I was just reading SSJCORY''s post about hiring a musician for yet another rpg project, and I would have considered offering my services as a composer had it been a few years earlier when I was not so pessimistic about these amateur projects. Let me know if I''m out of my mind or not because I''m very disappointed with several game programmers, producers, and any other people who want to make a game but never get past the delusions of grandeur that proceed the tedious hours of actual programming and months of successes and failures. I know it’s not just the musicians who get screwed sometimes, but there are other things that bother me just as much. First of all, I know directors love to temp-track their movies with scores from other movies and classical works, and this is exactly what game programmers should do if they haven’t already. But asking a composer to write original music in the style of, let’s say, Final Fantasy, would make any good composer cringe. Final Fantasy is one man’s style, and unless you’re doing an arrangement, remix, or whatever, you would want to steer clear of playing off someone’s style. I shouldn’t have to tell anyone this, because as game programmers already know, originality is where it counts. There should be no reason to want Final Fantasy music in any non-Final Fantasy game. If the composer wants to do that, then all the power to him, but if someone hires me, they’re going to get my style of music; take it or leave it. I can meet the requirements of whatever genre be it battle music, traveling music, or plain ol’ character motifs, but what is the Final Fantasy-style? Perhaps it doesn’t have one, and even if it did, could the composer (Nobuo Uematsu) honestly claim it as his own? I know the music because I’ve played the games for years and have even bought the arranged orchestral soundtracks. If I were the composer, there are many things I would have done differently, always for the better (in my opinion). That’s just the difference between what you (as a game producer) want and what you get. My second problem with composing music for amateur projects is everyone’s favourite: failure to plan. It''s good to have a composer on board for when you''ll need him, but who knows what could come up in a few months time (or whenever the game should be nearing completion). Call me picky, but I''m the kind of person who wouldn''t compose a note until the project was 80% complete, and even then I could be delayed by other projects and commitments. I think the game’s producer shouldn’t even consider hiring a composer until they know for sure they’re going to need one. That’s because if the project falls through, you can save yourself the sweat of laying off the composer you brought on board rather than just never talking to them again. Imagine the trauma this could inflict on a beginner composer where you’re supposedly their first project. I got lucky, and my first project ended up being sent to my door on VHS with my name on the back cover. Since then I haven’t had so much luck, which is one of the reasons why I’m writing this. Another option is to keep the contact information for potential composers kept somewhere in your files (you know, the files that contain the plans for the game) and not contact them until you know what you’re going to need to the smallest detail. Show them your schedule and give them the jist of the idea. Prove to them you’re going to be a big success and the only way you could fail is if the game suddenly disappeared from all the programmers’ hard drives and backup disks, and that all the plans were stolen by your rivaling competitors from some far off land. Okay, so you might be a big Final Fantasy fanatic. Is that relevant information when it comes to music? I’m just saying that at this stage in the game, it isn’t. If I agree to do a project, that means I know it’s going to be finished and it’s going to be great. It’s going to be great despite it not having similar music to Final Fantasy. A third problem I have is projects that have several composers, often each unaware of the other until they see their names listed under the “composers” section. This in itself should be self-explanatory as to why its so wrong, but apparently some producers just don’t get it. Composers hate working in teams. Forcing them to is like saying they’re not good enough on their own, or that the producer is some sort of “music enthusiast” and selects music based on what he believes works best (there are a ton of movie directors out there who do this). Some pieces can be rejected and have to be composed again from scratch, fair enough, but why bring on a new composer to do the job? This has never happened to me personally, except on my first project years ago (the VHS one) I was teamed with someone who I’ve yet to ever talk to through any medium, let alone a single e-mail saying “hi”. Since he was on the project first, I hesitated to be the first to speak up. He probably hated me. Well, I’d be the same way if the roles were reversed. The final product was a mess, and I’ll never let it happen again. Everybody, including me and even the producers were at fault here. I''m not picking on anyone specifically, especially not SSJCORY because he hasn’t done anything wrong. But I''ve seen my fair share of projects fall through, which has caused me to be reluctant of making long-term commitments to any projects. I’m sure there are other musicians, programmers, artists and all sorts of positions that have shared the exact same problems. I don’t think it’s ever going to change, which is why it’s perfectly okay to respond to these game producers who say “I’m going to make the next multi-million dollar mmorpg” with “no, you’re not!” It’s a lesson well learned, and saves the uninformed composer a lot of trouble. Then again, it’s good practice to compose for as many projects as possible. I’ve composed some great music for projects that have fallen through. So am I out of my mind or what?

Why not ? Is it some technical problems that can arise, or just that you happen to not like that ?
If someone has some useful answer to something, then I don''t see why one would not want this person to give it on the pretext that no one has contributed to the discussion for some time.
Now, there may be a good reason, feel free to tell me if so.
Cheers

Well... working on semi-pro projects has its positive sides -- the main one being that if the project falls through, the music is yours to keep. ;-)

I think a didactic project manager is, to a degree, a good project manager. I''d personally rather have someone say to me "I''m looking for music that''s Fantasia meets Stars Wars" rather than someone who''s gonna say "well, um, here''s a treatment, I dunno, could you do something that''s, um, ''classical.''"

I''m using an extreme example, but in this example, I''d just go back to the inspirations for those two pieces of music (Rite of Spring and The Planets), and take it from there.

When you''re developing a commercial project, those are sometimes the most easiest means for a non-musician to relate concepts to a composer.

As far as hiring multiple composers for the same project and not telling them, that''s just dumb. :-)

-nico