What happened to video game music?

[blaydcor]

Words Of Wisdom said:

blaydcor said:

Torillian said:
In general I would agree but I think there are still some extremely unique and memorable soundtracks out there such as Persona 4, TWEWY, and to a lesser extent Valkyria Chronicles.

Although I'm not sure if this apparent decrease in the quality of soundtracks is real or if it is just perceived because you only remember the best of the best from the past and you are comparing that to music in general of today.

I think that music is one thing that is, for the most part, unaffected by nostalgia. If anything I reject/dislike music I enjoyed when I was younger because I've heard it too many times, have developed more sophisticated musical tastes, etc. Part of the problem is no doubt my recent gamer-apathy; I haven't played nearly as many games recently as I used to.

I guess what I'm really trying to express is frustration with the overall drop in music quality, not the lack of isolated gems with great soundtracks.

I don't really understand the point.  For every one game here that we've mentioned, there have been at least 10-20 other games with totally awful or unmemorable music in past generations.  Do you remember the soundtrack of World Cup for the NES?  Brandish for the SNES?  Jet Force Gemini for the N64?  No?  Well that's because all generations have tons of games with mediocre music.  However we remember the best music, the stuff we love the most, and then we compare all of that from 3+ generations to a single incomplete generation and wonder where all the good music is.

Yeah, I skimmed and resultingly misinterpreted Torillian's post. So I'll just reiterate a point I made later in the thread: it's not so much a decline in the quality of music in games as the decline of the prevalence of music in games. So there are a lot more games on the market that do not expend a very large budget on music. I'd also assume that 9/10 developers, if given the choice, would spend more time on eye-popping graphics than a top-notch soundtrack.

I never claimed that the previous generations had unanimously great music, my original point was that the median quality of videogame music seems to have slipped a bit. That's far from inarguable, but I think it's valid enough to discuss.

Okay, end of meandering ruminations.