London Soundtrack Festival/Video Game Music

[Hitch]

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/mar/21/video-game-music-london-soundtrack-festival

“Video game music is prevalent because video games are prevalent. The industry itself is more profitable than the film, television and music industry combined."

[french frank]

‘It is impossible to ignore video game music now,’ says Tommy Pearson, founder and artistic director of the inaugural London Soundtrack festival

And as video games appeal predominantly to younger people, will the BBC cover it on the radio station targeting younger listeners - Radio 3?

[Hitch]

That is an interesting conundrum for the BBC bigwigs. I can imagine the groans if, in their hunger for ratings, they concluded they would have to play orchestral music on R1. You never know, the BBC orchestras might be saved by an influx of video game fans. However, it's more likely that game soundtracks will squeeze into R3's schedule and push aside traditional classical music. That seems to be the way the world is going.

I've always thought there was a parallel between the highly programmatic and functional music written for games and that written for spiritual and/or religious ceremonies and rituals, such as a Mass: both have quite rigid structures and expectations.

[Master Jacques]

And as video games appeal predominantly to younger people, will the BBC cover it on the radio station targeting younger listeners - Radio 3?

While thoroughly enjoying your sarcasm, I'd wish to add nuance to that presumption, in a mature market where gamers on consoles and PCs have been playing for over thirty years.

Mega-games like the Assassin's Creed or Dragon Age series, The Witcher Trilogy or Baldur's Gate 3 are aimed at an intelligent constituency of the young, middle-aged and elderly, male and female. And as you will guess, I'm speaking from experience! Children take up gaming early, but there are at least two generations of children now who've grown up, and don't do any less of it. Thus all the closing pubs and night clubs across the country.

[Master Jacques]

I've always thought there was a parallel between the highly programmatic and functional music written for games and that written for spiritual and/or religious ceremonies and rituals, such as a Mass: both have quite rigid structures and expectations.

A great point. Although increasingly, games are learning how to use music to subvert or challenge the ritual elements. Open world RPGs, for example, where the designers are not imposing a particular order on the player's progress, let alone which NPCs they choose to interact with, require a much more flexible compositional approach. An example would be the beautiful orchestral scores for the Czech Deliverance games by Jan Valta, remarkably fluid, flee-flowing and fitting together in an aleatoric way - because they have to. The role of music in gaming is changing: it is no longer the handmaid, more the master, creating the expectations rather than bowing down to them.

I'd name Cyberpunk 2077 - in my opinion one of the best games of all time - as a case where the experience is defined by the music, as much as by the visual or textual elements (though all three are working at an immensely high level in this example).

Of course Western music itself demonstrates a similar process of liberation down the centuries.

[Serial_Apologist]

I remain unconvinced. Maybe one day, when the destruction of the real natural environment has rendered it beyond rescue as a source of spiritual replenishment, getting locked in computer activities will be the only means to engaging in the here-and-now, but until then I will oppose such addictive substitutes. Are there any sample demonstration links available? Not that I intend getting enmeshed, but I ask out of curiosity because I wouldn't know how to Google reference a question on this subject.

[Hitch]

Thus all the closing pubs and night clubs across the country.

The main reason for that is the increasingly unaffordable price of alcohol and transport that makes an evening drinking supermarket beer and playing a good video game a more attractive prospect than a night out.

The point is often made on these boards about how the appreciation and enjoyment of classical music requires a decent attention span, something which does not come naturally to young people raised on Instagram and TikTok. Yet many players, young and old, will spend hundreds, if not thousands, of hours engrossed in their games and listening repeatedly to every second of the soundtracks. A quote from the Guardian article: "At gaming events, fans know these themes note-for-note, singing them back with the same devotion you’d see at a concert." A receptive audience is out there. The BBC should be chucking soundtrack and classical music programmes at its TV stations. A show could be as straightforward and didactic as "If you like that then try this!" and I dare say it would be more effective than R3's approach. Ho-hum.

Even more than film music, game soundtracks might nudge enthusiasts towards mainstream classical music. Perhaps game music itself will influence the development of new classical music. At the very least, as the article suggests, it will keep orchestras solvent.

My ancient computer quails at the thought of Cyberpunk 2077, but I will probably try it when my equipment allows - hopefully before the year in question! Re. soundtracks defining the gaming experience, I would proffer Doom (2016) as an example. As the joke goes, the soundtrack comes with a free game.

[oliver sudden]

“The industry itself is more profitable than the film, television and music industry combined."

Curiously enough, the building that when I first visited my now-home town (Köln) housed the immense CD cornucopia known as Saturn now houses an equally immense video game emporium. While the Saturn CD department has been relegated to an upper floor of the Saturn electronics and whitegoods shop around the corner, and the classical department thereof, which on my first visit occupied two whole floors, is now encompassed within a handful of tawdry shelves.