Entertainment: Is this how you play music?!

Chapter 332 Directly Changes the Industry Formula!

"It's hard to say, it depends on the situation."

Ge Jianxiong scratched his head.

"Depending on the context, it represents different emotions, such as fear, excitement, or exhilaration."

"See, now you understand, don't you?"

Li Can laughed.

"When making games, the most important thing is the player experience, the feeling presented to the player. So how do you construct that feeling?"

“You yourself know that emotions are just an energy outburst. The experience depends on the context in which it occurs. Therefore, the context can directly set the stage for the music, and the music ultimately merges with the context.”

"Emotions are just a kind of energy that we want to accumulate. As for what this energy is actually expressing and what players can feel, we need to use the scene to tell the story."

"In this design, music equals emotion. If we turn the emotion aspect into music, it becomes easy to understand. Music is only responsible for the outburst, and as for what the outburst is, the scene serves as a prelude to the narrative."

"If we are only confined to the realm of music, there is very limited room for improvement in the design of the user experience."

"The pursuit of integrated art is to integrate music with other elements more seamlessly. Therefore, we must also include the art scene, textual narrative, and highly unified theme within the scope of music in order to achieve a high degree of integration."

Hearing these words.

Ge Jianxiong suddenly realized.

If we only look at the design from a musical perspective, Li Can has undoubtedly gone to extremes.

People within an industry are often limited by their industry perspective.

According to industry insiders, this design is a perfect example of what not to do.

However, if we view it as a completely new immersive art experience that is "not music, not art, not games," then it is entirely different.

They have come together to form an indispensable whole.

This is not about music serving the game or the scene, nor is it about the scene serving the music.

Rather, all of these elements serve the purpose of creating an immersive experience.

In this design, the music for the BOSS battle is considered as the "chorus section," while the intro, interlude, and verse are each supplemented by other elements for synesthetic purposes.

"The most important aspect of integrated art is not expressing the creator's emotions, but rather guiding the emotions of the listener after selecting a theme, thereby enhancing the experience brought by the music. The focus is on the experience, not necessarily just the music itself."

"Open up your perspective and broaden your horizons. It's like playing rock music. If you really want to improve after reaching a certain level, you can't just focus on the basics of rock music. Otherwise, how would new things like bel canto rock and electronic rock have been born?"

understood!

Now Ge Jianxiong understood everything.

Music can express the emotions of its creators.

It can also evoke emotions in the viewer.

Clearly, this demo showcases a production method purely designed to evoke emotions in the viewer.

From the composer's perspective.

There is a formula for emotional experience.

[Scene + Music = Experience Feedback]

Evoking memories through a scene is often more powerful than pure music. Music itself is about energy, a kind of energy that can cause intense fluctuations, and a good composer will associate this energy with the scene.

What truly broadened Ge Jianxiong's horizons was that Li Can abandoned the traditional formula and did not engage in any fancy tricks based on it, but instead innovated the formula itself.

It has become [Scene X Music = Experience Feedback]

If the music itself remains unchanged, how can we increase the numerical value of the experience feedback?
That is, you continuously accumulate energy in the scene, making the scene's value larger, and when the music starts, the final feedback will undergo a multiplicative qualitative change in the experience.

If it's really like the conventional design, there will be background music in towns, background music when setting off on a dragon-slaying expedition, ambient music along the way, and even some music when falling into a valley.

When you get to the final boss, the experience definitely diminishes considerably.

Because pent-up emotional energy will continuously dissipate and be consumed under the guidance of various background music.

After being thirsty for two days, even ordinary pure water becomes exceptionally sweet.

During the process of accumulating emotional energy, the presence of the sound of thunder and storm is also emphasized, making people unconsciously ignore the background music and feel irritable and tense due to the spatial sound of thunder.

For this reason, the entire process should not be designed to be too long.

All of its monetization potential revolves around a single theme. Whether it's the protagonist, the soul, or the mad dragon itself, they all become different projections of the same theme.

If you want to increase the size, the required level of complexity and precision will increase exponentially.

Given the current level of the game industry and industry understanding, it is still difficult to expand.

"Thank you, Brother Can, you've really gone to a lot of trouble."

After understanding everything, Ge Jianxiong relaxed completely.

