Have you ever been playing your favorite video game and paused for a few moments to appreciate the soundtrack? There have been some fairly stand-out instances over the last few decades, where phenomenal soundtracks – while they might be in the background of the game – have been utterly fundamental to the game’s image, atmosphere, and experience.
How Is Music Used In Video Games?
Take a series like the Ratchet and Clank games. Even the latter games in this series, often heavily critiqued by fans of the early iterations, had some really amazing soundtracks. In the early games, every planet visited brought its own unique sound, and a die-hard player would have been able to identify their location purely based on that music.
Composed by David Bergeaud, most of the soundtracks had a bouncy, energetic, and highly peppy approach that accentuated the gameplay beautifully and truly made the franchise. They’ve got so much going on, with a blend of many different effects and paces running together to create an experience that’s just fantastic. And for fans of R&C 3, the remix of the old tracks you experienced when you popped back to planets from the first game created a wonderful feeling of recognition combined with a refreshed take. Who doesn’t appreciate this kind of thoughtfulness in the series they love?
But while Ratchet and Clank and many of its contemporaries stand out for their music, they’re not the only games to make the most of good music. Take a relatively modern classic like Red Dead Redemption 2 and you’ve got truly breathtaking, memorable scores – an ominous, slow start to the game with solemn piano, with plenty of more hopeful tracks to follow. And for those who have played through Arthur’s heartbreaking story, few moments will stand up against the song following the return from the Guarma, which is a true turning point in the game. It’s amazing how much cohesion was achieved when you consider that multiple composers were involved.
Clearly, then, music is a fundamental in a lot of video games and can mark some of the most important turning moments. But how does it build immersion and keep players coming back again and again?
Music In Casino Games
Let’s take a slightly different angle now, because it’s not just the vast mainstream games that make use of amazing sounds and quirky audio effects to immerse players and ensure their game experiences are memorable. If you’ve ever checked out an online casino… well, you’ll know what’s what here already.
Physical casinos certainly do a lot with sound, but the online casino works that much harder to engage and immerse their players, ensuring the experience is a treat for the ears as well as the eyes. When you play blackjack online at Bovada, for instance, you’ll be met with music that perfectly suits the theme of the game you’ve chosen. Pick their basic blackjack game and you get peppy but unobtrusive background noises. Go for something like American blackjack and your ears will be greeted with plinky-plunky piano sounds that immediately transport you to a Western saloon or something similar. Pirate 21 similarly depends on piano, but the tempo is faster and the beats less dramatic.
It’s not just the soundtracks, though. If you open any of the blackjack game options online at Bovada, you’ll also notice the sound effects – the satisfying “tick” noise when you make a selection, the purr of the shuffling cards, “chink chink” when the chips go down. These things help you feel like you’re sitting in a physical casino, and they’re also important in guiding the player, supporting the visual signals to let you know what’s happening at every moment, and leaving you in no doubt about the course the game is taking.
And what’s the overall effect of these efforts on the part of the casinos? Much the same as that in other video games: it helps you engage emotionally, it draws you in, it makes the experience more enjoyable. Furthermore, since music helps with memory, you’re way more likely to remember and return to casino games that have a great soundtrack, just the way you would to other video games that have incredible scoring to take you through their journeys.
With all that in mind, it’s easy to see why music is so critical to video games, whether we’re talking the behemoths like Red Dead Redemption 2, Skyrim, and Final Fantasy XV or browser games like those offered by casinos. It’s no wonder playlists are considered such a vital tool for music marketing; evidently, this is a huge part of building brands, establishing immersion, and creating loyalty. Because we remember music so well, we’re bound to return time and again to the games that have managed to create the “earworm” effect. The best video game developers know this and use it to create pieces that aren’t just visually delightful, but a treat for the ears too.