Questions about Composing video game music..I'd really appreciate some answers.

[prophetik music]

I mostly wonder about the workload. Just doing the music alone is a full-time, 30-40 hour a week job, what does the rest of that add on to it?

an audio engineer friend who was recently involved in a AAA-level game out in WA said that he worked about 65-70 hours a week for eight months for the project he was on. he was brought in mid-stream, and only worked in the sound studio.

that's the industry, man.

[zircon]

Depending on your exact job, you might not be writing music for 30-40 hours a week. I remember a survey on VI Control (a pro composer forum) which basically concluded that many pros are only WRITING about 20 hours a week. The rest of the time is spent doing everything else. There's also the issue of crunch time; you might be working relatively few hours on a given project until close to the deadline, when you immediately ramp up to 60 hours a week, but only for a short time.

Prophet's example is exaggerated; I don't think those hours are at all commonplace, and it really depends on the company, their competence and their staff. Video game companies that have hours like that force their employees out or end up closing entirely. Crunch time is a reality (I was up until 2am working with Bustatunez on MI2 a few weeks ago) but it's not common for that level of intense work to span across months at a time.

[prophetik music]

Prophet's example is exaggerated; I don't think those hours are at all commonplace, and it really depends on the company, their competence and their staff.

he was brought in when it was apparent that their team wasn't operating at 100%, so he was supposed to cover the slack. they lost someone mid-project, which was where the rest of the hours came from.

when the game comes out, i'll tell you which it was and you can decide if it was worth it or not. he didn't think so

[Arcana]

I mostly wonder about the workload. Just doing the music alone is a full-time, 30-40 hour a week job, what does the rest of that add on to it?

A lot of that stuff looks clerical, like doing paperwork and making purchasing decisions or setting up appointments with voice actors. Obviously those are things that happen once or twice in a project but need to be done at some point by someone.

[dannthr]

he was brought in when it was apparent that their team wasn't operating at 100%, so he was supposed to cover the slack. they lost someone mid-project, which was where the rest of the hours came from.

when the game comes out, i'll tell you which it was and you can decide if it was worth it or not. he didn't think so

It's all subjective with each job--going into the job you can't necessarily know what you'll be responsible for (you might have an idea though), so like exercise or eating your veggies, look into everything.

It only makes getting a job EASIER, which I think everyone can appreciate in this highly competitive industry.

If you go back to my post I say something like "Be a jack of all trades and a master of ONE." Learn as much as you can, but be good at that one thing that will get you noticed.

[Meteo Xavier]

Video game companies that have hours like that force their employees out or end up closing entirely.

Could you go into further detail here? I've had some pretty rotten experiences in what few jobs I could get doing music where I felt like the guy I was working for was forcing me out or had unreasonable expectations out of me, and I'd like to be able to tell the difference.

[zircon]

Check out this article:

http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/3/13/gdc-2010-day-3.html

The whole thing is good, but specifically read the part about "Fired and Fired-Up: Jobless Developer's Rant."

[Arcana]

As someone who studies software engineering, I would like to point out that in the dot com craze of the late 1990s, it was commonplace and expected for you to work far over 8 hours a day in the office. To make it more tolerable, you got perks like a weight room, in-house (free) catered food, free coffee and tea, regular snacks, and game rooms.

Eventually, the bubble burst and the first things to go were all of these free extras like gourmet coffee and tea (they replaced it with ordinary coffee and orange pekoe), free lunches, and the personal trainers. Next to go were people's jobs.

For a while longer there continued to be a culture of "who can stay the latest" due to fear of layoffs.

Now the industry (outside of gaming, to many extents) has righted itself especially as the workforce is getting older and as the experienced, valuable employees get families. However, one big difference between gaming and other software industries is that other software tends to need to do things like maintain large codebases, support customers, and maintain legacy code. In gaming, that doesn't happen quite so often - you often have a lot of creative staff and much of the work is spent on that side of things (art, design, music, etc).

The reality is though that 60-hour work weeks is starting to become the "bad thing" and if you're an employee who expects 60+ hours a week from your employees when it's not critical (ex: the week before your project goes gold) then you're going to be finding new employees.

[Meteo Xavier]

That article was incredible. Had to wonder how much of that would ever apply to me since I can't get started in any way, but yeah, I love that kind of indepth stuff.

Is there more like that at GDC?

[zircon]

Sirlin has a pretty good writeup of all the game design and psychology-related things he attended at GDC; I can't speak to it myself since I only attended audio events (you need a more expensive pass to get into everything.)

[prophetik music]

reeeeally looking forward to going to that next year. there was some great stuff in that article.

[Arcana]

I need some connections so I can start doing games-related software engineering research.

[RayMabry]

One question that I should have asked a while ago was how did everyone get their first composing job in the industry? I was wondering because eventually once I perfect my skills (and probably move cause I doubt I'll find a company in Delaware to compose for) I pretty much need to know where to turn and i've heard different things. Some people have said that you get hired by music production companies and then get sent out but others do indie stuff, which I'd probably have to start out doing so how do you go about getting into the business?

