Interesante (pero aviso que en inglés) entrevista a Junkie XL, DJ que seguro que os sonará, al menos indirectamente, de juegos y películas (como en la trilogía Matrix). Pronto sacará su quinto disco.

A grandes rasgos, expone que la principal diferencia de crear música para un juego frente a una película se encuentra en que el juego es impredecible, debes capturar las emociones, pero no es algo cerrado como una grabación, donde ves lo que se verá, en cada momento exacto.



PALGN: To start off with, can you tell us a little about yourself?

Junkie XL :I’m 39 and I come from a music family, everybody played 3-4 instruments in my family. I started playing my first instrument at the age of 8 and continued adding 3-4 more instruments a few years later.

When I was 16 I started working in a music store where they sold music computers so I got really into that and from that point my music style became a combination of electronic and organic punk/rock music.

The eighties really shaped me as a musician and I was in my first band called Nerve in the late eighties early nighties. Then I worked as a producer for a few years for metal bands who wanted the electronic elements in their music.

94-95 I started Junkie XL and I’ve been doing that now for the last 12 years. In addition to that I’ve done music for movies, video games and remixes. I’ve released 4 artist albums so far and will release my 5th soon.

PALGN: How did you first become involved with the videogame industry?

JX: One of my tracks got licensed in 97 and I started to realize that my music was a bit underground and hard to market the normal traditional way so I saw a great opportunity to get my music out in a different way. Plus I happened to be a big gamer myself…

PALGN: You’ve had the privilege of working with many different artists and music companies throughout your career. In your experience, has there been any particular company or person you’ve preferred working with, or have you enjoyed everyone you’ve worked with?

JX: Well that’s very hard to say, different companies and different artists have unique ways of working. I’ve worked with people that worked with recording techniques that were not good, but then the result was totally mind blowing. I have worked with companies where you become very good friends with everyone which makes that a great experience.

Certain companies push you in a certain direction and in the end it can be so amazing how it turns out.
But I can say that I’m not a big fan of repeating myself. I always strive to re-invent myself and I want to do new things.

I love working with EA games, they are very easy going.

PALGN: One of the first videogames you were involved in was EA Games’ Need for Speed, which was release back in 1995. Since then, how has music recording changed?

JX: Obviously a lot. I come from a time when we recorded demos on a 4 track cassette player. In those days you had to play a part over and over again until you got it right. Now you can do so much on the computer. So the landscape has changed a lot. It’s a different world today.

The music has changed completely, everything has stepped up! The amount of hard drive space, the possibilities with sounds on computers, I mean the only limit is your fantasy. I think that’s the beauty of the time period right now.

Colossus Remix de God of War 2. Desactivad la música de la cabecera, o sonarán ambas.

PALGN: Are there any major differences between recording for a videogame soundtrack and recording for a film score? Likewise, do companies tend to have the same recording methods / policies or are they different from one another?

JX: It’s completely different actually, a movie is a linear medium whilst a video game is an interactive medium. That means that a movie starts and ends two hours later. Whatever happens in the movie is “locked”, you can go back and forth until you get it right in the studio.

When you work on music for a game you first need to nail the tone of the game. After that you break down the musical elements and try to match those up with different emotions that happen in the game.

It’s different for every game but just to take one example. In one race in Need For Speed, 15-25 different things can happen. All those different things trigger an emotion and the music needs to underscore that emotion. The music needs to follow all the different emotions and you need to find the exact right mood of music.

Like I said, it’s hard to explain. If you drive a car that’s washed and clean and then you crash it into a pool of mud and you drive off without a scratch on your car, that would be hard to explain right? Kind of like that. It doesn’t make sense all the time.

PALGN: Would you agree that music has become an important part of the videogame industry?

JX: Yes, absolutely! Most game publishers don’t realise how important it is.

PALGN: When writing music, do you have a general idea on how you want it to sound or do you experiment and mess around until you find something you like?

JX: When making music for a video game it’s about working in a team spirit. I usually play around in the studio until I nail the tone in the game, then I get that approved and then I get an OK to create more of that type of music.

