As music industry stumbles, musicians turn to games

He's been a pop star, an ambient music icon and an acclaimed record producer. Clearly, Brian Eno knows a thing or two about evolution.

So when game publisher EA was searching for the right guy to handle the music for their life simulation game Spore, they headed right for his door.

"In the first phone conversations with him, he really got the idea that the music was always changing, that it would be procedural, and he was really excited about it," the game's audio director Kent Jolly told Rolling Stone in a recent article.

Eno wound up contributing to most of Spore's soundtrack, emulating the game's evolutionary theme by creating music that changes based on the way gamers play. But while this marks the first time the elusive musician has applied his unique skills to a video game, it's just the latest example of a big-time artist making music for a big-time game.

Back in the 90's, arty songwriters like Peter Gabriel and David Bowie explored the potential of game soundtracks with efforts like multimedia smorgasbord Xplora and underappreciated adventure game Omikron. Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails is credited with creating sound and music for seminal shooter Quake, while rock band Incubus hit the jackpot by writing tunes for smash shooter Halo 2. And when he's not busy bickering with Sting, Police drummer Stewart Copeland's work can be heard in the Spyro the Dragon series.

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Even established film composers are getting into the game. John Debney, whose body of work includes scores for hits like Elf, Bruce Almighty and Mel Gibson's blockbuster The Passion of the Christ, was handed the musical reigns to Sony's PS3 dragon-riding game Lair. He even gave a keynote speech -- the aptly titled Music in Video Games: Surpassing the Scope of Film Scores -- at this year's Game Developer's Conference in an effort to promote the medium.

Of course, artists annually vie for track placement in EA's football giant Madden NFL, and games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have brought hundreds of other artists into the games landscape by offering new ways to monetize old tracks. But there's a significant difference between simply licensing past material and actually getting credited as part of the development team; specifically, beefier residual checks by cutting out that pesky label middleman.

And if the timing's right, penning a video game track can do wonders to an artist's career. Just ask singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton, whose catchy song "Still Alive" from last year's breakout hit game Portal has turned him into a must-see act for millions of gamers.

For audio directors like Jolly, there's no comparison between licensed music and original material.

"With licensing, you have a band who has already written a piece of music without having thought at all about the idea of games or interactivity in any way, and so unless you happen to have some particular thing going in your game -- like a radio you can turn on -- it's very difficult to make it blend into the action of the game and be responsive."

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