By When I’m not writing this blog, I work as a Senior Director at Behaviour Interactive, an independant game developer based in Montreal, Canada, and one of the departments I oversee is Audio, a team I’ve built over the last 13 years. One of the things I had always wanted to do was to release the soundtrack to one of our games.
As an independent developer, we mostly do work-for-hire, which means we do not have control, rights or any kind of ownership over the material we produce. So, despite my dream of releasing the soundtrack to one of our games, that was not something that was possible.
We missed an opportunity when we released Wet, which is a Behaviour original IP (intellectual property). The music was a highlight of the game, but because assembling the soundtrack had been such an undertaking (on one hand we had Brian LeBarton of Beck’s band doing the score, while many different indie psychobilly bands such as the Gypsy Pistoleros, The Chop Tops and The Arkhams, provided songs), and the team was burnt out, we never got around to preparing an album release. Considering that all the deals had been made for in-game use only, the logistics would also have been hell. Still, in retrospect, that was a missed opportunity.
Our next original production was Naughty Bear, an off the wall, irreverent game about a homicidal teddy bear hell-bent on revenge on his fellow bears for failing to invite him to a party. We discussed releasing the music to that game, but in the end I didn’t think the music was strong enough for an album. Now, don’t get me wrong, the music, written by Philippe Charron, is very good and fits the game to a T. I just didn’t feel it would make for a good listening experience all by itself. Game music is a special art form, that is made to support an element (gameplay) that doesn’t exist until someone plays the game, and is never the same. It’s not unusual for music that works perfectly during the game to not be very interesting by itself.
So when a sequel to the original Naughty Bear was put into production, I decided that would be our chance to release Behaviour’s first soundtrack. Once again the music would be done in house by Philippe Charron, and, along with Paul Williams, (the project’s sound designer), they had more ambitious plans for the musical score. My request to them was to make sure the music would be written with intros and outros (game music usually loops, so endings are often skipped) to allow us to assemble an album.
Now Naughty Bear may have been Behaviour’s property, but it is released through a publisher called 505 Games. I had no clue what kind of deal we had with them, or if we were even allowed to release the music. So I went to talk to our Chief counsel. His answer was what I feared: we were not allowed to do that. But, he said, they were in the process of negotiating amendments to the contract and he’d try to work it in. Since, in all honesty, we didn’t expect to sell them by the truckload, it was mostly a non issue for everyone involved, and he got it in the contract! The first hurdle was cleared. I then got our CEO’s permission to set it up, so I was good to go.
Now I just mentioned that we didn’t expect to sell a lot of copies (actually I just have no idea what to expect. The success of the soundtrack will greatly depend on the success of the game and the progress of its cult status), so why are we doing this? The main motivation is that we’re super proud of the music for this game and we think (hope) that people playing it will like it too and be interested in listening to it outside of the game. It’s also a way to raise awareness of the game. We’re advertising the soundtrack to the game’s audience, but also in channels that would not pay attention to the game. It gives us an additional opportunity to talk about the game, and raises its profile. It’ll also make for nice giveaways.
So now we needed to assemble the album. With Ian Chuprun, one of my sound designers, we catalogued all the music that was in the game, and what its status was. In addition to Philippe Charron, Hugo Leger, another employee of ours, had written atmospheric tracks, and Paul had used tracks from his band Foil in a few places (which added another legal aspect to consider). There was also the diegetic music that the bears listen to, that I had composed to be tongue-in-cheek and purposely written and produced to sound like bad elevator music.
As I mentioned, I had asked for intros and outros to all the tracks, even if they wouldn’t be used in the game (game music usually loops and has no proper ending). But in the heat of production, we hadn’t always taken the time to do it, so some tracks had no endings. Not a problem for the game, but that would make for a very poor album. That would be a challenge. I have a few game soundtracks in my collection where the tracks are just dumped in as is, with a cold ending where the track would loop. I really hate this way of presenting the music: it might be faithful to the game but it makes for a poor listening experience.
A lot of the tracks were also written in layers, a common game technique. 3 tracks are played in sync, and we play with the volumes of each one according to the players actions, creating a dynamic mix. This means that there is no definitive version of the arrangement; it’s always different depending on the player’s actions. We spent a few days thinking about the best way to present those tracks. In the end, we used the elements to create a feeling of rising tension followed by release. While this is not exactly how it happens in the game, we felt it presented the best listening experience.
So I made the decision that we’d assemble the tracks by using the best pieces, combining them when possible, and using the stingers (short musical expressions) to cover the transitions that didn’t work. I assembled a few examples in Pro Tools then passed it on to Ian to create the album sequence. In parallel, an artist on the game team, Filip Ivanovic, created the album cover for us. Since we were only releasing digitally, we didn’t design the entire tray card and booklet.
Ian did a few versions of the album presentation that we listened to, discussed and made adjustments to. In the end, what we did was a brand new presentation, using the game music as raw material.
We weren’t sure if the diegetic music had its place on the soundtrack, but Ian found a very clever way to work some of them into track 13 (Paradise Island Radio), and we kept the rest for an eventual Volume 2 that would also include the Foil tracks we hadn’t been able to use. We’ll see what kind of success we have with Volume 1 first. 😉
In the end, we had an 18 track album that ran for about 30 minutes. While the music in the game runs for quite longer, especially considering the interactivity offered by the 3 layer tracks, we felt we had a good balance that included most of the best bits. We had an album that, despite the quirkiness of its music, (it’s not exactly easy listening) you could listen to all the way through.
Before we’d even started to assemble the music, I’d explored how we’d release the album. I knew I didn’t want to press physical CDs. I doubted we’d make our money back, and the initial outlay of funds to get the CDs pressed would probably end the initiative before it even started. So I settled on a digital only release. I did some research and realized we couldn’t submit to iTunes without being a label, and I didn’t want to involve a label into this. So I turned to CD Baby because it would easily let me publish the album to every digital retailer under the sun, and later on I could have CDs pressed if the sale warranted it. We could also have download cards printed to give away. It seemed like a really convenient solution.
In the process we also discovered some drawbacks, and learned valuable lessons for next time. For example, once CD Baby has accepted your album, it may take 2-4 weeks before other retailers list your album! That meant we’d miss the game’s release. We managed to turn that into our advantage though: publishing through CD Baby, I could only set the price on their own site, not their partners. So on CD Baby, the album is 4.99$, because I wanted it to be an impulse buy, but on other sites, the album will be 9.99$. So buy it from CD Baby!!!
So this is the story of my first venture as a DIY record producer. Lots of lessons learned, and I’m already looking forward to our next release! (No I don’t know what it’ll be yet)
You can learn about the game at http://naughtybearthegame.com
Composer Philippe Charron is on Twitter as @CharronPhilippe
Naughty Bear’s on Twitter too! @NaughtyBear
You can buy Naughty Bear: Panic in Paradise (Original Game Soundtrack) at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/naughtbearpanicinparadis
You can also preview 5 tracks:
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/2559149″ height=”200″ iframe=”true” /]
He's also a regular contributor at the excellent news site Montreal Rampage
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