Such attempts, while not impossible to replicate, will almost certainly result in a poor imitation if the essence is not grasped.

It's not a traditional way of setting music.

If even the slightest detail is misunderstood, the full potential of this experience cannot be achieved.

"It's okay, everyone wants to improve, that's a good thing."

Li Can smiled.

After hanging up the phone, Ge Jianxiong couldn't help but sigh.

"Brother Chan is truly worthy of his name; he's always ahead of everyone else."

"Indeed, the basic understanding and trends that have just emerged in the field of soundtracks are already two versions outdated by Brother Can. I really couldn't keep up."

Xiao Qi nodded repeatedly.

Only those in the music industry know how outrageously fast the iteration speed of Li Can's version is.

When game music first appeared, it actually placed great emphasis on melody.

On the one hand, the music industry at that time generally paid more attention to melody.

On the other hand, due to the limitations of technological capabilities, the ability to express images is very limited, so it is even more necessary to focus on the melody and memorability of the music.

This is why the music in old games is often very memorable, and it's not just because it represents the childhood of gamers.

But now?

The music industry is generally starting to "de-emphasize melody," with both the East and the West striving to explore and experiment more deeply with rhythm, tempo, timbre, and sound effects.

Meanwhile, the expressiveness of game graphics is rapidly improving. The absolute qualitative change from pixel to 3D simulation has allowed game music to gradually shift from creating memorable melodies to shaping atmosphere and emotions.

The music scene at that time.

There is only a preliminary understanding of such changes, and the practice is still in its early stages. There are a few good examples that have become industry answers, but they are not widespread and have not yet developed to the middle and late stages.

This naturally leads to audience segmentation and controversial comments.

The audience was highly polarized.

The vast majority of listeners still believe that "music is just melody." In reality, they haven't listened to much music. Audiophiles are also really tired of works that only have melodies. No matter how good the melody is, if the rhythm and timbre are terrible, it will make people drowsy.

And it was at this critical juncture.

Li Can carried out a very brutal "breakthrough" through his actions.

They went even further.

They even fast-forwarded directly to "de-musicalization".

At a time when music is moving away from melody and the gaming industry is placing greater emphasis on ambient music.

Li Can completely abandoned ambient music.

Why does the good music you listen to have to be music?

Throughout this entire experience, the initial silence, the noise, the thunder and lightning, and the sound of horses' hooves echoed in the empty valley.

Even the scene design and art direction are all just the "prelude".

"Holy crap, that feels so good, I got goosebumps."

"What a hearty battle."

"I think I'll never forget this boss."

"Yeah, holy crap, that second-stage wing-spreading move from the Mad Dragon really gave me goosebumps."

"The damage might not be high, but it's really crazy. The special effects are amazing, and the background music is epic. It's the most shocking performance, and the pressure is really too strong."

"Did you guys notice? In the death animation, the mad dragon didn't fall to the ground. Instead, it exploded with lightning and flapped its wings again, raising its lightning dragon claws high. Even the background music didn't stop until it completely dissipated. Holy crap, it scared me to death. I thought there was really a next stage."

"This is awesome! Holy crap, this journey has been epic! I don't know why I'm so excited, but it's just so exhilarating."

"Holy crap, this questline... the Mad Dragon and this soul seem to be echoing each other?"

"It is said to be cowardice and fear, but it is actually about courage. True courage is knowing fear but still facing it head-on."

"Holy crap, thinking back to that line 'Take me to the top of the storm,' I want to play it again!"

"Seriously, the pressure is immense as soon as you go up the mountain, and you feel the madness even more after you see the boss. There's no opening cutscene, it's straight to the exhilarating battle, and you can only breathe a sigh of relief at the very end."

Xiaoqi looked up and glanced at the other players' reactions.

They were all roughly the same in that they were excited about it.

After this experience, each player seemed to have experienced a highly immersive story of "The Old Man and the Sea" or "Moby-Dick".

In "The Old Man and the Sea," what people might notice are keywords like struggle, dedication, and hard work.

But this experience captured the elderly person's fear and hesitation when facing a storm.

Fear is a human instinct, but what makes humanity great is its noble attitude in the face of fear.

