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[We're partnering with game criticism site Critical Distance to present some of the week's most inspiring writing about the art and design of video games from commentators worldwide. This week, Ben Abraham looks at art game history, QA, and The Beatles: Rock Band, among many other things.]

This week Frank Lantz was at the Art History of Games conference and he reports back to say that, ‘Doom is too Rock ‘n’ Roll to ever be confined to a museum, man’! But not in quite so many words.

The AHoG conference was talk of the town this week, and Charles J Pratt wrote up some of the speakers he heard, covering the opening panel and a talk by the above mentioned Mr. Lantz and John Sharp on ‘avoiding the domestication of game art’ for GameSetWatch.

As a response to some of the things that came out of the conference, Corvus Elrod talks about how dictating what games aren’t through manifestos, etc, can only reduce their cultural relevance.

But if you’re looking for a more satirical take, you really can’t go past Matthew Burns’ “The new debate on games as ert” (sic). In the same week he also comes back to finish his series for Edge Online about QA testing ‘In the Dungeon’ with parts two, three and four.

Another new blog began its life this week, by one Amanda Cosmos, and her first post talks about the Global Game Jam and her team’s game ‘Quest for Stick’.

Elsewhere, Michael Abbott writes about Mass Effect 2 and what it says about the evolving nature of video game genres. Abbott notes: “Bioware knows what we who write about games ought to know better. Genre classifications are essentially meaningless, and it's time to drop them and move on.”

It’s a sentiment echoed to some degree by Jim Rossignol in Rock Paper Shotgun’s latest podcast, episode 38, and the resultant audio includes a great contextualized discussion of game genres throughout history.

Gus Mastrapa at Wired’s GameLife blog says ‘21st-Century Shooters Are No Country for Old Men’, noting: "Young gamers are somehow better than older gamers. Is it because they have fewer responsibilities and more free time? Or is it their youth that keeps them sharp?" At a mere 23, I think even I count as old in this scenario.

Via fellow blogosphere overviewer and synthesiser Erik Hanson comes a tale of ‘Myst as mythology of the hyperlink’.

LB Jeffries adds to the previous week’s discussion of No More Heroes 2, picking out some of its problems. Also on NMH2, Chris Dahlen writes for his Edge column that what the sequel is missing is really ‘the loser mechanic’ from the original.

Denis Farr this week examined the rather baffling choice Bioware made with regard to male-male relationships in Mass Effect 2. Farr highlights a quote from executive producer Ray Muzyka in which he explains the choice to limit any and all Male commander Shepard’s to an essentially straight male role. As Farr notes: “This tells me that I can create my Shepard, but he or she isn’t mine, actually.”

In other commentary, Grayson Davis uses a discussion of Uncharted 2 to argue quite convincingly that our vocabulary for discussing video game graphics remains an ephemeral, hard-to-pin-down thing.

Davis wonders: “…why can I quote decade-old reviews of a game that's only distantly comparable to Uncharted 2 and find the exact same statements, almost verbatim, that I find in today's criticism? These statements aren't wrong, but they're shamefully insufficient.”

Peter Kirn at Create Digital Music runs down the new music based game ‘Chime’ that I’ve been hearing good things about. The game is part of a charity-based collective, OneBigGame that aims to raise funds for children's charities.

After a negative piece early in the week explaining how difficult the Bioshock 2 hacking mini-game is for people with colorblindness, Dan Griliopoulos (who is colourblind himself) writes about the issue for Rock Paper Shotgun.

And lastly, Nicholas Shurson -- formerly of the Form8 blog -- has started The Game Journal, hoping to attract a mature audience interested in reading about and talking about videogames. This week he’s written about the The Beatles: Rock Band in ‘Come Together’, the second post named for a Beatles song we've mentioned in as many weeks.

[Finishing up our Art History of Games coverage - here's Part 1 and Part 2 -- and this one has the ever-controversial Tale Of Tales guys kicking off a ruckus, as well as Celia Pearce weaving some absurdist art references into a look at art and games.]

