Throughout the late 1990’s I annoyed the hell out of people at ‘future music’ conferences by insisting on game sound as the obvious next step for music. As we were still in the VRML era I didn’t have a strong body of evidence – (God, the amount of money I wasted on tech that went nowhere – anyway) – I think it’s clear now that I was right as per usual. There’s still a large disconnect between game and music culture, as many people are still using the language of the early 1900’s – ‘single’, ‘album’, ‘side’ et al. This language sets a limit on creative potential – if you are making an ‘album’ you’re choosing to remain within a tradition, and a dying one at that.

Part of the problem is the word ‘game’ which is more about baseball than environment design. I use ‘game’ to offer a quick understanding, but then spend a lot of time revising that first impression. An environment does not need a winning move, no time limit, it’s architecture – but more complicated than Goethe’s dichotomy – being both solid and liquid.

I’ve set my sights on a mythical reproduction of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. The reasons and the design details are set out here. But it’s a huge task and I’ve had to pull back and start building a smaller ‘album’ that can then be retooled for the larger work. It has more of an album structure with a central room that is encircled by rooms each with their own environment/story. Really just a sketch, but the start of a full idea.

Haunting

In this smaller game world (called Snakes after the twisting pathways) each environment is its own design style (to become more thematically related in the larger world). Like a gallery of paintings each ‘snake’ is coherent within, but share inspiration from aspects of theme park design. I need time to play around with looser designs to clarify some complexities of the larger plan. They will all eventually need to take on the mechanics of the 1930s.

Each is haunted in some manner. By this I mean – conveys some evidence of malicious intent without explanation. A world of airport gates/mechanical birds has some connection with flight and the anxiety that goes with that. A flooded pit filled with brightly coloured toys is derived from H. Bosch’s Musical Hell. Each of these is not the “Happiest Place on Earth” but could be a different kind of theme park. I hope to rework these to make the larger game less obvious, the dread a bit deeper.

In terms of Tiki (in the broader sense I am using it) there are animatronics – actors with mechanical intent, following a style of the environment. They are the ‘kitchen gods’ of their realms. Most of the environments have a connection with water, all have the ‘illusion of life’ that reminds you of animals and people.

Musically – each realm could be seen as a ‘track’ on an ‘album’ if that makes it clearer to you. The soundtrack will fit the action.

Currently

I’m about halfway into this smaller design. Some of the ideas have failed and need to be restarted. The most recent failure is a ‘large glass’ realm which never quite added up – it’s been replaced by a carousel, one thing I will need in the bigger game down the track. A ‘bespoke’ cardboard realm is also drifting nowhere. It’s not easy.

I’ll be adding more commentary to this post as we go along. Happy New Year!

If you would like to know more about game design as a environment here’s a useful link to what used to be called Walking Simulators on Wikipedia.