I get approached because of my sounds and specialties, people know what I do well. I won’t be approached by a company that is looking for music for a romantic comedy. This means the process of finding the right tone for the game usually does not take long.

PALGN: Have you ever looked back at a soundtrack you’ve created and wished you had done it differently?

JX: All the time! The level that I want to achieve and always strive for is very high and I am usually happy with my music in the beginning but then a few months later I start thinking about what I could or should have done different. That is good thing though, keeps me sharp and going.

SSX

PALGN: Outside the games we’ve discussed, what other titles have you worked on?

JX: We should split it up in licensing and worked on so I worked on games like Need For Speed, SSX Blur, Forza, God Of War, Sims, Matrix, Destroy All Humans and there are too many games to name where existing Junkie XL music got licensed.

PALGN: What projects are you currently working on?

JX: I am finishing up my new album, the 5th already, called “Booming Back At You” which will be released in March 2008. Working on some new remixes and probably starting on a new game in January. Then I am preparing my new live show. I will be coming to you supporting my new album, make you dance.

P.: ¿Qué elementos tiene que tener un blogger para triunfar?

R.: La primera norma es escribe cosas interesantes. Escribe sobre algo que te guste, que te apasione. Pero eso sí, escribe bien, cuida tu forma de escribir. La tercer gran norma es enlaza mucho, enlaza a tus competidores, a los blogs que te gustan, a los que te critican, a algunos pequeños que sean desconocidos y puedas descubrírselos a tus lectores. Cuanto más enlaces, mejor. También es muy importante escribir mucho, de manera constante, para crear una audiencia que te siga. Y hoy, un elemento muy importante a tener en cuenta, es saber qué quieres hacer con tu blog. Hoy nacen dos nuevos blogs cada segundo, hay una gran competencia, es mucho más difícil encontrar una temática o un tono. Tampoco es muy sensato hacer un blog pensando en hacer dinero con él. Yo creo que tienes que hacerlo por otros motivos, y después, el blog te sirve para que te conozcan y te contraten y te encarguen trabajos interesantes.

Parte de una entrevista al creador de Technorati.

Hace un tiempo subí un vídeo en el que Ubi Soft mostraba las bondades de ZBrush en Assasin´s Creed, y ahora Naughty Dog hace lo propio.

Esta es su web oficial. Ha trabajado en algunos juegos, como Encharted Arms.

Y este si funciona por completo, tres wallpapers incluidos. Pinchando en la imagen os llevará a Rapidshare para bajarlo.

Tema Shinra

Tiene cuatro fondos rotando.

Creo que hoy día nadie se sorprende cuando encuentra publicidad en los videojuegos. Si, me refiero sobre todo a esos deportivos repletos de logos, marcas de ropa, anuncios de telefonía o lo que sea en estadios virtuales que por copiar a la realidad, copian esa forma de financiación de los clubs.

AdSense (ya sabéis, Google) ha opinado en una entrevista sobre el tema de la publicidad en los videojuegos, y parece que va en serio. Publicidad en tiempo real, actualizada, que mueve dinero, y que puede ayudar a financiar grandes proyectos. Es inevitable que tarde o temprano llegue, y si tenemos en cuenta que actualmente ya es casi o más poderosa que la industria del cine, lo raro es que no haya ocurrido antes en grandes dosis.

Algunas frases destacadas de la entrevista.

Remember, the game industry started in the '70s. Now games are from the cradle to the grave. It's no longer [about] your 15 year-old. It's no longer your 18-to-32 year-old. The median player of a PlayStation is 29 years-old. The demographics have changed. So the rules have changed.

La edad de los jugadores ha crecido (el usuario medio de PlayStations es de 29 años). "Las reglas han cambiado". Parece que ahora que los videojuegos ya no son ese juego de matar marcianitos para niños, el sector es interesante...

The last game that I did at Sega cost USD 25 million. When PlayStation One started, the games were costing anywhere from USD 600,000 to a million. That's not the case [with] PlayStation 3 - you can't do a Triple-A game for under USD 20 million.

Datos del coste actual de los videojuegos, al menos las grandes superproducciones.