At the Art History of Games conference, Tale of Tales, the indie studio behind The Path, argues that "games are not art," and "largely a waste of time." Meanwhile, one professor examines where art and play have collided.

Tale of Tales: Games "Not Art," Largely A "Waste Of Time"

Tales of Tales has never been shy about making bold statements. At The Art History of Games conference in Atlanta, GA last week, Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey, who also worked on The Path, which many pigeon hole as an "art game," laid out their case for why video games are not and never will be art, and why games are never going to evolve.

"One thing need to be said first, we're not trying to not fit in on purpose," said Samyn. Instead, he maintained that they had tried to carve out a place for Tale of Tales in the game industry but room was never made for them. Samyn and Harvey listed the problems they have with games. Games, according to Tale of Tales, were not beautiful enough, or immersive enough, or welcoming enough for a large audience.

Harvey announced, "some of the members of the audience are confused," as he displayed a presentation slide that boldly said: GAMES ARE NOT ART. Samyn then argued that play was driven by a biological need, and that over time play had been turned into games. On the other hand, art was not created out of a physical need but in a search for higher purposes.

Unfortunately, according to Harvey, art is dead. After the rise of Modernism art has been co-opted by capitalism and restrictive forms of government. The speakers maintained that the real artists were no longer working in the art world, but instead were experimenting in the less explored corners of the internet.

Samyn then dug in further, intoning, "Beside a few noble attempts, video games are overwhelmingly a waste of time." Video games have stopped evolving, Samyn continued, and the reason that games could not get their act together was that they lacked guidance. Those that controlled the game industry weren't interested in changing, they were too comfortable with the way things were.

However, they said, old media that featured one-way communication was not enough. Computers offered the way forward for art, but at this point it is being held hostage by the video game industry. The speakers then switched from addressed to audience to a tone that implied that they were talking beyond the room.

Samyn announced that they, Tales of Tales, could not be stopped. They would continue to take games and rip out their "stupid rules" and goals. He promised that after eviscerating games they would breathe new life into the carcass, creating something new.

"Our time has come." Samyn said.

Harvey responded: "Make love, not games."

The two creators also announced that they were starting a project to organize all the people all over the world that were creating what they called "not games." The movement would be maintained on a series of blogs and forums, featuring conversations, screenshots of projects, as well as festivals with particular rules to guide the production of these new, 'not games'.

Tale of Tales' work to date includes The Path, the unreleased project 8, its first "anti-game" Endless Forest, Fatale, and its first iPhone project, the in-development Vanitas, commissioned by The Art History of Games conference.

When Art And Games Collide

While the subject of art and games has a lot of discussion that surrounds it, often it's without doing the hard legwork of actually compiling a list of the different instances in which the two worlds have collided. At the Art History of Games conference, professor Celia Pearce attempted to do just that, giving a long and thorough survey of participatory and game art from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.

Appearing in several lectures beforehand, Pearce clarified the connection between the famous artist, Marcel Duchamp, and games. Famously obsessed with chess, the French artist also made art as if it was a game, often playing with constraints, such as doing on entire painting while cross-eyed. Pointing to Duchamp's readymades -- already-manufactured pieces that simply bore Duchamp's signature, including a bicycle wheel and even a urinal -- Pearce pointed out that "the procedurality of the readymades was more important than their status as objects."

Touching on the Fluxus movement, Pearce talked about the composer John Cage, who would often give himself rulesets for how to perform his different pieces, even going to the extent of physically modifying the pianos he would play. A friend and collaborator of John Cage was David Tudor, who would build musical instruments out of electronic devices that were never meant to produce music.

"This is playful art," Pearce pointed out, "not necessary games, but structured play."

Pearce touched on more modern perspective in game design, such as the New Games Movement, which created outdoor games that were not directly competitive. She connected this to the work of Frank Lantz, the co-founder of the game studio area/code, who created games such as Pac Manhattan, in which familiar video games and types of games were scaled up to the point where they became something like performance art pieces.

