Music in Games - Custom or Default? Commentary
By G. Turner
Posted November 11, 2003

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!

Before Grand Theft Auto 3 there was Grand Theft Auto 1. My friends and I were positively enamored with it, often spending hours running around the cities trying to blast each other senseless. However, we enjoyed finding good cd tracks to listen to even more. See, the first GTA had a option that would select tracks from a music CD in your CD-ROM drive (I am of course, referring to the PC version) to play on your in-game car's radio station. Well, at least our European version contained this feature. We would often spend more time trying to pick exactly which CDs we'd play (as we did 1-on-1 matches, with the others watching which was the style at the time,) and much debate resulted as to whether Lords of Acid's Voodoo U or Leather Strip's Solitary Confinement would be better to score Gouranga's to. After a bit of time, GTA1 hit the US of A and I was a bit distraught to find that I couldn't play my music CD's on my brand new game like I did with my friends. I unsuccessfully searched forever to download the European version, cracks, whatever would let me play my music in GTA and begrudgingly stuck with standard music and eventually lost interest in the game.

Fast forward to now - GTA3 and GTA: Vice City have been released on the PC and Xbox and just like the first GTA, they too allow you to create custom soundtracks for your radio. While I loved the custom soundtrack option in GTA1, I'm rather hesitant to pronounce its availability in GTA3 and GTA: Vice City as a good thing. In fact, I'm rather conflicted by the ability to create custom soundtracks for your video games in general.

'G' to the 'T' to the 'A'?

Most video game music is meticulously labored over, created specifically to evoke a specific and unique atmosphere in the game you are playing. Look at the video game music remix community for an example of how the original music has affected those of us who grew up playing games - these classic, simple songs evoke a special feeling when you hear them (for an example, take a look at our gushing review of seeing old school video game themes recreated live by the Power-Ups). However, we now live in a world where more and more soundtracks are created by wedging in songs from current artists in hopes that it will fit the mood, rather than being created with the game in mind.

Not that a soundtrack created from pre-existing material is always such a bad thing - a perfect example is Crazy Taxi. Now whenever I hear The Offspring, I think of Crazy Taxi and it reminds me of the knuckle-bruising hours I spent racing from fare to fare. However, that doesn't mean that my Crazy Taxi experience would be diminished by using a Dropkick Murphy's cd instead - it's the song's energy that provides that special Crazy feel, rather than the actual soundtrack. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have games such as GTA: Vice City where the soundtrack is absolutely necessary to the entire atmosphere and feeling of the game. Vice City wouldn't be a 80's oriented game without a top notch 80's soundtrack now, would it! So why allow people to ruin that experience by adding the option for a custom soundtrack? What's the point of having the 80's look without the 80's sound? I don't object to it so much in GTA3 or GTA1 as it's more generic and meant to take place 'today', but ripping the 80's music out of Vice City is as close to ripping the heart out of the game as it would be to dress Tommy Vercetti in flannel. And don't even get me started on a Jet Grind Radio without Hideki Naganuma's earcandy.

As you might have gathered, I think there's a time and a place for custom soundtracks. Extreme sports games are one such genre that essentially requires custom soundtracks. While I loved Aggressive Inline, I ended up taking half of the playlist out of rotation because my ears couldn't stand them. I was then left with about five songs that I was able to tolerate for about two minutes. Essentially, if the game is trying to create a specific atmosphere, time or emotive feeling then let the soundtrack be. Yes, I may have to endure some bad background music but then I'll be assured that the developers will spend a good amount of time working on their tunes and just won't toss it in as an afterthought thinking 'Who cares - they're just going to play Linkin Park over it anyway.'

So what about you - which would you prefer? Complete control over the background music, to be forced to listen to the developer's music or some nice neutral ground where it's a sensible artistic decision rather than economic decision?

The New Gamer - We take ourselves seriously so you don't have to.

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Est. 2003