TheIt used to be such a joy to tune into the Proms on TV and see a concert dedicated to video game soundtracks. Although gaming concerts have been a thing for over a decade, the recognition from this festival was a defining moment. To see conductor Robert Ames and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra perform thrilling renditions of scores from titles as diverse as The Legend of Zelda, Journey and Dear Esther was a moving example of how the sounds, visuals and ideas of video games are escaping the cultural mainstream. . bag where they used to live.
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Successive generations have grown up with games, and so the aesthetics and conventions of the medium are seeping into the wider cultural landscape. Lately I’ve seen the growing phenomenon of video game soundtracks. For modern listeners, there is no snobbery in listening to game scores as standalone entertainment in their own right.
Louise Blain, presenter of BBC Radio 3’s Sound of Gaming told me this is something she wants to communicate. “Game music is inextricably linked to our emotions in a unique but vital way, it can also stand alone, and we can listen and appreciate the craft and the feelings the music evokes,” she said. “I recently presented an orchestral performance of Gareth Coker’s scores for Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps and several people came up to me afterwards to say they had never played the games but they were in tears listening to music. . There’s real power there.”
Fashion and fiction look at games
This month also saw the release of Gabrielle Zevin’s wonderful novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which follows the strained relationship between two game developers as they work on a series of projects together. But this isn’t a novel about technology, it’s about the fragile beauty of friendship and how we inspire each other to be creative. Thematically, it has much more in common with the movies Loving Vincent or Girl With a Pearl Earring than it does with, say, Ready Player One. In recent years we’ve also seen Amanda Craig’s novel The Golden Rule and Raven Leilani’s brilliant Chandelier, both of which incorporated video games into ambitious, literary narratives grounded in escapist fantasy.
It’s also been fun to see the worlds of video games and high fashion collide and cross-pollinate, which would have been completely unthinkable a few years ago. From Louis Vuitton incorporating the Final Fantasy character in its ads to Dior recently designing a vehicle and clothing for the racing game Gran Turismo 7, fashion houses are shamelessly borrowing ideas and even cultural nods from the world of gaming.
It’s exciting that games are permeating the wider landscape in almost stealthy ways. For two decades, video games and their worlds have been used in horror movies and science fiction novels as cautionary metaphors for civilization’s descent into an inhuman online existence. The downside, of course, is that we now have tech billionaires wondering how games like Fortnite and Minecraft can turn into the money-consumer metaverse. Until that happens, we can enjoy the cultural rise of gaming; their music, their stories, their visuals, reaching out into the world and returning to that world.
What to play
I’m a big fan of management simulation games, so I recommend Campus with two points, in which players build and run a university. Like its predecessor Two Point Hospitalit’s filled with dirty humor, but it offers a deep and rewarding challenge and has cool ideas in it, such as the heavily disguised spy school and the archeology department that deliberately steals ancient artifacts.
Available at: PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Approximate game time: ongoing
What to read
Throughout the pandemic, the video game industry has proven remarkably resilient, with publishers posting stellar results and games such as Animal Crossing, Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto V becoming obsolete. Now, as a recession looms, the story may change. GamesIndustry.Biz takes a look Activision Blizzard‘s difficulty in context with other accounts of declining sales.
The Commonwealth Games have been piloted esports as a competition category this year, with organizers claiming the aim is to broaden the event’s appeal to a younger audience. The Observer paid a visit.
Crime writer and avid gamer Chris Brookmyre has just published a new novel called House of rocks, a multi-narrator thriller based around a disastrous hen weekend on a remote island. As I read, I could imagine it Supermassive games making this one of her great horror adventures, along the lines of The Quarry and Until Dawn.
What to click
Streaming: The Best Video Game Movie Adaptations
Venba, a video game about the emotional resonance of food
A Midlife Crisis in Space: The Alters is sci-fi comedy about hapless clones
Skate Story: not your average skating game
Block of questions
This week on Twitter, Dan Chambers asked the apocalyptic question: What do you do if you feel like you’re slowly losing your love for gaming?
This has happened to me several times, so I can answer from personal experience. My first suggestion is to try playing on a platform you haven’t played on before. As a teenager, I mostly played arcade-style shooters and fighting games with the odd puzzle thrown in, and tired of it by the time I was in university. Then I discovered PC with its online functionality and a bunch of management sims and real-time strategy games and I came back. You don’t need to buy a new PS5, for example – just hop on eBay and try one out Wii Uor a Sega Saturnor a Game Advance Boy and you can unlock a whole approach to gaming that you never thought possible before.
Otherwise, get into a new genre. The Elden ring it was a revelation to me as I’ve never been into Souls games; and titles such as UNPACKING, OlliOlli world, White neon, Not for broadcast AND Trolley Problem Inc it made me think about games in different ways. And the discovery and support of small games on digital platforms such as steam AND Itch.io it can bring a sense of ownership and investment that can ignite that fire once more.