Parallel to the New Game Movement and Lantz's Big Games is the beginning of video game art, such as the game Alien Garden, which was designed by Bernie DeKoven and programmed by Jaron Lanier. Mods and hacks also played a huge role in early video game art. One of the first exhibitions of game art was actually an online show called "Cracking the Maze" which featured, among other pieces, the modification of different games to add female characters.

Interestingly, Pearce said, at the same time Counter-Strike, a mod of Half Life that is not considered game art, was showing the mods could actually be more popular than the games they were modifying. The two perspectives on moding collided however with the game art piece "Velvet Strike", which allowed the player's gun to fire graffiti all over the walls during a Counter-Strike match.

Pearce finished by pointing the audience towards latest wave of game art, such as Mary Flanagan's piece Giant Joystick. A recreation of an Atari joystick scaled up to 8 ft. 9-11 Survivor is a game that lets the player explore the terrible choices of a person trapped in one of the damaged Twin Towers.

Finally, Pearce pointed to the recent and strong overlap between the art games and indie games. Works like Unfinished Swan, Gravitation, Moon Stories, and The Path, are all the inheritors of a long tradition of both art and games. This meeting of the art game movement and the indie game movement is important in bringing art games to more eyes and finding more possibilities to explore in indie games.

[Charles J Pratt is a freelance game designer and a researcher at NYU's new Game Center.]

[The second Charles Pratt-authored write-up from the Art History of Games conference, after the intro/John Romero combo, this one sees John Sharp and Frank Lantz contributing some more intriguing commentary on games, art, their history, and where we go from here. Above all, the fact that this conference exists is important for video games.]

At the new Art History of Games conference in Atlanta, GA, professor John Sharp references the Renaissance period to explore the relationship of games with a burgeoning art movement.

In a separate lecture, Frank Lantz, creative director and co-founder, argues that games should embrace their "wild" side, and avoid the "domestication" of more established forms of art.

The Art History of Games - John Sharp

The question "are games art?" is often asked without a careful understanding of the long, complicated, and intertwined histories of both games and the fine arts. John Sharp, professor of game design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, tried to correct this oversight by surveying the role of both art and games in culture through the ages.

Games and art have been living side by side for a long time, and only recently have they started to intermingle in people's minds.

"If we look at a definition of art we can see that games meet most criteria," Sharp said. "Games have the potential to deliver deep meaning, just not in the places we're used to looking."

Sharp laid out the history of our concept of art, which he argued began in the Renaissance. Before then the role of art was almost exclusively for the personal use of a religious person. Beyond that, artists weren't precious about how they worked, often doing any job for which they were commissioned.

This changed in the high Renaissance, when art became part of the leisure culture of the aristocracy. Art was now considered primarily visual entertainment and the "artist" became a mythological character. "Game makers", Sharp pointed out by way of somewhat acid clarification, "were not given the same respect."

While games were an important part of life they were mostly associated with what were considered 'baser instincts', not the science and mathematics that the people of the Renaissance believed underpinned the elevation of art.

Through the 18th century games had become recognized as an important part of a well-rounded life. The poet Friedrich von Schiller saw art and creativity as only possible with play, but made clear that the games of his time did not live up to his ideals.

"As much as games mattered in life" Sharp commented, "they were not given the status of the arts." But at the beginning of the 20th century, conceptions about both art and games started to change.

Marcel DuChamp, who was influential in changing people's conception of what could or could not be art, was a devotee of chess and asserted that the play of chess was an art in itself. In the years that followed artists began exploring and taking on games.

Even so, Sharp pointed out "by the late '60s the art world is really open, but despite all this games still had trouble finding a place in the new order."

At this point it's not uncommon to see a game in a gallery. Projects by artists like Cory Arcangel have incorporated game elements, and the games of Mark Essen, such as Flywrench, have been featured in a number of shows.

