gaming Video games, and the people who don't play them

[Gay Bird 421]

I still play video games and enjoy them alot, but most of them are story based, and I don't play very often. I end up spending more time in things like After Effects. I still consider myself a gamer, but I don't usually play that often.

[Mutemutt 773]

Same with musical composers. These days people have so much advanced audio technology to work with, but all chiptune composers had to work with were 3 tone channels and a white noise channel for percussion. Such limitations forced them to focus on writing memorable melodies, which is why it seems like there are so many timeless 8-bit themes as opposed to the often (but not always) forgettable scores that modern games are rife with.

Going a bit off topic but I just have to address this one part--

 I think composers these days still want to make memorable melodies even if they have more tools to work with... I love chiptunes as much as the next moderate chiptune enthusiast but to say that composer of then were more focused on writing memorable melodies than the composers of now seems like a stretch to me.

Edited June 6, 2013 by MuteMutt

[Mio Akiyama 145]

I don't really like video games as I used to but recently I've been playing Call of Duty and other 12 yr old games to spread the love and tolerance. In other words I talk about My Little Pony to piss people off. Other than that, I'm just sitting there waiting for another good game to happen otherwise I'd be drawing, be on here, or just plain and simple do the first thing that comes to mind.

[Hansel 1,512]

 more importantly, they challenged our imaginations with the highly pixelated graphics and often bare bones storylines. 

 

This. 

Particularly when it comes to RTS games. Part of the fun I had playing Dune 2000, Red Alert 2, or Age of Empires was actually using my imagination to fill in what the game wasn't. The fact that the game didn't actually show everything was exciting for me. I got to make it up in my head, which was great.

 

RTS games in the late 90's/early 00's were perfect imo. The new ones are all "LOOK AT HOW 3D WE ARE! LOOOOK! YOU CAN EVEN LOOK OVER THE SHOULDERS OF YOUR ARMY AND GO INSIDE YOUR BUILDINGS! THREEEE DEEEEEEE!!!"

 

Edited June 6, 2013 by Hansel

[Thrashy 2,800]

Going a bit off topic but I just have to address this one part--

 I think composers these days still want to make memorable melodies even if they have more tools to work with... I love chiptunes as much as the next moderate chiptune enthusiast but to say that composer of then were more focused on writing memorable melodies than the composers of now seems like a stretch to me.

 

I don't think it's too much of a stretch. It kind of makes sense; when you're limited to 3 note chords, then melody is going to be the main "selling point" of any song you write as opposed to harmonies. Because modern video game music composers can have as many simultaneous notes going as they want, many of them may be more inclined to lean toward very harmonic, atmospheric music as opposed to melody-driven music. And as beautifully ambient as harmony-focused music can be, harmony simply doesn't stick in the mind quite as easily as melody does.

 

You could say it's just because I haven't played a whole lot of modern games, so I may be biased. Still, I could list perhaps 50 old-school video game tracks off the top of my head that I could hum the melodies to, simply because they've stuck in my mind all these years. The only modern video game tracks I could hum from memory? The main themes of Halo and Skyrim are really the only things that stick out in my mind.

[Gigapony 650]

I used to game constantly back in the day, but now I can scarcely call myself a gamer.

 

Even then, however, I was always a casual gamer and I always will be. Still, I used to so look forward to the next game I would buy and I'd rent games constantly, even if I had no intention of buying them, just to play something new.

 

But nowadays, I barely game. Monetary constraints forced me to be far more picky with games, and I simply can't find any games that interest me now. That developed into me just losing my taste for it in general.

 

I still switch on my consoles when I'm bored, but I only ever play the same games. I have many 360 games, but only play two of them, and I have only 3 games in all for my PS3, which I now barely turn on. My DS only ever plays Pokémon games (though it's been ages since I picked them up). That being said, when I do play, I very much enjoy my favourites, so I don't dislike gaming, but it's nowhere near the big part of my life it used to be.

[Mutemutt 773]

I don't think it's too much of a stretch. It kind of makes sense; when you're limited to 3 note chords, then melody is going to be the main "selling point" of any song you write as opposed to harmonies. Because modern video game music composers can have as many simultaneous notes going as they want, many of them may be more inclined to lean toward very harmonic, atmospheric music as opposed to melody-driven music. And as beautifully ambient as harmony-focused music can be, harmony simply doesn't stick in the mind quite as easily as melody does.

