AngelCityOutlaw

Just about nobody owns just one Buying instrument libraries is a slippery slope. Most composers I know have more samples and libraries than the crazy cat lady has cats.

Yes...so? It's the AAA companies that pull in billions of dollars annually and are almost always at the cutting edge of the technology behind it all and have people lining up worldwide at midnight to pick up their latest releases and they usually set the trends of what is popular. This is like if you said "There's this trend in the film industry..." and then someone jumped in and said "The film industry isn't an amorphous mass. There are indie films and studios and YouTubers that break that mold" the response you'd give is "So what?" Just because smaller-budget, independent studios (who will always outnumber the big dogs) are doing something different doesn't mean much. One-man teams and student projects generally have little to no influence or power over "the industry" in the grand scheme of things. Those people, more often than not, aspire to be like the AAA people anyway. Same thing with the music industry. More to the point - This is a debate I remember taking place for as long as I have been alive. Are movies the superior medium or games? A ridiculous argument since they're two completely different things, but it carries on none the less. Google right now something to the effect of "Games Vs Film" and you will find no shortage of stuff like this. "Have video games replaced movies as the popular modern narrative medium?" followed by two people arguing whether games or movies are better. When Grand Theft Auto V came out, people would not shut up about how it outsold everything "...more than any movie!" is how they usually end the sentence. Now, the industry employs film composers, hires directors, replaces perfectly good voice actors with Hollywood Stars, for years has segregated gameplay and story with lengthy cutscenes, Beyond Two Souls is a thing, there was a game about actually making movies, and there are no shortage of articles about "Games: Stop trying to be movies". The video game industry has been trying to put itself on "par' with the film industry in terms of production value, story, music, acting etc. for years. So I can absolutely see why when, in an age where games are super-mainstream and sell obscene amounts of copies, people would be butthurt when one of the most famous film critics of all time came along and said "games aren't art lol". His reasoning was piss-poor, but that's beside the point.

I nominate this for best post award. Seriously though, the game industry has pretty much always been trying to gain the film industry's approval and I really don't understand why.

Despite your meager apology, this has to be one of the most snide posts I've ever seen around here. Like, holy crap dude. Anyway, regarding the legal aspect, I'm no expert but I do know that you'd have to license the tracks directly from the companies that own the rights to them. I have no idea how to go about that, but I'd assume you'd probably need representation of some sort as well since I'm sure game publishers and developers get emails from musicians like that all the time and they probably don't even respond to them. I think a couple of OCR people have actually released commercial remix albums, but I can't remember who. There was also that one Megaman album which I think was an album that you actually had to buy through Capcom, so Liontamer or maybe DJP might be able to provide insight on what you'd have to do. I apologize to them in advance for recommending them if it turns out they're not the people to ask. What you'd need is called a "Mechanical License" and I know that for songs, it's often done through agencies, but I have no idea if video game music would be included there. To summarize - I'd agree with the others that if you're serious about about making money with music, VGM covers are definitely not the way to go. As a fun project that could maybe earn you some beer money, you'd have to decide if the obstacles you have to overcome are really worth it.

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of people still don't take video game music seriously. It could be hard to get gigs if you're starting out. About a year ago, a friend asked me to play with his band as they were going to do some instrumental-rock arrangements of video game music. We weren't even actually going to do it for money, but I'm told the venue they were planning to play at actually refused because they only wanted to book bands with vocals and didn't feel a band playing video game tunes would attract a crowd and of course, simply telling your friends on Facebook isn't enough to convince them. So that never happened, they never bothered trying another venue (there aren't many here, though) and we didn't want to go to "open mic night" at the local biker bar. Some of the guys wound up playing pop cover tunes instead without me a few months later. My point is, it's a niche thing and while that was just one experience, I suspect it's not an uncommon thing for venues that usually host bands in the "traditional" sense to scoff at the idea.

Possible to earn money? Yes. Possible to make a living at it? Unless you're Video Games Live, no. Though it might only be Tommy Tallarico making a living out of that show.

Vienna Symphonic Library, 8Dio, East West Symphonic Orchestra, The Hollywood 2&3 Expansions for the Nexus Rompler (actually pretty good!), Cinesamples and Symphobia are the most popular/standard ones I'd say. East West is the cheapest, but is also one of the oldest and requires a lame USB dongle...but still good. It's the one I'd recommend the least, personally.

The only real problem with going by MIDI files is that most of them are created by tone-deaf n00bz anyway.

I do it by ear. Most do it via MIDI files found on the internet, I think. I play it in a different position on the fretboard on my guitar or hit shift+up/down after playing it in as MIDI via Keyboard. Finale, Sibelius and MuseScore and basically any notation software out there have functions to transpose sheet music to any key you want.

Yes, finding women attractive and playing as them makes you sexist. You're worse than Hitler. Well....according to the Tumblr crowd anyway. I play as women in fighting games usually because they actually make the women far more interesting and different. In fighters, most of the male characters are generic, "totally not steroids bro" clones. Ryu, Ken, Jin, Akuma, Brian Fury...they're all the same really. Sure there are some male-female clones like Sakura or Christie Monteiro But Chun-Li, Karin, Nina Williams, Xiayou (looks like Chun, but is totally different), Juri, Cammy etc. all have unique, signature designs and playstyles. In their respective games, most of the male cast tend to have little variation or anything that really stands out about them I find. I guess I usually pick characters that I think are "cool" or "stylish" and in many games I'd say the women are just cooler. Nova is the most badass StarCraft character and I think Aqua is the coolest Kingdom Hearts protagonist...even if her voice actress sounds bored as hell all the time.