In the end though, Sharp said that the relationship between games and art remains fraught. "To display a game in a gallery is to take away a part of its game-ness."

Doorknobs and Butterflies: Games after Art - Frank Lantz

Games are more and more recognized as an important art form, but Frank Lantz, creative director and co-founder of game studio area/code (Drop 7, Spore Islands), argued that there's a downside to this situation.

The move to more legitimacy can also be seen as a kind of "domestication" of games; a hemming-in of their wildness and often unruly nature. Lantz argued that perhaps the trick is not to change games to make them more like our conceptions of art, but to change the way we think about art in light of games.

Lantz opened his talk by talking about something that had been bothering him. He was concerned about the status of games as an aesthetic form. Video games have done much to bring people around to recognizing the value of games, according to Lantz, but there's still something strange and unruly about games that doesn't fit into common conceptions about art.

"This moment we're in offers an opportunity to look at art in a new light." Lantz said. "I like the feeling of wildness. This is what aesthetics should feel like."

Lantz argued that we should try to see games for what they are, rather than what we would like them to be. We should ask when we talk about games, what games are we talking about? Lantz asserted often when we talk about games we're really talking about single-player games. These games, according to the area/code co-founder, are easy to talk about because they seem like a tidy package of attributes, much like a painting or a film.

"However," he continued, "I can't help but thinking about the other games I play. Some are single-player, but some are not."

Looking at games like golf and chess Lantz pointed out that as much as single-player games might feel like films and photography, they're also undeniably similar to more traditional games. "They don't feel different, or even look that different." he said.

What we shouldn't be doing, he continued, is putting off talking about these games while concentrating on games that might be easier for us to discuss. Beyond that, we shouldn't suggest that single-player games are more important than other games.

"Are we going to say that Super Monkey Ball is inherently more valuable than golf?" Lantz asked. "We make it easy on ourselves by excluding these games. It's lazy."

The problem, Lantz pointed out, was that games like golf and chess don't look much like what we recognize as art. They don't resemble a painting or a novel. "They're more like ways of life." Lantz said. People devote their entire lives to just one of those games.

Finally, Lantz asserted that while games might not fit into the normal templates for how we think about art, this doesn't mean that we should exclude games from our conception of aesthetics.

Instead, he concluded, if aesthetics cannot take games into account then we should re-engineer our ideas about aesthetics: "The way we think about aesthetics needs to change."

[Charles J. Pratt is a freelance game designer and a researcher at NYU's new Game Center.]

[Do video games have an "art history"? A new Atlanta event, the Art History of Games symposium, is trying to explain, and GSW correspondent Charles J Pratt was there to see the organizers kick off the conference by tackling this very question.]

It may not be obvious that games have an "art history," or why there needs to be a conference that's entirely focused on that particular subject.

So, in their opening panel for the Art History of Games conference in Atlanta, Georgia, which Gamasutra will be covering in-depth, organizers Ian Bogost, Michael Nitsche, and John Sharp entertained those very questions as to why an art history of games is needed.

The overall event is a three-day public symposium in which, according to organizers, "members of the fields of game studies, art history and related areas of cultural studies gather to investigate games as an art form."

Also featured in the conference is the premiere of commissioned art games by Jason Rohrer, Tale of Tales and Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman, of which there's more information available on the official Art History Of Games commissioned game site.

So, how about the concept of "an art history of games," and whether it's valid?

"It's interesting that we have to justify this question in the first place," said co-organizer, author and IGF Nuovo Award finalist Bogost (A Slow Year) in his opening remark.

Fellow organizer John Sharp added that the idea for the Art History of Games conference was to "start the process of looking at the question of art and games more closely."

They presented three ways of looking at the art of games. "Is the art of games found in the visual arts?" Sharp asked, adding, "Another place we can look is that the art of games is in their worlds. This lends itself to thinking of games as sculptural."

