I am really excited about the release of Anodyne 2. Anodyne was destined for cult [read: kvlt] status. If not for its surreal but humble narrative but for its emotionally descriptive soundtrack. Wanting to know more about the magic behind the frame rate I asked Sean Han Tani, co-creator of Anodyne, what he knows about Voodoo.
You teach both game scoring and game design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and your soundtracks are intrinsic to the world they compliment. As both a designer and a composer does one component stem from the creation of the other or are they constructed separately from a similar vision?
Music usually stems from the game – for my games at least, music should be subservient to the game. However now and then I’ll hear a song and think “Oh! This might be cool in a game.” And then I try to think of some excuse to write a similar song for whatever game I’m working on. Sometimes this doesn’t work and then I just write the idea in a journal and tell myself I’ll do it eventually, and then I don’t.
“Most mass-market appeal games are sort of ‘natural responses’…”
There’s a pragmatism to your work notes, where the descriptions accompanying your albums on bandcamp read like an open source projects readme file, and where other bands and artists brand their sponsors you detail your journey and the digital tools you used to make it. It is a convention that’s both academic and altruistic. How did you get involved with making music and game design?
Thanks! I like explaining stuff because I get annoyed that many creators never explain their process or go behind-the-scenes… but play up this image of being a genius or something… it’s like… no one is a genius, just some people were lucky to have time and resources to get good. That’s really the truth…
I would rather make encouraging work so I try to go behind the scenes when I can!
I played various instruments (violin for a while!) but most important was I took piano lessons for a year but quit because of the focus on technique and performance. Instead I started viewing game MIDI files from vgmusic.com in Noteworthy Player and trying to transcribe and play stuff on the piano. I kind of did that all through school and still convinced myself I was a Math, Science, and Bowling kid, but then college came and I started writing tons of music…
My game design story isn’t exciting. I made some bad Cave Story Mods and incomplete text and VBasic adventures as a kid (but mostly doing Math, Science and Bowling), but then in college I studied CS, and I decided to mess around with making Flash games and a year later I was making Anodyne!
In both cases a lifetime of consuming what I was making obviously was a huge privilege.
We are a long way away from the days of Satanic Panic however games have never been so rock ‘n’ roll. From concatenating socio-political concerns and identity politics in All Our Asias to exploring the sensitive balance between relationships in Even The Ocean your work is a great argument for games as art. How do you feel about the medium of gaming as the industry is now over the often overlooked passion projects of old?
Gaming at scale can be viewed as a product that addresses needs for the various stresses/isolation that living nowadays causes. Most mass-market appeal games are sort of ‘natural responses’ that manifest in response to an ecosystem of people with various unconscious, collective needs. It’s often capital chasing more capital, powered by underpaid, overworked laborers. But, it does help stabilize our moods I guess.
For example, some see Fortnite as a gaming revolution, and the popularity is pretty nuts, but it’s also a natural next step in a population that’s increasingly growing up with iPhones and communicating with Snapchat, TikTok, and generally hanging out online.
Anyways, like, I think the most dangerous thing about these games is that they consume too much of people’s consumption time. I would know… I wasted hundreds of hours on Maple Story as a kid, and I think I would’ve gotten just as much out of it if I had cut down 80%. I’d probably have learned to cook earlier…
Mass-market games are good to destress but they rarely provide challenging ideas or themes… e.g. society flowing in the status quo. Obviously we can’t just be consuming difficult work all the time, but the way a lot of big games are designed, they aim to take up most of your life. Which sucks. I think independent work enriches your life more than mainstream work while taking up less space, but playing those games is much more intense.
Anyways, *most* innovative work in games will always come from studios of 1-4. Past that size, to sustain a year’s development you’re gonna need to sell at least $100k in a year (if everyone is young, healthy, single). That’s really hard if you aren’t taking steps or compromises to make the game more marketable. Innovative work exists at large scales, but of course tends to be adjusted to help sell.
“… if you’re a musician in 2019 and not following a little independent music on Soundcloud or Bandcamp, or going to local live shows you’re hurting your work!”
Okay, less wordy and impromptu QTE: What are your top three influential game soundtracks?
So, I rarely listen to these following OSTs nowadays. But they’re definitely influential!
1. In 2011 I was using PxTone, a tracker made by the creator of Cave Story, whose music I’d been listening to for years. Cave Story’s OST showed me how personal and powerful a fixed, synthesized sound palette can be and is part of why I tend to stay away from orchestral sounds dominating the sound space!
2. After that, I’d say Dustforce (by Terence Lee / Lifeformed). I had it on constant repeat during early development of Anodyne in 2012, where I was really starting to think about the interplay of game design and composing. Dustforce is also primarily synth based.
Both are pretty ‘pop’ to me, not just their popularity but their focus on melody.
