Press F to Play “Respect”

A week or so ago, I found myself watching the reveal trailer for Crescent County, a game from new studio Electric Saint (founded by Anna Hollinrake and Pavle Mihajlovic), which has recently launched a Kickstarter funding campaign. The game itself looks like great fun, an open world adventure where you play as a witch, hanging out with friends and making deliveries on your motorized broom – a sort-of high-tech teenage Kiki’s Delivery Service life sim. But dozens of indie games are launched every week, many of them with fun-looking premises and unique ideas. What made me watch this one all the way through, and remember this trailer over countless others?

It’s pretty simple – the soundtrack is an absolute banger. The stylish broom-racing and vivid colors of Crescent County are backed by “I’m Not Getting Excited” by The Beths. This smart choice of background music communicates an extremely specific vibe in the first 10 seconds of the trailer, one that no generic stock music could ever have achieved. Before you even know what you’re looking at, you’re hit with a guitar and drum hit, which immediately grabs your attention and leads into a fun indie pop belter, infusing the trailer’s visuals with a boundless adolescent enthusiasm throughout its 90 second runtime. Importantly, I not only have a good idea of what this game is, but how it feels – something with which the weekly deluge of new trailers often struggle.

The trailer left me with a question –why don’t developers make more frequent use of licensed, existing music when soundtracking and marketing their games? This obviously happens in film and TV all the time, in their trailers, title sequences, and in the scenes themselves – importantly, not as a replacement to originally-composed music, but as a complement to it. Original compositions are obviously crucial to games and we are, in many ways, living in a golden age of video game music. From low-budget indies to massive AAA releases, we are treated each year to a mountain of inventive and expansive scores – orchestral and electronic, dramatic and playful, performed by the world’s best orchestras and released on beautiful, limited edition vinyl.

This is all great for fans of games and music, but every now and then it gives me pause – particularly when I hear someone say the phrase “I only really listen to game music.” What Crescent County’s trailer demonstrates – and what I hope more studios will think about – is that thoughtful use of licensed music can not only be a perfect accompaniment to specific gameplay moments, but that these songs also carry with them a wealth of cultural context, which is subconsciously and instantaneously imparted to the player as soon as the music starts.

So why can’t games do the same thing? The answers are likely numerous – and in many cases, probably the result of overwhelming legal headaches. Developers may want to remaster the game in 10 years’ time without worrying about re-licensing issues. They may also want to rely on streaming as an important means of generating buzz for their game, which can lead to all kinds of copyright issues with YouTube and Twitch. For a clear example of how this can go wrong, just look at the unintentionally hilarious workaround in 2021’s Life Is Strange: True Colors, in which a streamer-friendly mode left the game’s characters putting on a record, then awkwardly dancing together in a completely silent room. But it is my hope that many of these issues can be overcome – not only for the benefit of the games themselves, but for the surrounding culture as well. Many of gaming fandom’s biggest issues stem from how isolated it can be from a wider network of artistic and cultural touchstones, to the point where for many, “gamer” becomes their entire identity. By explicitly referencing a wider, interconnected world of art and media, the games themselves become a part of that network of ideas, and may just bring the players along as well.

There are, of course, exceptions to this trend – outside of music games like Guitar Hero, the most obvious examples are sports games. The most popular sports franchises are typically annual releases, and as such are seen as a little more disposable, which presumably quells any worries about re-releases. They also are perennial big-sellers, meaning they rely a little less on exposure from streamers to shift large numbers of copies. All that being said, these soundtracks are an important part of the game’s DNA, and firmly cement them in the time of their development. I’m generally not a huge player of sports games, but I have crystal clear memories of booting up FIFA 2004 on my PS2 and hearing Kings of Leon’s “Red Morning Light” on the menu screen – a perfect distillation of the indie sleaze era, and an evocative vignette of my teenage years.

This phenomenon is most obvious with the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, for which the soundtracks, an unmistakable mix of pop-punk, ska and hip-hop, are a crucial parts of the series’ legacy (to the point where there are multiple cover bands which only play songs from the games, with inspired names like The Downhill Jam, The 900 and Don’t Skate On My Ramp.) These games do still run into the streaming issue, however. Rocket League, which features a combination of licensed music and original compositions, has a “Streamer Safe” mode, which disables only the tracks likely to cause DMCA issues. A potential solution for some games, in this genre at least.

If we turn to single player story games, however, usage of licensed music is much fewer and farther between, and it’s here where I think there is room for growth. Perhaps the most prominent examples are the Grand Theft Auto games, which are renowned for their highly curated, genre-specific radio stations – a crucial part of the game’s mood, but again, subject to streaming restrictions. GTA – being the biggest game series on the planet – occupies a cultural mindshare unrivaled by any other, as evidenced by the latest trailer for GTA VI. “Hot Together” by the Pointer Sisters soundtracks the trailer, and the song received a colossal 182,000% increase in streaming traffic following the trailer’s release.