The whole casual game category has opened up in a huge way for this. I would say 80 percent of games [will have] advertising in them by 2010.

Estima que el 80% de los juegos tendrán publicidad en 2010. Temblad. Snake, Zelda, Kratos, usaréis pantalones Levi´s.

Let's say you're playing Tiger Woods: I'm using the Nike [branded] driver in the game. I can pause the game, ping on the driver, [and] it takes me to the Nike site. I can buy the driver and also get an idea of what that club is about. At the same time, I can ping my friend on his mobile and say I hit the ball 300 yards and it shows the Nike [logo]. I just showed advertising on two different platforms. That's really different than any other way of communicating advertising.

Un ejemplo de como sería un juego de golf con publicidad. Para ser sincero, en estos juegos deportivos no lo veo demasiado intrusivo, será quizá que ya estoy acostumbrado a relacionar Nike o Addidas con deporte, o por supuesto marcas de coches en juegos de conducción.



We're working with the [ad] agencies. We're working with the developers. We're working with the publishers to make sure that ads are placed in the appropriate places. A lot of companies cannot do that.

Publicidad apropiada para cada juego. Por supuesto, productos como Coca Cola seguramente los acabaremos teniendo en un Final Fantasy como sustituto de una poción. Que digo poción, ¡cola de fénix!.



The industry is going online. The whole thing of putting boxes on shelves is changing. There are close to 10 million people on Xbox Live. As soon as Sony straightens out their [online gaming] act, they're going to get to the same place. As a matter of fact, they've already said that all the games they want to do are online games. Yes, we can put games on the shelf that have advertising, but those are going to wind up being static [ads]. The whole thing is going to come to dynamic.

La publicidad ya existe (muy pequeña) en los juegos. El futuro es el dinamismo. ¿Que es eso de anunciar un Nokia anticuado en tu FIFA 2010? Aunque sigas jugando a ese juego en el 2011, la publicidad siempre estará actualizada con el último teléfono.

¿Bueno, malo?. Ya veremos. Si es útil para que juegos costosos no se queden solo en proyectos, creo que salimos ganando. Si se queda en anuncios para pantallas de carga, podría ser hasta admisible. Pero esperemos que no invadan esa línea que separaba los mundos aparentemente "inocentes" con el real, y pasemos a hablar en plan "oye, la armadura Reebok solo aumenta +130 la vitalidad, compra la de oferta en Zara que además te multiplica los efectos beneficiosos de la poción Red Bull".

En principio estaba terminado, pero lo he probado y tiene algunos fallos (o quién lo prefiera, "fallas" XD).

Por ejemplo, a mi no me aparecen los fondos que había preparado, que son 7 rotantes con diferentes juegos, pero en la prueba, no me apareció ninguno, continuaba el que tenía. Raro. Ya miraré cual es el fallo. Otra cosa que tengo que solucionar es el icono de la mensajería, aparece en algunos sitios que no le corresponde, como conexión USB. También he pensado que quizás sean unos iconos grandes, que tocan al texto en algún punto.

Son pequeños detalles que ya solucionaré un día de estos. Si queréis hacer la prueba, guardad el tema en una memoria, en la carpeta PS3>THEME

Pues si, ya tengo en fase pre-alpha (en realidad está casi terminado, solo queda compilarlo, pero me mola lo de pre-alpha) mi primer tema para PS3 con alguna connotación bamdálica, con sus iconos y fondos rotatorios de varios juegos. Y este solo será el primero de los que planeo hacer.

Y recordad que hay un post sobre los temas para la consola.

En uno de esos descuidos, Draskovic dejó tiritando mi barra de vida. Menos mal que Raven tiene alguna sorpresa. Todo un Great en toda regla.



Y el que quiera venir a por más, me encontrará casi todas las tardes-noches ):-). PSN: De-mon

Varias nuevas ilustraciones, la primera de ellas de Assasin´s Creed, ya que él participó, entre otros, como artista conceptual de lugares y ciudades. Ya había puesto con anterioridad varias ilustraciones, pero es que me encanta.

La verdad duele (tenía ganas de decirlo; click si no se pilla el sentido de la frase)