3. Then third, Yume Nikki. Honestly it’s hard to listen to on its own. But it’s super effective in using these tiny, 4-bar loops to conjure gigantic atmospheres, which is a great lesson about sound choice and low-labor music production!
Err, the pattern here is if you’re a game musician, you’ll get cooler results by playing with synths unless you’re already good at composing. Orchestral sounds are hard to do right, even in AAA it tends to be pretty boring, though Keiichi Okabe and Masashi Hamauzu are recent exceptions.
Oh no! An old wizened woman appears out thin air and gives you a copy protection wheel. She then asks you what your three favourite non-game related albums are. What are they
Rei Harakami – Lust. I love what he does with a minimal percussive palette and delay effect, I first listened to him right after he passed away (in 2011). There’s a hopeful, contemplative emotional arc to the chord choices and tonal shifts throughout the album, and his cover of “Owari no Kisetsu” is an amazing vocal piece, which is also around my vocal register which I like. I recently decided to emulate some of his style for an Anodyne 2 piece! If you’re a reader find it and e-mail me, I’ll send you a copy of Anodyne 1.
Susumu Hirasawa’s Solo Work – I can listen to many of his songs hundreds of times and still pick out new ideas! They’re eclectic and dense, and super catchy. Philosopher’s Propeller has some cool songs (Rubedo, Garden where the Solutions Are Found). I love how he’s in his 60s and still making really interesting and unique music, it rules – I want to be an eccentric, handsome music grandpa. Other favorite songs are Holy Delay, Moon Time, Gemini 2, PLANET-HOME… ok… I could just keep going on and on… listen to Susumu Hirasawa! Also he doesn’t have Pitchfork reviews, which is funny.
“There’s a rich history of concerts and live music performance in MMORPGs”
Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Flora – An electronic album that feels very game-like in its background-ness, but still are driven by melody in a cool way. I’m sort of ambivalent about his more ambient work. Many of the songs on Flora have a great sense of distance and tension in between each note that’s extremely hard to replicate… careful thoughtfulness. Asagao, Maple Syrup Factory, Over the Clover (I did a cover of this one!) are standouts on the album.
And Soundcloud! I don’t listen to enough, but really, if you’re a musician in 2019 and not following a little independent music on Soundcloud or Bandcamp, or going to local live shows you’re hurting your work!
I want to pick your brains about Anodyne 2 and its relation to music, having played the beta I felt an almost synathestic element surrounding the levels. With no spoilers, or at least some forewarning, can you elucidate how the soundtrack plays a part in augmenting the game world(s)?
The OST is pretty normal functionally (the music just loops). But, and this is the case for many ‘lo-fi’ games, the visuals alone aren’t always enough to convey the area’s mood. So music needs to fill in the needed tone of the places. Like, the opening island could be very mysterious, but actually it’s comforting and nurturing, so the song reflects that. Again, that’s nothing new for game music but it feels more important than usual in Anodyne 2.
The music industry and the gaming industry are overlapping more and more with Fortnite recently became the stage of the worlds’ first in-game concert. What do you think about the platform of gaming becoming a vehicle for the transmission of popular music, and would you ever consider hosting a concert in a game world you have helped bring to life?
That in-game concert thing is funny! There’s a rich history of concerts and live music performance in MMORPGs (Final Fantasy 11, Second Life, etc), so it was a little goofy to see headlines about it being the first game concert, because it totally wasn’t. Biggest? Probably, but not a novel idea.
Gaming becoming a vehicle for Grocery Store Music (Mainstream Pop, I don’t mean this derogatorily but as a matter of fact) also has roots in JRPG commissions of famous pop singers (Utada Hikaru, Faye Wong), Rhythm games, or games like GTA featuring real world music.
So it also feels natural that GSM would make its way into a big game! Money’s where the fans are at. It’s not that interesting of a phenomenon to me, it just feels… expected.
Live music is cool but I don’t go to it often or perform it much since I get sick at venues (bad air, bad lighting, too loud, I go to sleep at 11 now, I hate finding/holding water, using the bathrooms is stressful and dirty, getting home at night makes me anxious, I can’t hear anyone), but I’m not opposed to the idea of concerts in my games. (So long as I’m not programming the netcode.)
Another way the industries overlap is in digital piracy and with many store fronts moving towards a kind of always on-line/subscription only platform to optimise the revenue streams of their catalogues what would be your distribution preference Epic or Itch, Spotify or Bandcamp and one reason why.
I enjoy platforms that spread and curate more independent, low-budget, quality games and music! But I won’t turn down an opportunity to promote my stuff somewhere! Arby’s, Dollar Tree, Fuddrucker’s… whatever, I’ll take anything.
So, what about Anodyne 2?
It [had] better sell well!!! People already like it so now it just needs to sell well (laugh). Well, and we need to finish it.
You can hear more from Sean and also find more out about Anodyne 2 at the following places:
Anodyne 2 on Steam and itch.io. Sean on Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Twitter.
