Zod95 said:
Effort can be translated into number of man-hours work. And that's objective. Yes, I have no way of knowing that but I have several ways to estimate it. Let me give you one example: TrackMania. Nadeo hired 12 bands to create exclusive music tracks to TrackMania Sunrise. The result was: 13 tracks, most of them with vocal parts. Then they made Nations and United, each one with a brand new soundtrack this time instrumental-only: Nations got 4 tracks and United got 8. Do you know who made them? One guy. That's all it needs to create instrumental-only music. Not 12 bands, 1 guy. Of course I don't know if the previous 12 bands spent only a few ours and this new guy spent thousands of hours creating those musics, but I'm confident this was not the case. Let me give you another example, this time out of videogaming: Rurouni Kenshin. Aside from the openings and endings, do you know how many music tracks the anime has? 92. Do you know who made them? One guy. Again, I don't know whether he spent his entire life doing that. But I'm pretty sure it took a lot less than that. I'm a fan of instrumental-only music and I know a lot more cases than these two. And, by my experience, I'm inclined to say that this kind of music usually takes a lot less resources to be made than vocal music. Of course I know some other cases where such music demands an entire orchestra. Here the effort is similar, since it takes more people but less time (again, this is only considering my knowledge as a fan of instrumental music). But these cases are not common in videogaming. Now let's look at Sonic and Mario. Sonic Adventure 1 has: 7 vocal music tracks and around 30 instrumental music tracks. Mario 64 has: 0 vocal music tracks and around 20 instrumental. Now I have 2 questions for you. First, why didn't Sonic Team create 30 vocal and 7 instrumental, why was it the other way around? Second, what do you estimate to have been the most demanding soundtrack to create: the one from Sonic Adventure or the one from Mario 64? I guess you already know what my conclusions are. To conclude, what is my point (on the OP) with all of this? Simple, just to deliver some indicators about the effort Nintendo puts into its games (compared to the competition). Then people decide what conclusions can be taken. Some may easily perceive that vocal music demands a different kind of commitment while others may twist any logic that that exposes Nintendo's fragilities until the end of the world. |
So then effort=time and you are being redundant when you say effort, money and time are the three factors? Also, effort doesn't really equal time. I could do something for 5 hours and put in little effort or do something for 1 hour and put in a lot of effort...
One person can make vocal music just as easily as one person can make instrumental music. There is no rule stating that vocal music has to take more effort, it is a case by case thing which cannot be evaluated using the tools that people unfamiliar with the process that was used to create the music (aka everyone outside the company).
What your first example sounds like to me is a company that doesn't have the skills to create music going out and telling someone else to do it. These bands are not part of the company and I am hard pressed to agree with your point that paying someone else to do the work for you is equivalent to doing the work yourself.
I really have nothing to say about Runori Kenshin as I have very little knowledge of it but I will say that it sounds to me like that one guy put in a hell of a lot of work.
Your questions about sonic:
First, why didn't Sonic Team create 30 vocal and 7 instrumental, why was it the other way around?: There is a reason that most soundtracks feature prominently instrumental music. Its because vocals are more distracting and tend to draw more attention from the listener. Therefore, it easier to place instrumental tracks in the background and have the listener focus on the task at hand rather than the music (whether that is what is happening in the movie or the gameplay in a game). I would hypothesize that the reason there were more instrumental tracks is that they simply only needed that many vocal tracks and the instrumental tracks fit into more places.
Second, what do you estimate to have been the most demanding soundtrack to create: the one from Sonic Adventure or the one from Mario 64?: I have no real way of knowing the answer to this question and neither do you. You could say that one has more tracks and therefore it took more work which is a very reasonable hypothesis. However, I do not believe that you can theorize that the vocal tracks took any more effort to make than the instrumental tracks. I would also like to point out that Sonic Adventure came two years later than Super Mario 64, which was a launch title and therefore needed to be released in a more timely mannor. Make of that what you will...
Once again, you are making subjective judgements based on percieved value and this discussion has absolutely no place in a thread that claims to be based around facts. Any comments on "effort" you make are strictly conjecture and any comments on time and money are just guesses.
Zod95 said:
If an indicator is a flawed metric then I don't want to know your opinion about Statistics. However, despite Statistics to be a field where we are never 100% sure of anything, I can tell you for instance that thousands of companies use it constantly to reduce costs or enhance results. Maybe they're crazy but they do it. And maybe we should never use indicators, but I'm doing it. And, as you can see from the other reply I posted, I'm not doing it to conveniently making things up. I hope we are all on the same page about that.
That is not yet the numbers I've asked you. I've asked you the total number of instruments used in the entire soundtrack of each game we have been talking about. Are you able to deliver that?
I never said that. And that doesn't make any sense. Moreover, you fail to understand that time, money and effort are about the same thing: resources to achieve some result. Not just that. They are substitutional resources. You can buy effort and time with money. You can buy money and effort with time. You can buy money and time with effort. Therefore, there's no point in saying that the soundtrack X demanded only 1 resource while the soundtrack Y demanded all 3. It only makes sense to talk about the amount of resources.
