Academic Inegrity

I can't get this idea out of mind. It's nothing too profound:

While working on my Masters in Film Music composition, I have already geared my studies toward video game music and interactive media. If you are no stranger to any video game blogs or industry news, then you would know of the rise in market share held by video game publishers. Granted we are now finding out that the video game industry is not recession proof, as it was previously thought, it is still a media giant.

I have been dialoguing my interests with a professor, the head of the film scoring dept, and he empathizes with my struggle for creativity and originality in video games as he had a similar experience with the less then warm treatment of film music by the academic world. So I pass the dude today, and in our talking he drops some little nugget about how he sees that many students are focusing on the video game industry, particularly in the music tech department.

Meanwhile, back at the apt:

I start up the F.E.A.R 2 demo, which I only played on recommendation from a classmate (a dude I respect intellectually, but not his video game tastes) and I just thought it was a perfect example of the watered down crap American developers pass off as "cool" and cutting edge. It was a fucking nightmare, and not because it was scary because it wasn't. The controls go from twitch-tastically unwieldly to tank-ish ooze walking. The cues that were supposed to draw you in to the atmosphere were just confusing and off putting.

Now in my "Audio for Games" class, I get to take my first look at the unreal engine.

This is not how to make games. It is essentially a multi-tool where you take this poorly designed little "cutouts" and place them throughout the environment, hopefully out of the way enough so that passing rockets don't interfere on their way to make giblets out of some 10-year-old. You can choose "Awesome High Textured Machine Gun" or "Halo-esque Floaty Legged vehicle"

It just bugs me. I mean, obviously I want to make a buck, work regularly and be creative, but this lowest common demoninator game making is the equal of a jerry bruckheimer or that other asshole who made transformers whose name I can't think of right now because I'm partly watching the "Colbert Report".

Basically, I am committed to this industry artistically as much as I am dependant on of it financially. I really don't have the patience now to articulate that, but I will in time.

I just chose to shit on people now, it was brainless and rude. but chathartic.