The speakers pointed out that, of course, games can also be enjoyed from a technical point of view. "We can appreciate all video games from the technical perspective," Bogost said, and noted wryly that "this is how we tend to market games."

"Finally, is the art of games in the game design?" Sharp asked. There are plenty of examples of beautifully designed game systems, as the game designer and art historian noted. "Basketball is a great example," he offered. "There's an abstract system, but the experience within that system can be quite magical."

None of these issues are clear-cut. Pointing to Rod Humble's art game The Marriage, Ian Bogost mused, "What if we stripped everything away? What would remain? What makes Wii Sports different from real tennis?"

Sharp laid out one final way that one could claim games are art. He pointed out that the act of play itself has creative aspects. "Is the art of games found in the player's performance?" he mused. "This suggests that the real power lies with the player rather than the designer."

Co-organizer Michael Nitsche added, "If we think that the art happens in the process of playing, then we have to look at the artist in front of the screen -- the Doom god or the SoulCalibur dancer."

There are other areas in which video games are perhaps underappreciated, said the panelists. Sharp pointed out that "you don't usually see games in a museum. A lot of our historical understanding of games comes from representations in art. There's a sort of paradox there."

But what's important, the trio concluded, is that these issues continue to be discussed out in the open, to improve the lot and standing of games alongside the medium's creative counterparts. As John Sharp offered in conclusion, "If we knew [the answers to all of these questions], we wouldn't have organized this symposium!"

With speakers spanning industry veterans like Brenda Brathwaite (Wizardry series) and newcomers like Jason Rohrer (Passage), as well as former id Software superstar and keen game historian John Romero, now of Slipgate Ironworks, those issues are sure to be discussed further.

[UPDATE: Vital to any art form is its living history -- embodied the craftsmen and women who have pushed it forward. The development of games is no different.

So in his keynote address at the Art History of Games Conference, industry veteran John Romero -- formerly at Id and involved in Doom and Quake, and now heading up MMO house Slipgate Ironworks -- talked about the masters of game design, and how the pioneers had some advantages over modern developers.

Romero started his talk by honoring some of the masters of the game industry that are still with us, or have recently passed on -- living notables like Nasir Gebelli and Bill Budge, and those not still with us like Dani Bunten Berry and Gunpei Yokoi.

"Our masters worked within a lot of constraints." Romero pointed out. "The Atari 2600 was created to play just two games. However, designers today are more constrained."

Romero then walked the audience through the history of the first-person shooter, the genre he helped to create with games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. "The shooter genre exploded after the release of Quake," Romero said -- "and now our design patterns are being 'genre-fied'."

In fact, the Id veteran noted, with today's expanding budgets and relatively mature mainstream game industry, opportunities for big-budget diversification are dwindling: "We have five or six types of games that are going to be funded."

Romero then turned to games on Facebook, saying that -- even in the nimbler areas like social gaming -- the same thing was happening with games like Farmville. He mused: "A publisher is going to look at the numbers for a game like Farmville, and say to a developer: 'That's what I want!'"

Continuing the theme of constraints, Romero said: "Another limitation we have are APIs... the more we put between us and the hardware, the more we're constrained."

But all is not lost -- in his final remarks, Romero noted that plenty was still possible in games, and called for students to go back and study the early masters of the game industry. He reminisced: "We need to go back to the beginning. There was unbridled creativity."

[Charles J Pratt is a freelance game designer and a researcher at NYU's new Game Center. He will be covering the Art History Of Games event for Gamasutra.]

[Continuing our series of interviews between Japanese musician and artist Baiyon and other industry notables, as masterminded by GSW writer Jeriaska, he catches up with classic Metroid and Mother musician Hip Tanaka to chat about his history in the game biz and current thoughts on the industry.]

A Kyoto-based graphic artist and DJ, Baiyon has presented on his art and music direction for Q-Games' PixelJunk Eden at various venues around the world. Earlier in 2009 he gave talks at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the CEDEC Developers Conference in Tokyo, and the Korea Games Conference.

