Music Takes on a Hollywood Edge

Video game music, once composed with cheesy electronic bleeps, now rivals anything Hollywood produces.

In fact, game music increasingly comes from Hollywood as developers try to achieve the same dramatic depth as movies.

The soundtrack for "Metal Gear Solid 2," for example, was written by Harry Gregson-Williams, who scored dozens of films, including "Shrek," "Armageddon," "The Replacement Killers" and "Spy Game."

It's not that game developers have suddenly acquired an appreciation for music. The sophistication in game music comes from advances in computing power and memory, allowing for playback of vast amounts of high-fidelity audio. In fact, the concept of interactive music has been around since 1991, when LucasArts developed iMUSE, a proprietary program that changed the music according to what was occurring in the game.

"No one at the time had ever thought of doing interactive music," said Jeff Kliment, sound development manager at LucasArts in San Rafael, Calif. "The idea was revolutionary."

Today, music can be piped into a game dynamically, based on the player's location, health status and circumstance, Kliment said. In "Myst III: Exile," for instance, dozens of musical and sound elements can be simultaneously played and seamlessly changed as the player journeys through the game.

If the player approaches the sea, the sound of crashing waves becomes louder. If the player rotates so the sea is to the right, the sound would adjust so the waves would be louder on the right speaker, giving the illusion of three-dimensional sound. Altogether, the game contains thousands of musical elements and sound effects that can be summoned real-time.

Game music is recorded digitally, as are film scores. That lets traditional film composers make interactive music without having to know anything about video games.

Gregson-Williams, for example, hasn't played a video game since "Pong." But the Santa Monica composer has garnered raves for his score for "Metal Gear," which he wrote as a creative experiment.

Question: How is composing for a video game different from composing for a film?