Home - Introduction - Preparation - MMORPG - Composition Process - Sound Effects - Feedback - Scientists - Web Design - Blog - Screenshots - Conclusion

Feedback

Over the course of the cep, I've been asking various people for feedback on what I've been creating for vendetta online. These have been both online and in 'reality'.

Clearly, opinions have varied due to the angle at which the people are coming from, and their knowledge of both music and computer games.

Vendetta Online Surveys

Given the genre of the game Vendetta Online, one can talk to other players in the game on public, private or group channels. I went about asking questions to players in the game every time I played it, which for a time was every day.

To begin, I would ask to "does anyone have any comments to make about sound and music?" This would usually lead to private chats with other players where, basically they had a bit of a rant and complained about certain aspects. This, for the purpose of my CEP was very good feedback.

So what where my findings? I found that many people said the same things, so I had to make tally's of comments that where the same. Other individuals had suggestions to make about larger changes that where beyond my control, but where nevertheless relevant and interesting.

Here are a few common suggestions. These results are taken from the survey on nov 27th 2006.

Music
Extra music (more variety)
27
Regular music updates on a monthly to quarterly basis
12
more variety with ambient music
19
more variety with space station themes
22
more battle music
5

Sound Effects
more energy weapon sounds
52
more booster sounds
43
more engine sounds
26

 

 

Here are some more specific suggestions made by players of vendetta Online.

Makanouchi Ippo: "there should be some sort of in game interface where you can select between tracks depending on where you are, Itan, UIT, Grey and so on". By Itan, UIT, etc, he is referring to the different colours of sector in the universe. As shown below.

Eric C: "It would be good if we could upload links to our own shoutcasts and access them in the game". Shoutcasts are personally constructed internet radio recordings. This surprisingly would be very easy to program and seems to me like the next step in online gaming.

Lord Spidey: "a lot of the sounds I don't find convincing enough, like when your power cell overloads. I really want to hear the ship sounding like it's dying!". Spidey's problems where with immersion, he want the game to be more realistic so that he can connect himself more closely to the virtual world.

So given these few responses, it seems that people want a choice of what they want to listen to, and it isn't surprising. MMORPG's contain huge amounts of people at one time. It therefore seems illogical to impose certain music upon your audience. particularly when they all need not listen to the same thing. On the other hand, if you give players complete free will over this, you begin to lose character and immersion in your game. This is why I thing Makanouchi Ippo's suggestion is a good compromise between these issues.

 

Online Music Feedback

Many of the players on vendetta have their games playing in a window, whilst performing other tasks on their computers. This meant that I could give links to my online music to people whilst they where playing. This was great for showing the alternative music that I had created for the game, and to see if it fitted in with peoples demands for the game.

Here are some examples of peoples responses

"Eric C" said "it's weird, it sounds like it's coming from all around me", and he didn't have surround sound on his computer. He wouldn't answer as to weather that was a good or a bad thing. He did think though that the music suited the game and asked me which tracks I was already responsible for, Implying that he thought was a developer of the game. Which was a brilliant comment as it was an honest mistake.

 

 

 

"Makanouchi Ippo" seemed to enjoy listening to it he said "I think I might download these if you don't mind" which I replied "feel free". He said that the music would be good for relaxing to, even when you aren't playing the game. he was referring mainly here to the track "Piano (ambient)" He told me that the tracks weren't long enough though and I should be pushing more like 7 to 10 minutes rather than 4 or 5.

"Nami Budo" thought that the music was to far in the background and that it didn't have a "tune". This I can't really respond to as it is what I've been asked to create by John Bergman. He also made some comments about the sound effects that I had made. When talking about the engine sounds he said "about half of them I would trash, but the others are great :-)". this is a tough one for me, as I don't know (and couldn't really find out) what his opinion is based on and weather it's a popular opinion.

Personal Feedback

I have also met up with some old friends and musical piers of mine, and recorded their feedback on my music for this project.

Dominic Bird
Dom is an old friend of mine and used to be a pier musically. We've written a lot of music collaboratively, and played in a band together. Dom isn't much of a gamer. He enjoys playing games occasionally, but is not much of a collector.

He said "it sounds a lot like your earlier stuff" referring to my other electro music "but without the beats". He made quite an interesting point about how the ambient sound I had created for vendetta, already exists in a lot of my other music, but is usually disguised by a large synthetic ensemble of instruments, effects and automations.

Gary Clarkeson
Gary is also an old friend of mine and a creative pier. He is studying web design at college and hopes to make a mod in the future as a means of accessing the games industry. Gary is also a big gamer and keeps up to date on the latest advances in gaming technology.

Gary told me that the music I had created is just what he would want to here from an "adventure game" he compared my music to that of "Panzer Dragoon Saga" (an RPG for the sega saturn). He said he could imagine scrolling though menus to upgrade your character, trade, communicate etc when listening to Red Moon. He also said that much of my musical influence comes from computer games anyway, so it is theperfect context to place my creativity.

 

 

Tom First

I've been working with Tom in the scientists for his CEP, and we have been composing and performing collaboratively recently. I'm pretty confident that Tom would give me his honest opinion about my music. Having said this, the first thing he said to me was that he cannot comment accurately on the context as he has never played the game, and only seen it on my computer.

He told me that the music I made was "very atmospheric", "spacey" and that it fit in with the existing music quite seamlessly.

He also said that the music wouldn't stand up on it's own as pieces, and that they only really serve the accompaniment of the game