In this interview on the subject of music and gaming, Baiyon sits down with Creatures, Inc. president, Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka. A game composer since the early days of the 8-bit Famicom console, Tanaka has also performed live techno remixes of his music from Dr. Mario at 5pb's EXTRA Hyper Game Music Event in Tokyo.

This discussion, posted in Japanese to GAME Watch, begins by shedding some light on Hip Tanaka's musical influences, from New Wave to reggae. Offering background on the making of such classic Nintendo Famicom scores as Metroid and Mother, the conversation provides a unique look at the state of music in videogames from the perspectives of two innovative audio designers.

Baiyon: Can I start by asking what has appealed to you about performing at the EXTRA Hyper Game Music Event?

Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka: Seeing as I began working in games 29 years ago, back in 1980, an event like this one allows me to catch a glimpse of people who have listened to my music over the years, people of different generations.

When I began in this field, no one talked about "videogame music." There wasn't much conversation between game designers, either. It really took gatherings like this one to allow game creators to get together, have a drink and talk casually about their lives.

Last year when I attended EXTRA, I spoke to a lot of people in my field for the first time. We got to chat about gaming trends and the various disappointments we've encountered over the years. It was eye-opening. While at Nintendo, I needed to be focused only on my own work.

In terms of your live performances and what you do in sound design, what do you find to be the big differences between the two?

Nothing beats hearing your music in a live performance at full blast. Whether it’s videogame music or any other type of music, there's something about the joy of witnessing a crowd getting enjoyment out of it. Working in the studio by contrast is serious work, but there are these almost transcendent moments. What I mean is that there are times when something you never expected would come from you emerges in your creative process. When you get your groove on and you have a spontaneous breakthrough, it can be a real joy.

Do you rehearse extensively before live performances?

No, not at all. In terms of my own experience performing music from my laptop, I find it's best to leave room to ad-lib. What I prepare for in advance is the order of the set list and the general duration of each track, but that's the extent of it. I find the success of the performance itself often depends on how much you're physically involved in the experience.

Some say you need a live instrument to perform on stage, but I have a different view. I was watching a show back in the '80s and there was this keyboard player who put his hands up in the air in the middle of a song, but the sound of his instrument kept going. Instead of thinking, “Hey, I've been cheated,” my feeling was that I ought to rethink the meaning of live music.

Is this opinion in contrast to mainstream assumptions about what makes rock rock?

It just means there isn't the need to think up these divisions between live instruments and electronic music.

I've read that you like New Wave and club music. What categories of music do you enjoy most?

There are so many. Maybe too many to mention here. (laughs)

For instance, what led to your appreciation of reggae?

I think I was 18 or 19 when I was first exposed to it. I remember hearing dub reggae for the first time while having pasta at a restaurant. I was eating, and I remember there was this deep reverberation at one point in the song. The echo was sounding and my body was instinctively following the rhythm while I held the bowl in my hand. I turned to the waiter and said, "What is this?" He said, "It's Jamaican music."

There was a bass player named Jah Wobble in the group Public Image Ltd. that I liked at that time. His performance style was influenced by reggae music. First I began listening to British reggae and eventually moved on to Jamaican reggae, listening to a lot of it in my '30s.

Incidentally, what do you think of On-U Sound Records?

I've listened to it, of course. However, once you've paid close attention to Jamaican music, On-U is On-U.

Have you ever been to Jamaica?

Not yet, but I've gotten to play with Sly and Robbie twice, and it was incredible.

I've heard you used to be deeply into the club scene. Where would you go?

As you can imagine I used to go to a lot of reggae clubs, rare groove and acid jazz clubs, occasionally hip-hop as well. What I like about hip-hop is the use of rhythm. The same is true to some extent with reggae, but the flexibility of hip-hop allows it to be generated quickly. In the studio it feels like all it takes is a few minutes spent on the kick drum, then polishing off the vocals. Whenever I listen to hip-hop music, I'm amazed by the improvisatory quality and how quickly the various elements are tied together.

