Levelling

MP3’s and Game Design

I read a great article in Rolling Stone on the weekend that was bemoaning the loss of audio quality in modern music due to the rise of MP3 as a core format. I was struck by the similarities between that and the games industry. Let me explain.

There are actually two problems with modern music production. The first and possibly worst is that in order to “compete” with all the noise in the market, engineers are being forced to push the signal strength of tracks to as close to the 0db threshold as they can. 0db is like the infinity of digital sound recording. You cannot push a signal louder. Recording studios are actually intentionally distorting raw tracks during the recording process (something analogue recordings avoided at all costs) in order to facilitate volume levels at the mastering stage. Mixes are compared not for their subtlety and musical richness, but for which is loudest; and loudest is best.

Engineers are calling this The Loudness War, and most hate it because the result is that all the ebb and flow - the emotional dynamics - have been compressed out of the tracks. One could argue that most of the music has also gone, and all that is left are key changes, bass, and volume meters.

The second problem is the MP3 format itself. MP3’s reduce the size of music files by removing those frequencies the ear is less likely to notice. That’s great in theory and works well, except all the richness, harmonic overtones, and subtle depth has been removed from the music at the same time. Combine this with the heavy handed use of compression to increase volume above all other elements, and you have a pretty bland audio palette. That is why most modern music sounds the same, and fatigues the ear quickly. But in the day of the iPod, we just hit shuffle, and move on.

The problem is we are missing out on so much. It’s only those who have been exposed to anything different - such as the sonic richness of vinyl recordings - who know anything has happened. As Donald Fagan of legendary 70’s American jazz fusion band Steely Dan (who has been responsible for some of the best sounding recordings ever made) said, “God is in the details, and all the details have been removed.”

After playing many recent games, I get a similar feeling. The games industry has been pushing loud and brash for so long, it has removed much of the joy of gaming. Games used to be filled with superfluous details that didn’t add directly to the core game, but which produced the moments of surprise and delight that made the games worth playing. Since games have become big business and huge teams are paid big money to produce them, the extra details are actively cut early in the design process. They are risky, hard to debug and track, and don’t fit well into project management spreadsheets or marketing agendas. I have personally fought for many hidden, extra details to be added to games, yet lost the battle almost every time because such features “won’t be seen by most players”. Mostly it’s logistics and schedules, but what we are left with are strong, sleek, loud core game experiences that are ultimately - and perplexingly - unsatisfying. Our gaming ears are fatigued, and we don’t even know why.

I remember the days of the “useless” details, and they are what I miss most of all.

  posted by monty · 16 Jan 2008 · comment?