Should PD spend/waste game space,time,money&energy on music tracks ?

[Pit Crew]

I do put my own music lol, but GT music is annoying and no one listens to it (jazz & classic), I'm not trying to fall asleep while playing .. GT music should make the game exciting .... It's the only thread about the music tracks on GT, so why not ?

How do you know what everyone else is listening too? Plus if you created your own GT5 playlist, then there should be no issue with GT5s default music. Driving music is optional, listen or don't. PDs music has always been a great mainstay for me, and I truly doubt taking out the "Jams" is a solution for getting more content.

I thought there was a thread about music in the forums, though it's not an unconstructive reach like this one, plus Jazz & Classical are not your only choices. It's really not that serious.

 

[glassjaw]

It's not absurd it's a fact. PD, like every other company in the world, operates on a budget. You get $X to make your game. The more you put on one thing, the less there is left to put on everything else. Doesn't matter that it's different people programming the music and the physics, that's completely irrelevant. Resources are simply not unlimited and tradeoffs and comprimises are part of the game.

Polyphony had $80,000,000 to develop GT5. Believe me, they weren't concerned about budgetary restrictions. Music was not in any way a significant part of that, considering the artists that were selected for the game and the fact that Sony is one of the music industry giants with a large library of talent. And, as many people have said before me, modelers can't make music, and so productivity wasn't split between the two. Time was the biggest factor in the amount of cars that were created for GT5, which we know to be true because more cars were released as DLC after release.

Yes, resources are never free. But that's not the argument here. Explain to me how additional music comes at the expense of additional cars.

 

[diegorborges]

Gran Turismo music is one of the special touches of the series. Some wrong tunes here and there, but most of all, classy.

 

[niky]

Merged a shedload of posts. IGNAI, please use the multiquote or edit button next time.

The only music specially commissioned for Gran Turismo are the background jazz tracks and whatever edition or rendition of "Moon over Castle" they're adding. Even with the cost of commissioning that music, it's not a huge amount of money.

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You've got a one-time expense, involving hiring musicians or commissioning a studio to record the tracks, versus the continuing expense of hiring a group of full time modellers. That's hardly comparable.

The only way to make it comparable is if Polyphony Digital outsources or contractualizes modelling, but they don't, so it isn't. And given that PD already do hundreds of cars per game, versus maybe a dozen unique jazz tracks and instrumental race tracks... which, by the way, I think are groovy.

Oh, of course there's music licensing, but come on... what's a good racing game without good music? Hell, what's a good video game without good music?

Which GTA does everyone still remember and love? Arguably Vice City is always at or near the top of that list, and it had kick-ass music and radio chat tracks.

Which Gran Turismo was your favorite (let's not argue realism... just which was the most fun to play)? GT3? Raise your hands? Which Gran Turismo had the best soundtrack? Exactly.

Need For Speed? Would people still be clamoring for another game like Underground 2 if it weren't for the "Riders on the Storm" remix? (arguably the grooviest menu intro music ever)

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Let's get this straight. PD shouldn't spend less money on music. They should simply spend money on better licensed music selections. Chuck out most of the classical music and low-cost jazz in GT5 and give GT6 a high-priced, pop-rock-hip-hop song list, and I guarantee you sales will double.

 

[Niyologist]

Whatever happened to getting a Next Song Button as part of listening to music on GT5? That game desperately needs it. I hope GT6 will have that function.

 

[LongbowX]

Let's get this straight. PD shouldn't spend less money on music. They should simply spend money on better licensed music selections. Chuck out most of the classical music and low-cost jazz in GT5 and give GT6 a high-priced, pop-rock-hip-hop song list, and I guarantee you sales will double.

I'd rather they keep the classical and jazz music, and simply do what they let people do now...replace the soundtrack with what they like. I actually like the type of music that is played. I think that is their own artistic decision in terms of the game, and I think that expression is important. Perhaps I'm in the minority. I would say that there should definitely be increased customization in terms of when tracks are played - people should be able to play what they want at any time. I also don't agree about the sales...but I don't know if it was serious or not.

The original premise of this thread is of course ludicrous. What, they're going to model some premium cars and then they remember "oh yeah...music"? They have to now exclude those cars (that they spent so much time modelling) because they would run out of space for the music. Right. Or the equally silly assumption that the music (which is such a minor cost to the game) thus costs PD the ability to model cars. I'm pretty sure they are operating at their maximum ability to model, and the individual(s) who select the music plays no role in it, it's an additional cost.

 

[Nurburgthing.]