Rockstar’s other big franchise, Red Dead Redemption, uses a different approach, hiring established artists José González and D’Angelo to write original songs for the first and second games, respectively. These songs start playing at pivotal story moments, during long, contemplative rides across the landscape of the Old West, and are some of the most talked about from across the two games, in part because they so were unexpected. A potential solution, but an expensive one. While it’s hard to imagine many developers without Rockstar’s hoards of cash being able to commission bespoke songs from world class musicians, two beloved indie games from recent years have had entire soundtracks composed by existing bands; Disco Elysium’s by Sea Power, and Sable’s by Japanese Breakfast, whose track “Gliding” accompanied the player’s first moments of daunting, exciting freedom while racing across the game’s striking landscape. Again, I should emphasize, these soundtracks are not inherently better or more interesting than an original score written by a full-time composer of game soundtracks, but crucially, they were the right fit for the games in question.

Perhaps the biggest advocate of using licensed music in the AAA space, and of cross-pollination between games and other media in general, is Hideo Kojima. It only takes a quick look at the man’s Instagram page to realize that he’s as obsessed with experiencing new music and cinema just as much as new games – a fixation which would infuse itself into his directorial style. This can be seen as early as the extremely Bond-inspired theme song for Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater, a perfect example of how the cultural context a player brings to a game can be exploited by music to color their playing experience and create a highly specific atmosphere. Metal Gear Solid V featured collectible cassette tapes with music appropriate to the game’s 1984 setting, while Death Stranding deploys songs by Low Roar and other artists during story missions, as Sam Bridges traipses across the game’s beautiful landscapes – not unlike those moments in Red Dead Redemption.

Perhaps this is the smartest way of using licensed music in-game – as scene-setting background, rather than specifically tied to specific story moments. But this does feel like something of a wasted opportunity – as much as the right song can set the vibe for a quick match of FIFA, it could have far greater impact when accentuating big story moments in a game. While struggling to think of any examples which currently exist, the first to jump to mind was the use of “Eyes on Me” by Faye Wong in Final Fantasy VIII, which plays not as the characters are walking between destinations and thinking about their situation, but during a climactic moment of rescue, in which protagonist Squall launches himself into space to save his love interest Rinoa. While this track was written for the game, it is unmistakably a pop ballad in style, and is very specifically played at a romantic moment between the game’s two leads.

The moment to pick your needle drop can even be the credits. Firewatch has a lovely soundtrack of stripped back guitars, perfectly fitting the game’s atmosphere and complementing its unfolding mystery. When the story’s twists are revealed and the credits appear, however, “I’d Rather Go Blind” by the inimitable Etta James kicks in. Unexpected, and wholly different to the musical character of the game up until that point, but an inspired choice which perfectly encapsulates the game’s bittersweet undercurrents of love and loss – which are clearly, now the mystery is revealed, at the heart of the game’s story.

Perhaps a roadblock as significant as any other is the task of trying to fit existing compositions of fixed length to open-ended gameplay. Interactivity and agency are what makes games unique, so is there really much to be gained by making players watch a cutscene while a familiar track plays in the background? This might help set a mood, but not in a way which is really any different to what TV and movies can do. So how could they be better integrated into gameplay? It’s all well and good to drop a beautiful, contemplative song when you have nothing to do in-game than ride over landscapes on your horse or trudge through mountainous landscapes, but what if you’re in a fast-paced action game or a frantic platformer.

Luckily, this problem was solved 17 years ago. 2008’s LittleBigPlanet would feature a huge range of licensed music on its soundtrack from a variety of genres, which was adapted and curated to fit the game’s collection of fun and frantic platforming levels, neatly edited to loop so as to provide backing music for as long as needed. Perhaps the most famous of which is The Go! Team’s “Get It Together”, used to create a scrappy and energetic propulsion to one of the game’s early levels. The process of creating this soundtrack is detailed by the game’s sound designer Kenneth Young in this blog, where he touches on the importance of exploring outside one’s interests to find the perfect fit for a creative project, and in the significance of connecting with a player’s pre-existing repertoire of aesthetic ideas and associated feelings. As he puts it, “we have the wonderful ability to conflate particular pieces of music with the events and experiences in our lives and their associated emotional responses.” The whole LittleBigPlanet series would use this approach, in my opinion to great effect, and it surprises me that it hasn’t been more commonly repeated. It’s no coincidence that one of the closest examples from another platformer series – the music levels in Rayman Legends – are some of that game’s most fun and memorable.

All of this is not to say that music from outside the world of games is in any way inherently “better” or more engaging than original compositions – but that for the right moment, in the right game, the two can complement each other perfectly, and expand our musical horizons in the process. When working one day, I had Todd Baker’s wonderful soundtrack to Monument Valley 2 on in the background. The closing track, a live studio session of “Child”, was so gorgeous, I went to find the session on YouTube. It was Todd on guitar, with a bass player, drummer and pianist. This group of musicians are Lydian Collective, a British jazz group who have since become one of my favourite bands of recent years. Just imagine if, instead of just trawling through Spotify’s recommended playlists, we were discovering a new favorite song, band or even genre, because of a single moment in a game which connected with us. It’s my hope that in 10 years time, there will be hundreds of these moments happening to people with controllers in their hands every day.

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Jonathan is a biological researcher by day, but spends much of the rest of his time obsessing over games, music and music in games. You can follow him on Bluesky and at Medium.