Lost Gaming Arts: Licensed Soundtracks

A few days ago, I was sitting in my office playing something with a minimalist soundtrack. Now for something that is aimed to be relaxing by nature, that simple and calming soundtrack fading into the background does, indeed, work. However, over the years the larger scope and more open-world triple-A games have moved on from the peak of what many of my age would call perfect soundtracks and moved on to something broader. The most recent notable example might be Watch Dogs: Legion‘s soundtrack (which I stupidly tried to fix a little), trying to predict near-future dystopian tastes on what is currently popular without much, if any, looking back.

So what was the soundtrack that put me on this track of thought? As most things do in my life, it all began with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Whether it is dressing in an all-black leather suit and beating up pensioners with a purple sausage (a euphemism) or the basis of my love of country music and talk radio. After playing the game with the minimalist soundtrack (which I don’t think I can talk about), I sought a bit of K-Rose for reasons beyond me. Nevertheless, I put on my playlist of K-Rose classics: Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Jerry Reed, Patsy Cline, The Statler Brothers, and more.

I have no doubt, those early to mid-2000s formed my broad taste in music and one that is open to the situation rather than a predefined box of things I already like. At that young age (don’t tell FOX News) of six to eight years old, you are soaking up as much around you as possible. Sometimes you are accepting those things and other times you reject them without much reason. That’s the joy of being a kid: You believe everything you think without great reason for it, though you are always questioning the world around you. Songs of a kindly prostitute and that of a lost love probably informed my rather hippy worldview as well.

This isn’t a misty-eyed rose-tinted vision, during that period of near-perfect soundtrack after near-perfect soundtrack, the tone of the setting was stuck to. I’m thinking of the lack of substantial pop in San Andreas, the complete absence of any pop unless it was pop-punk in Burnout 3: Takedown, and a sprinkling of pop throughout SSX 3. Of course, I picked three games that come to mind straight away without one genre of music. Nonetheless, on the other hand, Vice City lacked any classical music, the Fallout series only uses pop music from around the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and Brütal Legend stuck two fingers up at anything that wasn’t 80s metal (or inspired by it).

However, once you cross the threshold of about 2010, almost everyone forgot what tone was and moved on to being made of broad appeal tripe. You’d be hard-pressed to argue against that, I’d say. One of the few good examples, though sometimes having a dud here and there, was Metal Gear Solid V; The 80s and Kojima just meld together well. So, what caused this sudden drop-off in fantastic soundtracks? Well, no, the musical directors of games didn’t all die at once. They were just given fewer options of their own. As every plight of the modern age does, it starts with the internet.

You might like it, I sometimes do, but Spotify and other music streaming services are often held as the reason for Sony, Microsoft, Square Enix, EA, Activision, and others to avoid spending money on music. Why pay the licenses to have music in your game when you can just let people play their music? I’d argue it is reducing our ability to strike a tone, broaden someone’s musical preferences, and ultimately make some games special. I’m talking about all those moments driving trucks across San Andreas listening to Willie Nelson, not knowing him but knowing so well his pain while singing his song, “Crazy.”

Now, I’m not trying to take away from original scores or even some modern pop songs featuring in games, but not all of them bring vivid memories. Bear McCreary’s “God of War” from God of War (2018) is something that gives me a feeling deep down that Christopher Judge, a young boy named Atreus, and I are going to war, again. Of course that game gives me personal feelings, I named my cat after the Vanir goddess Freya for Christ’s sake. Shadow of the Colossus is another with a tonally pitch-perfect original soundtrack, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

A licensed soundtrack very often doesn’t include orchestral or operatic music; it features contemporary music of the time or the closest we can get with artists of the past and present. Of course, open-world games set that in that modern or near-modern realistic (ish) setting with things like radio have almost drifted away. They now make room for games like Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2, the Assassin’s Creed series, and even things like Biomutant. Games themselves have shifted away from having licensed songs in them, which doesn’t stop trailers using a single famous song or cover of said song.

Maybe I’m far too old at the ripe old age of twenty-four, but the most recent FIFA that I’ve played (FIFA 19) doesn’t have a single song I could name from the top of my head. There was one point in time when I could name at least one song from the latest FIFA of some years gone by. The point I am trying to make here is how it is not just open-world games that are lacking what I’d argue are heavy-hitters, but even the former monarchs of video games soundtracks, EA, have lost interest. I’d hate to be a kid right now, with such a dearth of quality horizon-expanding soundtracks being dumped onto games.