Of course it doesn't. But Sonic was "only" the biggest competitor of the main Nintendo franchise. Feel free to find references about the soundtrack of other competitors of the same or different Nintendo franchises.
You are confusing 2 things: 1 - Making the first move is not the same as becoming the standard. The shift to vocal music was a long process considering not only the major gaming genres and niches but also the games' musical contents. It didn't happen instantaneously when the first dev created the first music track with some vocal parts. 2 - The first time Nintendo has implemented vocal music by means of 1 game from a subsidiary that was not even called Nintendo was not the time when most of Nintendo franchises shifted to vocal music.
Each game is unique and thus ultimately we couldn't compare any game with any other. Fortunately, they are categorized in genres. Mario and Sonic belong to the same genre. But the thing is that Mario attempts to be simple, traditional, clinged to the old formula whereas Sonic has significantly evolved along the time, changing its environments and becoming more complex. Having that said, the standards used by the critic to evaluate Nintendo games are different from the ones used with most of the games from other publishers, not only because (fairly on unfairly) simplicity is not considered an issue but also because Nintendo games sell many millions and web sites cannot afford to be unpopular (the OP elaborates on this). Nevertheless, I find your info very interesting. Those 28 tracks were all vocal?
Meh... |
a. ...errr what? That was 100% off topic. We agree that vocals are just another instrument, yet you still say that vocals are are good indicator of effort. That makes no sense. Using the same logic I could say "well x game uses a timpani in its soundtrack and therefore it took more effort than every game that didn't feature a timpani". Are you getting how dense you are being yet?
Also, the exact numbers are difficult to count and I don't have time for that. However, your logic is highly flawed as stated above. That was my point.
b. You essentially said that licenced sountracks take more time, effort and money than non licensed, instrumental soundtracks. Once again, I disagree on that point and I find it ridiculous that you would imply that paying someone else to do the work for you requires more effort than doing the work yourself. I honestly don't see the point you are trying to make with this. It just sounds silly. You can argue it all you want but saying "nintendo makes their own soundtracks" should not be used as evidence towards your point that Nintendo soundtracks take less time, effort and money.
Also, I think the burden of proof for this is on you: "Feel free to find references about the soundtrack of other competitors of the same or different Nintendo franchises."
@"You are confusing 2 things":
1. Thats pretty much what I said. We are talking about the industry standard and I said it seemed to become fairly standard in the mid 2000s, after Nintendo had been already using vocals for a while. I don't really know why you said this as its obvious I was not making that mistake.
2. ...Okay, cool. I wasn't even talking about KI here but okay. As I have already said, nintendo has used vocals in a bunch of soundtracks from Metroid, Zelda, F-Zero, Killer Instinct, Xenoblade and more...
c. Sonic's "evolution" is what has made it one of the most laughed at franchises of all time, producing some of the worst games of all time such as Sonic 06. Even games like Sonic Adventure, while fairly well received when it was released, tend to be looked back at in a negative light as demonstrated by the metascore of 48 for the release on the 360. This "evolution" has made it so the only really sucessful games in the franchise are the ones that call back to the old days like Sonic Generations. The whole "trying to be cool" thing that Sonic maintained is a large part of what caused the franchise to be destroyed and resulted in games like Sonic 06 and Shadow the Hedgehog.
Mario on the hand, continues to produce great games that are critically praised and remembered as not only some of the best games on whatever platform they appear on but some of the best games of all time. Mario games have stayed true to their roots while continually changing and have for the most part given a very new experience in each of their 3D efforts. From 64 to Sunshine to Galaxy1/2 to 3D World/Land, each series gives a fairly different experience with their own unique style. When people talk about what kind of mario game they want they see the difference between each of these franchises and see that they each have their own style. Mario games change and innovate while remaining true to themselves and remaining great.
"not only because (fairly on unfairly) simplicity is not considered an issue but also because Nintendo games sell many millions and web sites cannot afford to be unpopular (the OP elaborates on this).":
You have absolutely no evidence to back this up and I am appauled that you would even say that this is anything other than a paranoid conspiracy theory...
Also, about the Latin Tracks, I originally meant that to be a fun fact (as shown by the "fun fact" tag *rolls eyes*) however, after thinking about it more, I think this pretty much proves a few of my points.
First of all, this shows that Nintendo chooses the soundtrack of Mario games, not because they are easy but because they just fit with their vision. After doing a little more research on this, I found that after the Latin tracks were rejected, Miyamoto was shown three tracks for the Galaxy games. One was Orchestral, one a blend between Orchestral and Pop and one Pop. After hearing these three pieces, Miyamoto chose the orchestral piece because he felt that it best demonstrated the vision for what they wanted the mario game to be.
This also helps refute your point that Nintendo just does what is easy. Why would a company who is only looking to do what is easy and cheap, spend the time developing 28 songs, then scrap these songs and start anew creating a full soundtrack based around a 50 piece orchestra?
"Meh..." errr...okay?
