- Method 1: Ignore the Problem
- Method 2: Tiptoe Around the Problem
- Method 3: Engineer the Problem
- Method 4: Throw Resources At It
- Method 5: Transcend It
- About the Article
Method 4: Throw Resources At It
Here's what you do: In this method, more time, money, attention, and energy go to audio, with all of it going specifically into composition, rather than relying on new technology and the brilliance of our engineers to make things sound better. Instead of composing an hour of music and then doubling the expense by telling the programmer to cleverly make the thing bearable, this method suggests that we just double the amount of careful, intentional, heartfelt composition that happens.
Positives: This method comes with my personal guarantee that the game will be considerably more than twice as good from an audio standpoint. The rationale here is that first you bring twice the amount of entertaining music to the listener, which of course doubles the amount of Beautiful Human Loveliness (BHL) to which he is exposed. Double value, right there. Then, on top of that, you take the worst thing in the game player's life, which is certainly the over familiarity he has with the music he's stuck hearing for the next 40 hours, and you cut that pain in half. Not bad!
Negatives: You've doubled your music costs, and it's far from enough. You've only come a second 40th of the way to your requirements. Even though you've fed twice the music-hungry people that you had before, your crowd is still starving, and you still have to do the work of 40 loaves with two instead of just the one. And there just isn't enough dough to make 38 more loaves. How many more copies of the game will this doubly good music sell, if the music is still, even after doubling, a 20th of what is needed? And now, the budget guy has seen the music department double its expenses. Uh-oh. And then he heard the music guy tell another guy that there is no solving this problem until the budget is multiplied by 40!!! So, you know that Mister Budget Guy is now playing a little game of his own. Like, it's WWII, he's flying over London, heading a squad of German dive-bombers loaded with layoffs, and now he's looking at your music department through a bombsight. "Target spotted, Sir." NYOOOWWWWWWWWwww Dow Dow Dow Dow Dow...ka-BOOM!
I can hear the soundtrack even now.