PHOTO: Rudy Koppl

“Music in Video Games: Surpassing the Scope of Film Scores”—that was the title of a keynote talk given at the 2008 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco by composer John Debney. Last year, Debney set film work aside to score the hit video game Lair, because he believes composing for video games is the better gig these days. It's a surprising idea coming from someone who has won three Emmy Awards and in 2005 was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score. There's more: the video-game community, more so than Hollywood, “is where a lot of the more imaginative people reside right now.” The week before the February speech, Debney spoke by phone from his recording studio in Southern California to IEEE Spectrum Senior Associate Editor Steven Cherry.

IEEE Spectrum: I wonder if you could talk about the differences between film music and game music generally, and then the difference that it makes for the composer.

John Debney: The single greatest difference between the two disciplines that I see right now is the time frame. In Hollywood right now, we're in an environment of tremendous cost cutting because of technologies that make it really easy for the director to change a film all the way through the postproduction process. It's really made it quite difficult for the composer. Postproduction schedules are very much accelerated. So the composer has to be very adept at making changes, very quickly and at every step of the way.

For the one video game I've done so far, Lair, it was a totally different process. The composer is hired, starts to work, and then there are large tracts of time where the video game is gestating, and different areas of the game are getting finalized. It's a much longer period of time from start to finish, more like a year, or even two years for certain games. In the film world it's the exact opposite—how quickly can you get it done? The whole process has been, in the film world, scrunched down.

So the creative process in writing for games is potentially a much more leisurely affair, a much more creative affair, because the composer gets a longer time to try things out or to write other kinds of melodies for different areas of the game. So in structure they're really quite different, although the compositional process is what it is. It's the same in both disciplines.

Spectrum: I'm a little surprised. I had assumed that scoring a movie was more of a back-and-forth process, that you look at the script, or at least the treatment, and you start getting some ideas, and it's generally more iterative. And then in postproduction you see much of what will be the actual movie and fine-tune the music. But it's not like that.

JD: It's not like that, and I'm so glad that we're talking about this. I think that it might be an eye-opener for many people. I certainly wish it were more like what you're describing. It does happen. There are certain clients one works with, hopefully, in the film business, and it becomes an intimate process. The composer can come on early, can definitely be a part of the process of reading the script, of writing music while they're filming. But I must tell you that in my life, that might be one time out of 10. The other 90 percent has been much the opposite.

Hollywood, because of its belt-tightening for the last few years now—it's truly about shrinking budgets, shrinking time frames, coming on later in the process, as we've said, so you're really thrown into the fire very quickly and have to be very nimble. On top of that, there's a new phenomenon in Hollywood, the new or first-time director.

So it helps if you're a seasoned composer because you can jump in, and knowing that you have four to five weeks to write a score, you jump in and open your individual bag of tricks—you hit the ground running. Whereas what you're describing was once really more the norm, truly in the past five to 10 years it has taken a turn for the worse, in my opinion.

Spectrum: If you were at an earlier point in your career right now, or if you were advising a composer who was at an early point, it sounds like this would be a big reason to go for a game instead of a film.

JD: Absolutely. The fact is, video games eclipse the film business. The video-game business—I'm looking at the statistics right now—in 2007, revenues were up 43 percent to nearly US $18 billion. Film, by contrast—I don't want it to sound like the film business is not doing well; it actually is—film revenue was at a record high for 2007, that being $9.6 billion.

[Editor's note: Industry statistics vary wildly for both games and film. For example, the Motion Picture Association of America has put worldwide 2007 box office revenues at $26.7 billion, making it twice the size of gaming. One thing is clear: games are growing much faster than movies—more than twice as fast, according to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers study, which also predicted that the worldwide video-game market will be worth $46.5 billion in 2010.]

So when you look at both as a whole, the gaming business is double what the film business is. And I think most analysts think it's going to continue to surpass the film business. Where the film business used to drive the game business, I think it's the opposite now. I think that the gaming business as a whole is driving film. You're going to continue to see more and more movies based on games, just for that reason.

Getting to your question, I think the opportunity for young and upcoming composers is tremendous. I certainly would highly recommend young composers see if they can get a couple of games under their belt. It's a tremendous training ground too. I mean, I'm hearing wonderful scores coming out.

Spectrum: It also sounds like the process is going to be much more agreeable for the young composer who can't just reach into the bag of tricks and whip out something in four weeks.

JD: Correct. I want to make it clear: obviously, I haven't done 30 games. I've only done one. But from what I glean and from what I hear, it's just a much different process. I would liken the game-composing process to scoring an animated feature. When I do a feature for Disney, I'll go in and be writing scenes very early. Many times we'll score one or two animated reels of a film and then months can go by as they develop more of the film. It's a process more similar to what the video-game process is.

Spectrum: You mentioned wonderful game scores. Could you name a few?

JD: An old friend of mine—actually a guy I knew, interestingly enough, in the television arena, Garry Schyman—won an award with the score for BioShock. I thought it was a terrific composition. There is a team of composers that wrote for the God of War franchises. This newest God of War really sounded terrific.

There are people like Jack Wall and Tommy Telerico who are writing really, really wonderful scores. And let's go back couple of years ago to a guy who is flourishing now in the film business, Michael Giachinno. I was first blown away by Michael's work in—is it Medal of Honor or Call of Duty? That sort of thing made me take note, a number of years ago, that the quality of the scores was just jumping up and getting better and better very quickly, using live ensembles, much bigger production values, orchestras, and live choirs. In the last 10 to 15 years, maybe even the last 10 years, the quality has really just jumped up light-years, at light-year speed.

Spectrum: The music industry itself is in quite a bit of turmoil. Breaking in new acts and taking them up to the superstar level are harder and harder nowadays. Things like film and even television—a band can get a break by just appearing in a Buffy episode—

JD: That's true.

Spectrum: —so film and game composing seems like it must be more and more important nowadays.

JD: Well, it is. You've hit on one of the biggest problems in popular music right now. The record companies are going by the wayside. Technology again is transforming the whole business. And yet where there are these tremendous new sources of revenue for bands or for composers, I also think there is a potential pitfall, which is that of loss of identity and uniqueness.

So this would also be part of my advice to composers or bands: we need to find our own voices and try to be as unique as we can. One of the problems of the last few years with film scoring—because of the tremendous constraints and time pressures and budget constraints I've mentioned—film scoring by committee has become more popular. It has inherent in it the trap of sameness: songs and scores sounding similar to one another. Let's remember the creative side. Let's bear in mind that it's also an art form.

Next: Game-composing: a 3-D puzzle