The problem with leaving Spotify (and its ilk) to pick up the slack, is that often the closest you get to growing someone’s tastes falls on algorithms. Of course, there are sometimes gentle surprises in these “Discover Weekly” things, or if you are anything like my dad, you’ll ask why you have suggestions for something that isn’t Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, or Meat Loaf. This is putting aside that the algorithm-based playlists aren’t curated toward whatever moment you are currently in, in whatever game you are playing. This is where I bring up my two-thousand-sum liked-songs on Spotify, which can go from The Big Phat Band’s “The Jazz Police” to No Doubt’s “Just A Girl,” as it did on shuffle while writing this.

That whiplash, that concussion of sudden change in tone, is what I have the biggest issue with when it comes to filling out this void we’ve created for ourselves. Now, of course, I can’t just say developers/publishers should be giving as much money over to every artist possible to license their new song. That would be stupid. For one, I understand that some games don’t actually need that great wealth of refined modern pop or classic rock. Quite frankly, it would be a harsher grinding of tone to have the dead silence in Red Dead Redemption 2 broken by Justin Bieber; Sometimes, that silence is the perfect score for that tone created.

So, what’s the solution? That I think is the problem. There is no solution to a problem that those in power find to be a non-issue to begin with. To higher ups and to the money people, spending anything up to, say, a million dollars on licensing fees (can you tell I don’t know the actual numbers?) for one quality soundtrack vs letting players use their own Spotify playlists is a no brainer. In my research on the topic, writer Mat Ombler mentioned another reason in an article in GamesIndustry.biz, expired licenses.

Why spend (as Ombler notes) upwards of $100,000 for a single track? To then either remove it in a patch or withdraw the game from sale. This is the other advantage those early to mid-’00s had over us people that live in the present: At a random guess, I’d easily put the market share of games being fully digital somewhere about 50%-60%, easily. Unlike Statista, which is including subscriptions, mobile, and other digital sales, putting this number during 2018 at 83% over 17% in the US. I’m including second-hand resale globally in my guesswork.

To get into the mind of a business person, or lizard person as they are more commonly known, it is more “cost-effective” to not include Taylor Swift in the latest Grand Theft Auto soundtrack. In fact, Grand Theft Auto V was probably the last big game to feature a soundtrack that is both well-curated and full of depth. That is something 2K can afford when the game goes on to make over a billion dollars within the first week of sales. Sales that keep going up with continuous releases onto new platforms and sustained online monetization several years later. To return to Ombler’s point, it is a risk developers/publishers would be taking. I highly suggest reading his full piece.

At this point in time, there is no attainable solution that fits all parties: One wants to make money, so the other had to pay, while said other doesn’t want to spend too much to “hurt their bottom line.” Writing that last bit without irony or making fun of it hurt my soul. Some would argue the ones that should budge from their position are the musicians and record labels, as Ombler notes of Randy Eckhardt and Chris Cooke’s belief in a central licensing system. While, of course, others would say developers should make room in the budget for an expensive soundtrack if they want it. The former would take far longer to sketch out than the latter, though the latter isn’t always an achievable goal for smaller studios.

It is ultimately difficult to conclude this lengthy editorial without saying that I’d prefer that the system benefited the musicians more than the developers. After all, it is their work being used within something else. Though I do think, and I’m sure many others would agree, proper soundtracks that stand out for being excellent is the true goal. Yet here we are talking of licensed soundtracks, the original score of Doom (2016)‘s soundtrack fits perfectly with the game’s tone. To go in with the same mindset, no one thinks of the music from The Crew 2 because it is so broadly appealing and non-existent to any enjoyment you might be having.

In both those respects, we know a licensed soundtrack can be memorable. Brütal Legend brings hard rock and metal to something action-based and does so with such an extraordinary soundtrack for the setting, just as Burnout 3: Takedown took that whiney and angsty pop-punk sound and made it fit perfectly. We remember games like this so much for their soundtrack, as we do their gameplay. That, I think, is what we’ve lost the art of. We no longer share in those moments of talking about the soundtracks of games like Grand Theft Auto, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Saints Row, and many others, as we used to.

I’m sure I’ll be told by some kids that I’m being needlessly nostalgic, but they can go watch their six-second long Valorant trailers from E3. I’m sure I am not the only one hoping to one day share again in that discussion, or rather those glee-filled expression-heavy conversations over specific songs and over entire soundtracks. Though aside from sparing games bothering to pick up the torch, I’m afraid such soundtracks have been put out to pasture.