The music is part of the GT saga. Whe I get bored and want to listen to music, I have in the ear HPs for the SFX and over the ear HPs for my tunes.

Otherwise it's.....
Race BGM = 0
Replay BGM = 0
Menu BGM = 7

Also, music when racing doesn't seem right to me. Not something that reflects real motorsport.
The car and driver together make beautiful music.

 

[niky]

There's actually a theory out there that games with good music are often good games, because a good selection of music, or a good amount of budget given to the creation of unique music, indicates that the studio had both good direction and good resources during the making of the game.

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Granted, I typically only leave the menu music on and mute the music during the race (only play music in replays) after playing a few hours, but it's nice to know the company cared enough about the customers to try to give them an all-around experience.

 

[Zevious Z]

I wouldn't even notice if there was no music in GT. The music gets turned off (menu or race) right after the disc fires up...I couldn't tell you what the music in GT5 is like. Never heard it...

 

[Conquerer]

I wouldn't even notice if there was no music in GT. The music gets turned off (menu or race) right after the disc fires up...I couldn't tell you what the music in GT5 is like. Never heard it...

You turn off the menu music? That must be quietly depressing.

 

[Nurburgthing.]

You turn off the menu music? That must be quietly depressing.

No, it's less distracting.

Complete silence would be depressing.

Like I said, who listens to music whilst racing IRL?

 

[RACECAR]

No, it's less distracting.

Complete silence would be depressing.

Like I said, who listens to music whilst racing IRL?

Pretty sure he was reffering to menu music though.

 

[Traviizter]

So I must be one of the only people to listen to the music while racing? Okay...
Anyway sometimes I just like to leave my game on the menu because the music is so relaxing. Most of it probably isn't made by PD (or their modelers) anyway, so what's the big deal?

 

[C_Raccoon23]

So I must be one of the only people to listen to the music while racing? Okay...

I do too. If the right song is playing, it can actually make the race more enjoyable for me. But GT doesn't capture the excitment of racing enough for me to want to turn the music off. I'm afraid I would get bored of playing without it. NFS Shift 2 and I think Dirt 3 has no music playing while racing; only in menus. And I was okay with that, because the game engaged me enough to not care.

 

[Nurburgthing.]

Pretty sure he was reffering to menu music though.

DOI!

Apologies towards Conquerer.

 

[Metfanant]

having music has no effect on car count...the people doing music design are not going to be 3d modelers...

the people working on music are not going to take away any man hours from the "cars"

personally i like racing with music in GT5 because i can't stand the sounds the cars make...music gets shut off (in race) in Forza...GT5 has better music than Forza 4 though as well

 

[SuperCobraJet]

Personally, I never listen to any music while racing.
I prefer it to allow, complete and total focus on driving.

Even though I played them quite a bit, I couldn't name one in race song from GT3, 4 or 5.

I keep the menu music low, just for a background effect.

The only music I recall from any of them, is the ending movie from GT3, which played "Joy of man's desiring", which I really liked.

The other would be "The Entertainer" which was part of the menu music in GT5. I recognized it from the movie "the Sting".

There are other things game wise, that I would consider alot more important.

BTW, thats just me, if you like music while you race, crank it up.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Yes, resources are never free. But that's not the argument here. Explain to me how additional music comes at the expense of additional cars.

Already did, you just can't see it.

 

[ProjectWHaT]

I would love to have some EDM in the new soundtrack!

 

[Griffith500]

Already did, you just can't see it.

The question is, how much does a car cost, and how much does a music cost? I'm guessing there's an order of magnitude difference. There's also an order of magnitude difference in the number of each in the direction that deepens the gulf. Music's a pretty insignificant part of GT's budget, I'd say. I bet Sony covers it anyway.

 

[KWZX10]

Hope to have a gt2/gt4 style menu' music for gt6. I like if they ''spend time'' on that side.
Don't really care about race, i have my own stuff if i want.

That's all, music doesn't have any impact on the game talking about time/money/space.

 

[Johnnypenso]

The question is, how much does a car cost, and how much does a music cost? I'm guessing there's an order of magnitude difference. There's also an order of magnitude difference in the number of each in the direction that deepens the gulf. Music's a pretty insignificant part of GT's budget, I'd say. I bet Sony covers it anyway.

I have no idea how much each costs, I just like pointing out the tradeoff in resources because most people seem to think that all parts of game development are completely independent from each other when they clearly aren't.