Have you applied these experiences to your videogame music?

That was only natural. The use of rhythm in Balloon Fight and Wrecking Crew was an homage to Sly and Robbie.

To be honest with you back then I had a lot of reservations about the use of music in games. I was sort of embarrassed by it. The background music would just keep on playing over and over. I thought it was annoying. My feeling was that the audio should be more in line with the sound effects that you had control over as the player, so that there was a more unified sound to the game. I was kind of in love with the idea of a game whose audio was totally composed of sound effects.

This concept was on my mind while making Metroid. The idea was for there not to be a strong melody line until the game was completed, and that gave you as the player a sense of accomplishment. You were playing this game with its dark-sounding music, battling for weeks on end. Hearing this melody at the end of the game would then feel so rewarding.

That's the kind of thing I wanted people to experience. Others were telling me it needed to sound upbeat, that playing games was meant to be entertaining. After Dragon Quest, people expected to hear beautiful melodies in games, so it was difficult for them to appreciate my perspective. These days there seems to be a general understanding that the audio design wasn't just about "game music," but creating an environment for the game through the use of sound, though it took twenty years for people to be brought around to my side of the argument.

Your audio for Mother often sounds like experimental or electroacoustic "musique concrète." Even the effect for the telephone is distorted, as if the sound were melting. It offers a different kind of experience from what you find in other games from around that time.

It was never a matter of approaching the task on the basis of "this is game music." The first step was to establish the rules that governed the audio for this world. There were considerations in terms of how time and space were related, how characters were associated with one another, and how the concepts of good and evil were represented.

In Earthbound, Giygas is presented as the embodiment of evil. As a consequence, your proximity to his influence, for instance when you are face-to-face with enemies, is reflected in the sound effects and music. By contrast, I wanted there to be a kind of spiritual nuance to the "Your Sanctuary" locations.

It's almost like foreshadowing the story through the use of sound?

That's right. You can't expect the text to completely explain everything.

Do you consider all audio elements together, including the sound effects?

I’m always conscious of the interaction between the melody and sound effects. No matter how faint it might be, every sound has a certain pitch. The effects might be clashing with each other, but it's up to you to find the most pleasing combination.

Because the NES had limitations to its memory capacity, sometimes an audio channel would fall out every time a certain effect sounded, for instance in shooting games. As a result I often left a short pause before the note to emphasize this effect. I both designed the sound and input the data myself, which was an unusual way of doing things. Most companies had an audio team and programmers handling separate tasks.

It was surprising to me to hear that you were both writing music and managing the sound data.

I did everything, from sound to programming. When Nintendo was in its early phase there were musicians doing both.

Are there different requirements for an RPG game, where characters are expressing their emotions, when compared to a more straightforward puzzle game?

They're very different. RPGs are dramatic, requiring you to create music that corresponds with the characters’ emotions. The music for an RPG can help make subtle emotions more pronounced. Puzzle games, while not so emotional, still need to provide a sense of excitement. It's comparable to riding a roller coaster, where one minute there's a feeling of danger and then you're at ease. An RPG might involve a kind of sound that complements complicated emotions that can't be expressed directly in words.

Which do you find more fun?

They're both a lot of fun. But making a career of writing game music, it's good to have a stab at games in that genre of RPGs. In fact, I wouldn't mind having another chance at it. While certain circumstances make it difficult, I've always loved creating this kind of game and I think it would be a lot of fun.

In my own case, I often start off with the intention of expressing certain emotions. But making music for a puzzle game, I'm left wondering what to do. It feels weird imbuing the gameplay with emotions that are foreign to the game itself. I would like to try my hand at both kinds of games.

I've only seen what you've done with PixelJunk Eden, so I think it would be interesting to hear your approach to a different style of game soundtrack.

