Do You Listen to Video Game Soundtracks?

Like movies, video games often have their own soundtracks. Sometimes the soundtrack is made up of popular or existing songs, like the "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" and "FIFA" series; others employ professional musicians to compose soundtracks specifically for the game. "Modern Warfare 3," out next Thursday, will feature original music from Hollywood composer Brian Tyler ("The Expendables," "Battle: Los Angeles," 2008's "Rambo" sequel).

IGN spoke with Tyler about his work on "Modern Warefare 3" and asked him about his transition from Hollywood to video games, the process of writing music for games, and specifically about the difficulty in composing the music for multiplayer, which runs the risk of becoming repetitive when people play multiplayer for a long time.



Tyler explained, "I really have to keep in mind that my music is going to be used differently depending on how the player plays the game. If they're going in one direction or the other, if they're doing poorly or very well, or if they're going to different areas that require different types of music at different times; these are all scenarios that I have to really write the music around because it's going to change every time the game is played."

To address lengthy multiplayer games, he decided to separate his fully orchestrated pieces into individual sections and instruments, which could then be layered on top of each other in different ways. "What happens is it grows exponentially from all the instruments that are played and there are so many layers to the score," he said. "As long as schematically it's still driving home the emotional content of what you want to have in a particular theme, you end up with hours and hours of music."

Some composers have made their names on video game soundtracks. Nobuo Uematsu is best known as the composer of all "Final Fantasy" games until 2004 (he'll be returning for "Final Fantasy XIV"), and Akira Yamaoka's work in the "Silent Hill" series until 2009 was highly regarded.