that.

Game Music.

Dependent on the genre of game, audio can be used very differently, for instance when you look and listen to games like Halo etc. You find they have higher, fuller orchestral pieces; the camera could pan out on a huge alien landscape and then with the added music you feel emotions run through you and you just want to explore. Then there are also time where in sci-fi games we see different adaptations from the audio side, a lot of older games opting for a synthesizer and more of a techno feel, this can be found today but just not as often as the technology we have today is more than capable of creating and adding huge orchestral and fancy music.

In comparison you could take Red Dead Redemption (Western Videogame). This game felt very cinematic, like you were watching a john Wayne cowboy film, the harmonica howling accompanied upon upbeat banjos when you were rewarded really made you feel immersed in the game.

They used a lot of the instruments that would have been available back in the time of the cowboy, such as steel guitars, banjos and acoustic guitars this made the game feel very atmospheric, when you were playing the game you seemed to feel like you were in a movie but all of the decisions were yours, For instance when you were on horseback and you were going fast the sounds around you felt distorted, this really made you feel like you were on the horse, in some ways things like this, small really sometimes unnoticeable things can make a game great.

Technology advances and with that the experience we get does, you can get full soundtracks, climactic music sequences and more in the most average of games and now after looking into audio in video games you appreciate how to have a good game it must be accompanied with great audio and soundtrack.

Now take a PG game like Mario where its very arcade, childish and simple then accompany this with a fun upbeat theme tune, simple beeps and bops when you are rewarded and you see a fast paced plat former. This also backs up the fact of how important and integral music is with games, it creates a sense of reality, immersion and depth and for me its really paints a clearer picture of how you’re supposed to feel when gaming and as time progress’ I think that audio will become a bigger part of the gaming experience.

Foley.

Foley is the recreation of everyday, simple sound effects that are added to a lot of media such as; videogames, films and TV shows. Foley sounds are used to intensify the overall experience of the videogame or movie.

Good Foley in a TV show, film or videogame will go unnoticed and integrated into the clips near perfectly.

Foley is constructed in a sound studio known as a Foley studio. A large percentage of the sound we hear in a film and videogames are not organic, they are created off set. The recording can often be exhausting and laborious.

There are 3 main categories in the Foley creation; Feet, Props and Cloth.

Feet, this is simply footsteps. Using the right shoes and surfaces can create accurate footstep they will use things from marble to wooden floor to create accurate footsteps.

Cloth, This category is more of the subtle sounds you hear on television and in videogames. This can be the minutest thing like pants rubbing together.

Other Effects, This is built up of things like doors closing and opening, doorbell and many other things. Most of these sounds can be made by using stock sounds (archived sounds).

Personally if I had to be a Foley artist as a career I would love to work on games with really realistic sounds, games like the last of us, FARCRY and uncharted they are adventure games set in places which you will never explore where there are basic elements of walking but it could be inside of a jungle, forest or a ruined temple but you the Foley artist would have to find the sounds of the monkeys sporadically scuttling up the trees, the lighting of a torch to explore a cave, they find everything from the ground up.

I think challenging yourself would be a major element in being a Foley Artists, you could be looking to create a rumble of a cave collapsing in an epic scene and you could be in the studio all day experimenting with sounds and then you give up and go home, then when you’re at home you could put the wheelie bin out and as you push it you hear the rumble the drum of it makes accompanied with the reverb and the hard wheels crisply rolling over stones and you’ve just realized how to make your sound.

Sources Of Sound.

Music and sounds can be acquired in many different ways and with the music industry growing everyday it becomes easier. You can look for archived sounds and music, which is loyalty (free of charge).

You could get an artist to make the sound for you and pay them.

Associated Legal Issues.

Sampling music is the subject of a lot of many legal disputes; within the copyright law this can include musical compositions and sound recordings.

Some legal issues can be solved out of court with payments being made to the aggrieved party.

Copyright.

This is the exclusive and assignable right, and is given to the person who created the product for a fixed numbers of years (there life). This means when the product of the owner cannot be published or brought out by anyone else without paying and or consent from the owner.

The length of the copyright can vary dependent on the country you’re in, most times it tend to be the publishers life +50 years or +100 years.

Many things can be copyrighted, examples of these things are; Books, Poems and Songs.

In the modern age copyright has moved onto websites as it is easy to copy and paste online, so therefore the copyright law protects original content published on the web.

A great example of a copyright infringement would have been in may 2013 an iPhone game called mine was ruled to infringe on Tetris’ copyright and trade dress, to summaries, XIO (the company the who infringed on the copyright) and were found to have infringed on Tetris. This was a big step in copyright in the video game market as creativity and influences can remind you of a game but this game was seen to have solely copied Tetris.

Royalties.

Royalties or royalty is a usage-based payment made by one party to the owner of the copyrighted asset (someone’s intellectual property). Royalties can be a fixed price or they can be settled as a percentage of net revenue.

Also considerations are taken into account when it comes to royalties, some technological royalties can have a small life cycle and can be more valuable at the early stage.

Another fact that not many people know is that when you hear a song on the radio its not the person singing it who will get the money (unless they themselves wrote, or partly wrote the song). Royalties will go to the songwriter.

Companies like Spotify currently pay around 10% of revenue to songwriters (this is split between mechanical and performance royalties) and about 60% to the artist. On royalties (mechanical) are usually paid by the labels or artists to a third party, who then pay publishers.

Ancillary Right.

Ancillary rights are supplementary rights that stem from a primary right. This right exists depending on a claim that is reasonably linked to a main right.

Ancillary Right is a contractual agreement in which a percentage of profits made on the sale(s) of action figures, posters and T-shirts which relate to a film and or motion picture.