The truth about Nintendo

[Zod95]

forest-spirit said:

But how could you possibly present that as some kind of rule, that vocal music always require more effort than instrumental-only? How much knowledge do you actually have about music theory, composing etc? So far you've completely ignored the part of music making where you actually make music. You only look at the number of instruments and if there's any vocals or not, and ignore the rest. You might as well claim that the effort behing a piece of music can be calculated by the length, the number of notes, the amount of accords, tempo shifts etc. Because if two composers write music for piano and one uses 54 notes and the other 67, the one who used the most notes clearly put in the most work, right?

Again, voice in music is just an indicator.

 

forest-spirit said:

And no, that's not enough to say that the music in Sonic required more than the Mario soundtrack. How can you know that the composers spent equal amount of time on their songs? What if one composer spends as much time on a single track that it takes the other to make ten tracks? Not saying that it is so but the possibility can't be ignored. Musicians also works in different ways. Some make more songs than they need and scrap the ones they don't want, while others work on exactly the amount of tracks they're supposed to make. And again, just because there's vocals doesn't mean that the effort is greater. I could sit down by the piano and write a song in 30 minutes if I wanted. The result probably wouldn't be the most groundbreaking work ever created but it would be a piece of vocal music done in 30 minutes.

How can you know whether Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber (or who is behind them) spent the same amount of time on their songs as Metalica or Foo Fighters?

 

forest-spirit said:

I really don't understand how you can write off design choices like that. We are talking video games here, aren't we? The composer(s) make the music needed by the game designers, and the amount/type of tracks varies from game to game. Going back to Sonic and Mario, Sega wanted Sonic to have that "cool factor", and the games and music were made with that in mind. It was a design choice. The pop music used in later Sega games were design choices, they choose music that fit with Sonic's image.

As for you last paragraph, the part about spending millions of euros on a game is plain silly. How many one man teams out there do you think have millions of euros at their disposal, and have the luxury to spend tons of man-hours on their games? You're taking a piss at a lot of indie developers with that one, as many of them have to settle for more simple graphics, gameplay, story etc. because they don't have the resources to spend on a grand project. You got to pay your bills somehow.

Choosing a small project doesn't automatically mean that you're not commited, unless you choose to be lazy. If you make a basic game and put all your efforts behind it you're just as commited to it as someone putting all their efforts into a bigger project. Your commitment isn't measured by the size of the project but by how much of yourself you invest into it.

 

You did not understand my point. If a certain design choice (even if it wasn't my choice) simplifies my work, I will have less work. I may not have asked for less work, but that's what going to happen.

Why should we only consider one-man-teams? Is there any reason for that? And no, I'm neither disregarding indie developers nor telling they're not committed. Some may have the greatest heart in this industry but I'm not talking about intentions, merit or dedication. I'm talking about commitment, and let me tell you that for me it's clear that 2 fully committed people show more commitment than 1. Therefore, commitment is scalable on its own variables (effort / time / money).