[dannthr]

One question that I should have asked a while ago was how did everyone get their first composing job in the industry? I was wondering because eventually once I perfect my skills (and probably move cause I doubt I'll find a company in Delaware to compose for) I pretty much need to know where to turn and i've heard different things. Some people have said that you get hired by music production companies and then get sent out but others do indie stuff, which I'd probably have to start out doing so how do you go about getting into the business?

gamedev.net

indiegamer.com

[zircon]

Also.. a few issues with that statement. First of all, there is no reason at all for actually moving unless you are looking to work INHOUSE somewhere. There are almost no inhouse video game audio positions, and you tend to need a lot of experience (ie. shipped titles) to even bother, not to mention they get a million applications for each. So, the other option is a freelance contractor, in which case you could work from anywhere - don't feel like you have to move just to be in "the industry". Dan is in Boulder, I'm in Philly, Sean Beeson is in Ohio, Jeff Ball is in the middle of nowhere, etc. You get the idea

Another thing is that you shouldn't be thinking in terms of "perfecting your skills", THEN looking for work. Your skills will never be perfect, and even if YOU think they are, I can guarantee they won't be at the level of the big gun VGM composers out there. I'm not saying don't keep striving to improve - not at all, in fact you should be working tirelessly to improve your skills. However, you need as much actual experience as possible, which means working on real projects, even if they're just indie gigs. You can't compose and produce in a vacuum (I've tried), and you need to get credits somehow, no matter how small they are.

[Meteo Xavier]

Another thing is that you shouldn't be thinking in terms of "perfecting your skills", THEN looking for work. Your skills will never be perfect, and even if YOU think they are, I can guarantee they won't be at the level of the big gun VGM composers out there. I'm not saying don't keep striving to improve - not at all, in fact you should be working tirelessly to improve your skills. However, you need as much actual experience as possible, which means working on real projects, even if they're just indie gigs. You can't compose and produce in a vacuum (I've tried), and you need to get credits somehow, no matter how small they are.

I want to add a couple comments in here.

Although you shouldn't compose in a vacuum, it would be awesome if you created and "perfected" (in quotations for a reason) something that you could really show off. Zircon helped me finish something last month that I'm going to post on Ocremix here soon, and I've been in talks to two project leaders this week alone about doing some game work again after using it as a reference point. I don't know if I can speak for all trudgling composers, but just getting in talks with people can be an accomplishment in and of itself.

I'll also add that even though you can't expect perfection out of yourself, the people you work for might. Even the most rank amateur looking for music work might expect things out of you that are simply unreasonable, or beyond your grasp.

If that happens, do what you can and call it good. Don't do like I did and take it way too personally and use that burn out to torch every damn bridge like a crazy man. That will set a dangerous precedent where you got developers laughing at you and possibly telling other people about it too.

A bad reputation will circumcise your dreams before you ever got to see how big they could get.

[RayMabry]

Also.. a few issues with that statement. First of all, there is no reason at all for actually moving unless you are looking to work INHOUSE somewhere. There are almost no inhouse video game audio positions, and you tend to need a lot of experience (ie. shipped titles) to even bother, not to mention they get a million applications for each. So, the other option is a freelance contractor, in which case you could work from anywhere - don't feel like you have to move just to be in "the industry". Dan is in Boulder, I'm in Philly, Sean Beeson is in Ohio, Jeff Ball is in the middle of nowhere, etc. You get the idea

Another thing is that you shouldn't be thinking in terms of "perfecting your skills", THEN looking for work. Your skills will never be perfect, and even if YOU think they are, I can guarantee they won't be at the level of the big gun VGM composers out there. I'm not saying don't keep striving to improve - not at all, in fact you should be working tirelessly to improve your skills. However, you need as much actual experience as possible, which means working on real projects, even if they're just indie gigs. You can't compose and produce in a vacuum (I've tried), and you need to get credits somehow, no matter how small they are.

I had an assumption based on absolutely nothing that perhaps I could do stuff from home but I wasn't quite sure so that's good to know. I probably will end up moving regardless anyways cause I just need to be in REAL a city again.I know there aren't any in house positions. Kinda like with Disney and it's artists but I had heard that some people get hired by production studios that send out artists so I figured eventually I'd wanna do that.

As far as perfecting my skills I know I'll never get them to be "perfect". I was more speaking of Perfecting them on a personal level. Learning how to mix, Learning how to use a few DAW's and having a clearer understanding of composing music for other genres of video games aside from Fighting Games, and learning other things that might be expected of me are what I meant by "Perfecting my skills". I understand as a composer you'll never be "perfect" It's too music is always changing and it's far too subjective. I just have an idea of where I wanna be before I start trying to get jobs. I can't roll just be like "Hey I know how to compose on Sibelius, and I've mostly only done Fighting Game Music. Hire me!"

[RayMabry]

gamedev.net

indiegamer.com

Thankyou I've been looking ofr more sites like this.