 

[OriginalCheezIt]

Let's see if I can do this...there's a lot of detail put into every auto-mobile in the game. Standard cars have only a few thousand polygons compared to the hundreds of thousands that the Premium cars do. I'll assume each Standard car is 3MB, and each Premium car is 15MB on the disc, so there's opportunity for about 750 Premiums in GT6. Question is, is PD going to take advantage of this opportunity to give us that many cars, if I think this is going to go where I think it is? That might depend on the number of songs put into the game.

EDIT: Let's say there's 250 songs in GT6, each one between 8 & 30MB in size. This is assuming that the file format used is 320kbps OGG Vorbis. Assuming the average file size across all the music files is 13.5 MB, you're looking at over 3 GB of music...so that's about 200-250 Premium cars gone to make room for the soundtrack. Or, they could just keep all the Premium cars and still have room for everything else in the game, from UI to tracks to Online content to DLC. On a downer note, installation would take longer...but I just want to play the game and hear what Sony put in here.

EDIT 2: I do not see space as an issue unless you have about 23-24 GB worth of content on there...my problem is, who is going to be able to pay the licensing fees to feature songs in GT6? PD is the company making the game, so I think that they would have to pay all of their licensing fees to Sony. Then again, Sony owns PD so I don't see payment of licensing fees being much of an issue, either.

EDIT 3: This leaves question for how much music that ISN'T licensed by Sony will appear in the game. It'll most likely follow the trend that I think started in GT3 with Daiki Kasho. I think that trend is by default, any music not licensed by Sony is set to not play during races. (I'm sure Sony will find a way to license this somehow...) In before...wobble wobble wobble wobble?

EDIT 4: How does removing music from a video game result in anything more being added to it? It doesn't. I just want to demonstrate how editing a post works.

EDIT 5: (And by the way, here's my real post) Isn't PD obligated to put licensed music from Sony into their games to begin with?

The ending was sooooo worth the wait.

 

[Zevious Z]

You turn off the menu music? That must be quietly depressing.

Not at all. First, I spend as little time as possible in the menus. Secondly, I generally really hate the music that gets used in videogames and even if it is stuff that I can stand, once I've heard it once or twice I don't want to anymore.

I guess I'm a little odd though...I actually find music kind of annoying when I'm doing anything other than specifically listening to music.

 

[niky]

I have no idea how much each costs, I just like pointing out the tradeoff in resources because most people seem to think that all parts of game development are completely independent from each other when they clearly aren't.

Some estimates put game music at 10-15% of a game's total budget. But that's games with completely original scores, which need a constant stream of background music.

Here's a suggestion of how much the original music might cost:
http://rodabernethy.com/assets/uploads/media/files/fmm-videogamecomposers.pdf
(around $90-$150k for an orchestral score, composition, synth work, etcetera)

GT5's might be more, might be less... they use a lot of already-made music, and licensing fees for those are handled by Sony or contingent upon sales (and thus, not a fixed fee, or the fixed fee part is small).

But let's be generous... If you've got $150k, that's probably... probably... daily wage for two to three modellers for just one year. And that doesn't include the cost of the workstations you need to equip them with. Given PD's estimate of 6 months per model, that gives you... four to six... extra cars, in exchange for the in-game (menu, Moon over Castle, incidental) music.

You could get those same six cars by waiting six months for the first DLC...

 

[Antonisbob]

Uhhh, a game needs good menu music, but when I'm racing I honestly have it turned off.

That said - A good soundtrack can save a mediocre game from being a total piece. In other cases it can make a great game that much more memorable (GTA's Rock & Metal selection?) Panama from GT4 also comes to mine.

 

[SavageEvil]

Anyone actually remember GT4 replay music mode where the camera angles would change according to certain parts of some songs? That was pretty interesting and looked like an experiment of sorts on PD part with in game music in replays. GT4 had an epic smooth sound track, miss those tunes. Time to go buy some tracks.

 

[HBR-Roadhog]

One of the first things I do is turn off the music in the game, both menu music and race music. If I want any music I will add my own but usually would only turn it on if I was doing something like the 4 hour Tsukuba race or the Indy 500 as those are very boring and a little music helps a bit.

 

[Imari]

First, I spend as little time as possible in the menus.

As little time as possible in the menus.

GT5.

You are a funny man.

 

[C_Raccoon23]

Anyone actually remember GT4 replay music mode where the camera angles would change according to certain parts of some songs? That was pretty interesting and looked like an experiment of sorts on PD part with in game music in replays. GT4 had an epic smooth sound track, miss those tunes. Time to go buy some tracks.

GT3 could do this too.