When it comes to talking about video games many people spend a lot of their time talking about graphics or gameplay styles, but the reality is that video games as a whole are a collaborative art project in a way. This means that there is no video game without graphic artists as well as coding engineers but there are also many other artists that are involved in these kinds of massive projects with incredible budgets. In recent times one of the big discussion subjects about video games has been its musical aspect. While many video, games use music simply as a soundtrack others have grown to have different relationships with their music and their soundtrack. So, let’s take a look at music in video games and how it can be used effectively to create something new.
Before we address one of the main subjects of our discussion around music and its integral use in creating new types of video games we should discuss something or rather a group of people that many gamers know without even knowing. We are talking about a band from Finland called The Poets of the Fall. Many people can already deduce what the subject of our analysis of music and gaming already is but for others, this name might not be familiar. While they may not be as big as many other worldwide famous bands the reality is that poets of the fall have had a massive footprint in the video game industry for over 3 decades now. Where did it all start you might wonder? It all started with a small video game called Max Payne.
While Poet of the Falls music has been present in the Max Payne series the real crux of their part played in the video game industry would come a little bit later. We are of course talking about the collaboration between Remedy Studio and poets of the fall under another name. We are talking about one of the most popular bands in video game history we are talking about the old gods of Asgard. Whether you are one of those die-hard fans of Alan Wake from its very first video game or someone who was introduced to the franchise through the video game control you have heard of some of their absolute bangers. Whether we are talking about the song war, take control, or more recently herald of darkness we are not simply talking about the songs. We are talking about the importance of the song both in the meta-narrative of the video game and as well as a gameplay element.
The incredible work that has been done by Sam Lake in the whole remedy team is not only to include the music inside of the world of Alan Wake but to include the player inside of the musical number inside of the universe. It is easy to score a good moment with a good track it is much harder to build a song in concert with a moment and after song has its power within the story. The old gods of Asgard are themselves characters inside of the video game but the songs themselves are stages of the story inside a stage of the video game. The meta-aspect of the gamer being able to enjoy the song both as a song as well as a Ludo narrative device to create both an immersive and a storytelling tool elevates both the song and the video game to a level that has not been achieved before.
The impact of the music created for Alan Wake Two cannot be overstated. Not only was the music performed live for the first time in the video game awards but it also has been a massive staple of 2023 as one of the biggest years in video games since 2008 or 2011. This is why even outside of the video game the soundtrack for Alan Wake Two has garnered millions of streams on platforms such as Spotify. One thing that many people do not understand is that remedy new to make effective use of music inside of their video game the music and be not only a soundtrack but an integral part of the video game itself.
So, whether you are an avid Call of Duty player, a Minecraft gamer on the hunt for the best lifesteal servers, or a career wow PvPer you can understand the music both as simply music and as well as a video game cultural product. The way the music was written for Alan Wake not only transcends its role as a soundtrack for a video game but also transcends its role as simply a song by merging both roles into one. Therefore, it is not only video game music it is music that defines a video game. This in turn also means that Alan Wake is not only a video game with music it is a video game with musical foundations.
