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Certain game genres live and die by the level of excitement they create. Part of the experience of playing a game like this is feeling your pulse rise. These games, known collectively as action games, tend to be “twitchy.” They rely on quick reactions that resemble involuntary twitches (hence the name). Manual dexterity is a must. The games serve as a rigorous test of the agility and musculature of the human hand and the keenness of the human nervous system. Examples of action game genres include:

• Fighting

• Racing

• Action-Adventure

Shooters also fall into the category of action games, but for the composer there are unique considerations for shooters. I’ll discuss this in more detail later on in the chapter.

Music in an action game should reflect the pacing and energy level of the gameplay.

However, music can also serve the dual function of augmenting that sense of pace, subtly nudging it in the desired direction. Twitch games such as fighters consist of lots of quick actions that can at times feel choppy, with pauses occurring between actions that have the potential to drag down the momentum. Racing games have periods of relative inactivity (such as when the car is alone on the track, or the player is driving down a less challenging section of the raceway), and these can also create a dip in the overall excitement level. Action-adventure games sometimes have short breaks during combat sequences in which the player has defeated a first wave of enemies but has not yet engaged the remaining foes. These lulls are deadly in a game whose primary draw is adrenaline.

As composers, we can remedy this problem by infusing the game with an overall momentum. This momentum should link the highest-energy parts of the gameplay to each other, boosting the lower-energy segments so that the whole experience feels more unified. In order to do this most effectively, the pacing of the music should share a common core with the pacing of the gameplay.

There are many ways to accomplish this. I like to watch videos of gameplay taken from the project I’m scoring. While watching, I pay close attention to any rhythmic happenings onscreen. In doing this, I’m certainly not trying to sync the characters to the tempo of my music. Even if this were possible, it would make the characters look like they were dancing in time (which might be desirable for a humorous project, but would be very undesirable for a serious one). What I’m trying to do is create a rhythmic construct that shares a common pace with the overall rhythm of events in the game.

When done correctly, this technique allows the music to meld with the actions of the player, feeling very natural during gameplay. When lulls occur, the music creates a sense that the figurative wheel is still spinning. The machinery of the action is still at work. In other words, the music says to the player, “Keep alert! It’s not over yet!”

For example, when I began composing the music for the video game Speed Racer from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, I kept in mind that one of the main draws of the game is the ability to race at over 400 miles per hour. The game environment and physics does everything in its power to make the player perceive that speed, but it is difficult to mentally encompass 400 mph. In reality, we only truly feel the intensity of the speed at which we’re driving when we have to suddenly hit the brakes hard, or if we are involved in a crash. Driving smoothly along, our minds and bodies adjust to the speed until we register it comfortably. In an action game, we don’t want the player to feel comfortably adjusted.

The Speed Racer game incorporates something called ‘Car-Fu,’ in which cars can perform combat-like maneuvers against each other in slow motion. During these brief sequences the race will grind to a near halt, and the subsequent acceleration back to

normal time serves as a reinforcement of the sense of speed. During normal racing, however, the game has built-in assistance to prevent the player from running off the track, and it is unlikely for the player to suddenly hit the brakes hard. I knew that there was a potential for the player to mentally adjust to the speed during regular racing sequences and cease to feel excited by the racing itself.

When I started preparing to write music for this project, I had already decided that my primary goal would be to communicate dizzying speed to the player. This goal had to be approached carefully. Simply writing fast music wouldn’t be enough. In time, a person’s senses become numbed to fast tempos, and they no longer seem particularly exciting.

Like the Car-Fu segments that provide big speed contrasts in the game, I would need big speed contrasts in the music. My experiments with frantic rhythms set against slow harmonic lines seemed to work well when watching the gameplay videos. The slow elements of the music served to make the fast elements feel even zippier. I also incorporated some sound design within the music, such as whooshing sounds with dramatic Doppler effects, to reinforce the perception of speed. Further, keeping the music in a state of flux with rapidly changing textures and instrumentation proved to be an effective approach. Contrast is one of our most powerful tools as composers. It gives every musical device and technique more impact.

In a fighting game, our rhythmic inspiration may be derived from the idle animations of the fighters between attacks, or the built-in gaps between actions that occur when a particular take-down is activated, or the flurry of movement when two experienced players attack each other. Likewise, in an action-adventure game our rhythmic inspiration may derive from many of the same gameplay components, with the added consideration of progression through a complex level rather than confined combat within an arena setting. In the Prototype action-adventure game from Activision, Cris Velasco and Sacha Dikiciyan scored the fighting sequences with a hefty combination of dark orchestra and synth, emphasizing the main character’s tendency to land devastating blows rather than engage in thrust-and-parry. They also often used simpler versions of the same action tracks to maintain the momentum between battles, helping to bridge the player from one fight to the next.

Regardless of how we address the pacing of the game, our most important objective will always be to create music that feels integrated with the gameplay experience rather than simply skimming on top of it. We should use whatever composition techniques will most effectively infuse our music with the pacing of the action.

Now I’d like to offer a word about shooters. As an action game, one would think that a shooter would have the same music needs as other game types within the overall genre.

Generally speaking, they do. However, since most shooters offer multiplayer modes that take place in a fully three-dimensional setting with enemies appearing from all sides, the ability to pinpoint an attacker by listening to his or her approach becomes very important.

Players of shooters don’t like anything that interferes with their ability to perform at their best, and this is especially true for competitive online play. A composer for a shooter will often take these issues into consideration when structuring the music for multiplayer modes. A good example of this can be found in Christopher Lennertz’s score for the Starhawk shooter from Sony Computer Entertainment. During the single-player campaign, driving music keeps the excitement alive. However, this changes radically in multiplayer mode, when music isn’t heard unless certain circumstances are triggered, such as when an enemy flag is captured or when a timed match is about to end.

Composers of music for shooters need to be especially careful, remembering that the soundscape around the player is an important part of the gameplay mechanic. In some cases, the most exciting music in shooters may be relegated to dramatic special events that are limited in duration. As composers on shooter games, we may want to save our most dramatic compositions for special occurrences that advance the storyline. These are called scripted events, and they share some similarities with cinematics (I’ll be discussing both of these concepts in more detail in chapter 10). We may also find ourselves creating a lot of exploration music, which is heard between major battles and helps to set the scene (refer to the “Music as a World Builder” section, earlier in this chapter).