Career Summary

I always joke about the 80's video games. The clunky graphics, the same scenery and the the synthesized, looped 'music' of the late 70's updated with 80's graphics and technology. The music was simple, the games just got faster as did the music. There was no matching game play to single scene game stages. But all of that changed and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game was one of the pioneers to experiment with digitized music.

Dolby digital support has become a vital component of the game development process employing musicians, music and sound mixers and music publishers as they would for movies.

Game music has become so popular that MTV now has a category specifically for game music. The 2006 Video Music Awards for Best Video Game Score and Best Video Game Soundtrack included the video games Fight Night Round 3, Ghost Recon and Elder Scrolls IV.

A few years ago Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall created Video Games Live; a huge success concert series featuring video game music spanning the music of video games from the granddaddies to the current complex of in-depth music compilation.

A video game supervisor works collaboratively with audio leads to match the creative goals of product teams. Sometimes this means working with up and coming artist and sometimes this means working with a music conductor. It also means that a video game supervisor is constantly communicating with hundreds of independent music labels and music publishers.

A video game supervisor must consider how specific types of music might function in each game and each scene. This consideration is what helps video games become popular. Where one game may introduce music like a radio play list anther game will blend and mix music from one scene to the next smoothly.

Video game music supervisors have an amazing part of the creation of video game making. But it is a career that is tedious, loving, frustrating but always something to be proud of.