I'm feeling that it might be time for me to create music that goes beyond capturing an atmosphere, but also suits a dramatic context.

It would be particularly fun to make sound effects for a game like that because it adds to the storyline.

You feel sound effects have a direct influence on the gameplay as well?

Yes, especially if the game director is involved in planning synchronicity between these components.

I should mention that on PixelJunk Eden I collaborated with Q-Games president Dylan Cuthbert. For years he was at Nintendo, of course.

I met Dylan just after he arrived in Japan, having developed 3D games in England. He had an immense interest in music. Even now as the president of a company he's still able to relate to everyone around him in a casual way.

Let's say you were asked to create some form of music for your next project that nobody had ever heard of... what would you do then?

A song that's completely unlike anything else? I think it's enough to make sounds that are fresh, that make your body move. Any sound that undergoes development from beginning to end is music as far as I'm concerned. If it's not clear that there's any beginning or end to it, then maybe it's better just to call it noise.

Music is mysterious, and a simple rhythm can call back old memories, while the same song feels completely different depending on your situation. The possibilities are endless.

[This article is available in Japanese on GAME Watch. Image courtesy of Baiyon.com. Translation by Kaoru Bertrand. Photos by Jeriaska.]

[GameSetLinks is GameSetWatch's daily link round-up post, culling from hundreds of weblogs and outlets to compile the most interesting longform writing, links, and criticism on the art and culture of video games.]

A rare weekend-specific GameSetLinks here, just because this is the final set of post-E3 catch-up links, and it's headed by a link from a recent highlight, Indie Gaming Bingo, showing off The Marriage's perfect 5-in-a-row. And man, I can't believe Blueberry Garden didn't produce bingo-related results.

Also in this set of links - Jesper Juul and colleague on interface vs. gameplay, the GameTunnel indie round-up, an interesting piece (spoilers, obviously) defending the Bionic Commando remake's already much-maligned ending, some more good discussion on newsgames, and quite a few things besides. Including (the pictured) Scribblenauts, just in case you missed it.

Poly gon cities:

Indie Gaming Bingo: The Marriage
'Recording the trends and breakthroughs of independent game-making with as much integrity and accuracy as possible: Through BINGO cards.'

The Ludologist » Blog Archive » Easy to Use and Incredibly Difficult: On the Mythical Border between Interface and Gameplay
'“Easy to Use and Incredibly Difficult: On the Mythical Border between Interface and Gameplay” is a paper I co-wrote with Marleigh Norton and which we presented at the Foundations of Digital Games Conference in April 2009.'

James Parker Writing Blog > About Games Writing
' Sure, once you get down to doing a piece of work that’s what it’s about, but the majority of time, certainly at the start, the focus is going to be on sales, pure and simple. If you can’t do sales, you can’t do the job and that’s a very bitter pill to swallow for a “creative” person.'

1UP's Best Games of E3 2009
Haven't really linked to other round-ups, but this one is well laid-out and helpful, so there.

May 2009 Indie Game Round Up by Game Tunnel
'This month at Game Tunnel we have two freeware games! We've recently begun coverage of freeware, if it is excellent quality, and with today's economy who can blame us?'

GAMBIT: Updates: Why I Like Stupid Game Stories.
'While I'm not about to claim the story for Bionic Commando isn't silly, I don't find it to be nearly as random or meaningless as critics have claimed.' Spoilers, obviously, but an interesting discussion.

Newsgame, or Editorial Game? - News Games: Georgia Tech Journalism & Games Project
'Basically, our suggestion is that most games called "newsgames" don't have the same intentions or goals as traditional reporting, or "the news," but rather those of the op-ed piece: to persuade; therefore, we should label these digital opinion pieces as "editorial" rather than "news." '

Kraken vs. Stegosaurus, Griffin, Jackalope, God,... - Tiny Cartridge
Just in case people haven't checked out these demos of Scribblenauts... you should.