I recall there being a study that said you could most often tell if a female avatar in a video game was played by a guy if the character jumps and walks backwards often. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/05/13/world_of_warcraft_gender_switching_why_men_choose_female_avatars.html Not sure if satire...

Every argument is like this - especially where social justice is involved to any degree.

¯\(°_o)/¯

Sweet. Hey Alex, I just remembered we did Forze Del Male a few years ago, but a short version for Dwelling of Duels... Maybe we should expand on that?

If you've got a better to way raise 100k and notoriety in less than a month that is somehow simpler than sharing how people are total assholes to you on the internet, then I'm all ears. Pretty much I think the difference is that Planned Parenthood raised lots of money beforehand.

Let me break this down: - You say/said they aren't doing this to make money. Maybe...maybe not. - Anita explained how she used to deal with trolls, which I think we can agree was the sensible thing to do. - Literally the moment after these people publish how they are being treated, a massive increase in donations via kick starter or Patreon occured. - She now shares how she's being victimized all the time. - Anita and Zoe Quinn are making a living via Feminist Frequency and Gamergate. Even if not directly via their funding, this is what Anita does every day now as far as I'm aware and Meteo just shared how Quinn's got that movie deal or whatever. Look, I don't actually care where the money is going because I didn't donate any. What I'm saying is that being a victim can be a successful business model and bring in huge dough whether it's for non-profit or not. Do you really believe that if Anita had kept dealing with trolls the way she used to that she would've got as much money as she has? I doubt it.

The debate here is about whether or not these people and their companies have made huge money (whether it's being pocketed or not is irrelevant) as a result of publicizing their harassment. Just because they have a surplus being re-invested into their cause doesn't mean they haven't or don't have the means to make substantial "profit" themselves as Cash seems to believe. It's clear that they have.

Literally all of the information in that video is simply discussing objective facts - things that have actually happened. You have all the access to the same info he does and that info is coming right from Feminist Frequency and Zoe Quinn. In the actual feminist frequency 2014 report, they refer to the money received via donation as "revenue" which literally means income as a business and here is a quote right above those charts "We only made necessary purchases for production/research needs and we were paid bare minimum salaries, volunteering much of our time to the organization." "We were paid bare minimum salaries" "Paid bare minimum salaries" "Paid...Salaries" Whatever "minimum" is, is not defined and nor is said what "administrative" costs entail, but Anita openly is admitting here that she and maybe some of her underlings do pay their bills with this. There is also nothing stopping her from giving everyone a pay raise - you giving her your money at this point gives her every right to use it as she sees fit. Her company made over 400,000 last year and only had 64,000 in expenditures. If a company pulling in nearly half a million in a year with expenses less than 100,000 and paying some "staff" with it doesn't count as "profit" to you, then you are simply delusional. OCR provides transparency in exactly how the money is used and I'm pretty sure aren't worth over half a million. They also aren't saying "Yeah, we pay Larry a "bare minimum salary" which even if they did, we'd all know it was in McRibs. Zoe Quinn has also made a shitload via the gamergate thing as also evidence in that video so she's in the same boat as Anita.

There was definitely profit.

I know I missed the deadline here, but I will have the update to you tomorrow night if possible - If not, Sunday. I kinda realized that the key change was throwing epic/seductive vibe off - so I'm re-doing that part with original composition. So it should be like 60/40 source : original

Oh hell yes! I just recently played through the first game again and I was planning on doing a remix of at least one tune from the game after I finish this Fire Emblem remix. Maybe I'll hold onto that KH remix for when/if this becomes a thing. It should totally be a thing.

What you've described sounds exactly like it's "dying". What else is substantially decreased activity because there are "better" alternatives and a shift in public interest supposed to mean? It's like saying "Sure, people don't really go to video stores anymore, but that doesn't mean they're dying. There are still some left, but with a smaller customer base. Most people just prefer Netflix now, is all." Nothing that's "dead" ever truly goes away most of the time as far as technology is concerned. When I worked for a movie company, brand new movies we'd get were often sent directly from Dreamworks or whatever on VHS. So VHS still around...but it's definitely a dead format.

28 is "old". Okay there Grandpa Strader, I'll get off your lawn.

That is very true. Most of the remixes I listen to on here or tried remixing myself are from late 90s or early 2000s games. Games I had as a kid in other words. Lots of the newer games don't have music that is as simple and melodic as the older ones, so it's tough to remix or when remixes of it pop up on the site (like those Dark Souls remixes) I either don't listen because I'm not familiar with it or when I do, I'm not familiar with or passionate enough about the material to really give an in-depth review.

I think it's a symptom of a larger problem. OCR seems super dead in general compared to when I first came here a few years back. I don't know, it just seemed like this place was really happening around 2011-13. Now, the top threads in almost any part of the forum remain unchanged for days and some of those threads don't see a new post for quite some time. It's like everyone is either not here, or just lurking. I'll admit that I don't really listen to a lot of the new mixposts, but that's due to my decreased interest in game remixes. I don't venture too far from the production and community forums these days, but I notice even in the workshop, it's not uncommon now for mixes to get over a hundred views but absolutely no response.