August-Inspiration

At present, many of my fellow masters students are in a rush to finish up their theses.  First opportunity hand-in deadlines have become a bit blurred and the ones aiming to hand in for the second opportunity are spurred on to finish up as quickly as possible.  So, there is a lot of hard work going on at the moment—well, sincere aspirations to hard work, at least.

Everyone has his or her own ways of blocking out distractions (even though the Internet usually voids these methods).  Many—if not most—of us turn to music.  There are many different tastes and schools of thought out there for what exactly is the best music for concentration: from jazz to Smashing Pumpkins; from Live and Muse to Swedish pirate metal (yes, that is a real genre).  Personally I have used baroque and KFM, among others, in the past.  But from the beginning of this year, I’ve also been moving towards a particularly niche taste.  I know of other people who use movie soundtracks to block out the rest of the world.  But I’ve turned to a particular flavour of game music; a genre which my flatmate tells me is akin to EBM (apparently).  This doesn’t mean that I’m becoming a goth, however.  But if you think about it a little, one realises that the right game music can be a perfect solution.  For big and popular games, the soundtrack is not haphazardly flung together, but rather it is carefully composed to fuse art and psychology.

Disclaimer: The following discussions may contain spoilers, even though it was not intended to be so.  If you plan on playing any of these games, perhaps skip them when reading through the list.

Here are the soundtracks I’m listening to at the moment and which I particularly like:

• Half-Life 2: The successor to the legendary FPS Half-Life, Half-Life 2 (and its subsequent episodic expansions) have strong dystopian overtones.  Playing Gordon Freeman, you have to lead the Earth’s resistance fighters to throw off the shackles of their trans-dimensional alien oppressors.  As a well-balanced FPS, it features some heavy battles at times.  Typically during these battles (usually when facing off against a “boss” creature), a specific music track would be played.  The music is designed to aid the gameplay experience: force concentration on the task at hand while helping the player’s adrenalin to start pumping.  The music is remarkable effective at this, and that is why I like it.  When it starts playing, I find myself completely focussed and amped for the task at hand.  My personal favourites are the tracks which come from Episode 2 (the second instalment of the episodic expansions).  Unfortunately the tracks from the original game are a little too short to be effective, but queued in sequence in a playlist it could still be useful.
• Portal: Portal shipped as part of the “Orange Box”, which also contained the games Half-Life 2 Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2.  Also a FPS, it is atypical as it trades violence for environmental puzzle solving.  In the game, you, the player, are trying to survive a series of experiments by a mad AI.  You are effectively a lab rat playing within lab conditions.  The music is non-intrusive and helps you to concentrated on solving the current puzzle, while also ever so slightly hinting at something deeper and sinister going on behind the scenes…
• Eve Online: I have to admit that I have never played Eve Online.  Even though I wanted to, I was warned that the game takes a lot of time to play properly and time is something I don’t have in abundance at the moment.  Eve Online is a MMORPG set in space.  Think “World of Warcraft with spaceships”.  Some of the in-game music tracks are available to download free from the Eve Online website.  The ambient music is peaceful and soothing, while other can get a player really riled up.  Its job is to help keep a player focussed on the task at hand for all the hundreds and thousands of hours necessary to play this game properly.
• Command & Conquer: The Command & Conquer series of RTS games was one of my first personal favourites.  Call me sentimental, but I really like Frank Klepacki’s work in these games.  Klepacki composed the bulk of music for the Command & Conquer games for years.  All the way through from Command & Conquer to Tiberium Sun (including the expansions), the music accompanies a player as he micromanages his base, defends his base from enemy attacks and plan attacks; something I’ve done for countless hours.  Starting in the mid 90′s, this is the oldest of this genre of music I have which I am discussing.
• Deus Ex: Bringing more nostalgia to the table, Deus Ex is another FPS featuring a strong story of a dystopian world on the verge of collapse and the conspiracy theories surrounding it all.  This game inaugurated the new millennium along with The Matrix.  The music highlights the gothic undertones of the game.

So that is my story for today.  If you know of any other similar music or games, I would appreciate it if you could let me know: I’m always looking to expand my cultural horizons!