This highly unified theme is constantly being confirmed from beginning to end, reaching its peak during the final boss battle.

If Ahab could leave his soul on the harpoon he thrust into Moby Dick after his death, then he too could have his wish fulfilled one day.

Holistic Art

Not just producers in the industry.

Even players.

Throughout this entire journey, I also felt this sense of wholeness.

Perhaps it's hard to put into words.

But upon closer reflection, I realize that I still want to continue this story, without considering anything else, and simply want to fully experience this dragon-slaying journey.

"Is this the terrifying aspect of total art, ugh?"

Xiao Qi clicked her tongue in amazement.

Since the philosopher Trandov coined the term "Gesamtkunstwerk" (total art) in 1827, people from all walks of life in the arts have made various attempts to integrate different art forms as elements.

But never expected.

At this moment, in the game, Xiaoqi experienced the idea that the book master had once proposed.

"It's possible to learn a skill, but it's quite unlikely."

Ge Jianxiong shook his head regretfully.

Now I understand everything.

But it is precisely because of this understanding that this feeling of awe and reverence becomes even clearer.

You can't learn even a little bit; he's far ahead.

The hands-on experience was quite successful.

The development team was overjoyed to see such feedback from the players.

Li Can deserves a lot of credit for completing this game.

Initially, the production team didn't intend to go overboard with the special effects, but everyone felt that the music for Li Can's boss battle was a bit of a waste, so they started to add more special effects and fill in the details.

When the final design was completed and we discussed the other music segments with Li Can, we were given two options.

Two choices that could significantly influence the design of the subsequent game flow.

[Either conventional ARPG design, or a different approach, emphasizing the overall performance and immersion; depending on the choice, the soundtrack will be produced in different ways.]

The production team will naturally ask which one is better, the differences, and the corresponding methods.

Li Can's answer is precisely this: "In the overall art, scene art can serve as a prelude."

It is precisely based on this concept of "total art".

After comparing the content with other conventional ARPGs, the producer, inspired by Li Can, made a decisive adjustment.

We decided to make some changes and try new things.

Based on the production team's decision, Li Can also made optimizations and cooperated, which resulted in the final version.

then.

That's how this unique, self-contained experience came about.

I had never heard of such a thing before, but I believed it.

They believed it and immediately received rave reviews.

Regardless of the overall quality of the game or its details, this "Dragon's Fury Side Quest" was definitely a fun experience for players.

Seeing the positive feedback from players.

The production team finally felt triumphant and confidently threw themselves into the work ahead.

And at this time.

The various aspects of this game demo have finally begun to spread!
Many streamers who focus on various aspects of gaming have also started to make money from streaming, including music bloggers.

After the release of the gameplay footage of Mad Dragon, I began to appreciate Li Can's new work.

Because music contains a lot of information, many streamers like to guess things in the game based on the music even when they don't know anything about the content. Once they make a connection, they feel a real sense of accomplishment.

Liu Jitong is a sixty-year-old man who once played the clarinet in a theater musical orchestra.

In the internet age, Liu Jitong, who still has a youthful mindset and wants to play with young netizens, naturally caters to their preferences by doing game music analysis.

In this live stream, we will begin analyzing the background music (BGM) used in the "Mad Dragon" boss battle.

"This music really has an extreme sense of violence, especially the strings, it's insane."

"The evil feeling of tearing everything apart and using any means necessary to achieve one's goals."

Liu Jitong frowned in thought.

It wasn't a show; I genuinely didn't play any of it, and didn't even bother to learn about it.

However, the mere conjecture based on the expression within the music caused an uproar among the viewers in the live stream, who exclaimed that he was a genius.

"The violin and cello parts are played in turns many times, not like a dialogue, but more like a confirmation, or rather, a feeling of mutual confirmation between characters?"

"Is that sudden soprano voice at the beginning of the second segment an explosion? Can this boss transform?"

Holy crap! Amazing! How could they even tell that?!

Wow, for a moment I don't know whether to say "up" or "Chan" is awesome. One truly lets his music speak for itself, and the other truly understands what he's hearing!

Faced with the praise in the live chat, Liu Jitong's brows furrowed even more.

No, that's very wrong.

This music is definitely not that simple; he's still hiding something!

(End of this chapter)