Music permeates all areas of life, and our lives are also inseparable from music. Similarly, in the field of games, a moving and contextual music can attract players' interest, and players may even pay for it. So since the advent of game music, what growth process has it experienced?
In 1952, the world's first recorded video game came out. It was developed by AS Douglas, a professor at the University of Cambridge. The game is called "OXO" and its game mechanism is Tic Tac Toe. For a period of time after this, video games were just green computer codes, with no sound, let alone music.
With the changes of the times, video games have gradually developed, and sounds have also appeared in the games, but they are just "bang bang bang" sounds. In addition, the development of game music has also been severely hampered. The reason is that game developers at that time rejected music composers. Developers believed that musicians did not understand games, let alone give game music production to them. They, so the developers choose to make their own music for the game. As for the results, there are not many successes.
The FC console that came out in 1983 can be called a milestone in the history of games, and the improvement of game hardware has also provided help for the development of game music. 8bit music has also become popular in the history of games. The Super Mario Bros. released in the same year put a lot of effort into music. In order to enrich the sound effects of the game, the music producer of the game has repeatedly considered the sound effects of Mario’s body collision. This also allows players to feel the joyful and relaxed atmosphere from the music when they start.
The following year, the Japanese national RPG game "Dragon Quest" was launched. In this classic PRG game, the game producer invited professional composers to make the game's BGM for the first time. After that, "Dragon Quest" became popular among players. The determination of the status has also made many game makers truly realize that they must work hard on game music. As a result, game music has developed rapidly.
The rapid development of audio production technology allows game music to have a larger display space, such as the stereo surround effect on the Xbox platform today is unimaginable in the past. Up to now, game music is no longer a work composed by a single music producer. Large game companies will set up a dedicated game music production department. Some games invite famous composers to compose music, and some choose to compose music. Qiyi Music and other outsourcing teams specializing in the production of game music work together.
It is undeniable that music has now become an indispensable part of the game. If a game loses music, the charm of this work will be greatly reduced. Game music, video games, as the "ninth art", are bound to have a broader development space under the joint efforts of music.