 

You could say it's just because I haven't played a whole lot of modern games, so I may be biased. Still, I could list perhaps 50 old-school video game tracks off the top of my head that I could hum the melodies to, simply because they've stuck in my mind all these years. The only modern video game tracks I could hum from memory? The main themes of Halo and Skyrim are really the only things that stick out in my mind.

 

Still sounds like a stretch to me. Just because I give you more instruments to work with, doesn't mean you will use them all. It also doesn't mean you will compose something that's very harmonic and atmospheric either. At best this is a gross generalization and at worst it's a blind assumption.

 

And I can list 50 or so modern tracks (I just wasted my time doing so to make sure), though it's not quite the same because of the difference in years. Even if you strip the modern songs down to 8 bit (which I love), the melodies are still easily recognizable and still just as memorable. Heck, Cladun X2 had a chiptune version of every track and you could switch between the modern and classic soundtrack in the options menu. Same songs and melodies, different instruments.

[Thrashy 2,800]

Still sounds like a stretch to me. Just because I give you more instruments to work with, doesn't mean you will use them all. It also doesn't mean you will compose something that's very harmonic and atmospheric either. At best this is a gross generalization and at worst it's a blind assumption.

 

And I can list 50 or so modern tracks (I just wasted my time doing so to make sure), though it's not quite the same because of the difference in years. Even if you strip the modern songs down to 8 bit (which I love), the melodies are still easily recognizable and still just as memorable. Heck, Cladun X2 had a chiptune version of every track and you could switch between the modern and classic soundtrack in the options menu. Same songs and melodies, different instruments.

 

Gross generalization or blind assumption...interesting things to call a hypothesis. Make no mistake, I don't mean to pass off any of this as fact, and I certainly don't mean to belittle the work of modern video game music composers. (I kind of hope to write scores for games myself, someday.) After all, I find majority of the music I've heard in current-gen games to be quite beautiful, and beautiful music is clearly the work of a good composer. But a lot of it simply doesn't have any staying power in my memory, and I'm just speculating to find an explanation as to why this is so.

 

Again, it could just be because the ratio of older to newer games I've played is terribly skewed in favor of the former, and I'd probably concede to that being the answer in the end. But I still strongly feel that chiptune composers worked by a sort of "MacGuyver principle" in that the less they were given to work with, the more creatively they were forced to think about every note they put down; when you only get three of them, melody counts above all.

[Dopey Hooves 90]

Well, I think I have lost some interest for gaming but, not much. I think I lost some of it because, I started gaming so early. Me and my brother were big gamers, when I was like 8 we would just go and game until we like went to bed and passed out. Then that's when the Xbox 360 came out, I was a big fan of that, me and my brother did the same thing everyday and every night. But, now that I  have gotten older I actually have a life because, I have to deal with girlfriends, taking care of children, chores, grades and loads of homework I no longer feel that I can just sit back and chill. Bro when you get older you better watch your step. Gaming still is fun when I have nothing better to do but, just sit there all damn day but, when you have to deal with a lot of things I feel it's no longer necessary for that. 

[Mutemutt 773]

 

 

Gross generalization or blind assumption...interesting things to call a hypothesis.

 

You can make it sound pretty if you want to; hypotheses are assumptions. Personally, I find it weird to call something a hypothesis unless you plan on testing it. 

 

Anyway, I'm just saying I don't think your reasoning is very good. Let's just leave it at that because this is off topic.

[Thunderchild 875]

I used to love gaming-it got to be enough of an addiction that whenever I wasn't doing it I was thinking about it. Thing is, it was before home computers were worth a damn so it was all in the arcades-but there were these games called 'Dragon's lair' and Space Ace which were like cartoons that you controlled. Awesome. Add in all the other stuff that was around back then and it wasn't only time consuming, it was expensive.

 

I've avoided games as I've gotten older because I know I'd love them-and I just haven't got time with the schedule I run. Maybe in the future I'll get into it-I would love to try some of the MMORPGs that are around.