Video Game Lets You Drop Beats As You Drop Blocks
During a month in which the biggest video game releases include such ultraviolent titles as Bioshock 2 and Dante's Inferno, one small, beautiful puzzle game has managed to capture much of the spotlight.
It's called Chime, and it's a puzzle game that integrates the music of artists like Philip Glass and Moby.
The game is the first release for the video game industry charity project OneBigGame. When you download the game, about 60 percent of the purchase price goes to Save the Children and the Starlight Children's Foundation.
Video game developer Martin de Ronde hatched the idea a few years ago.
"I was actually watching a documentary on the 20th anniversary of Band Aid and Live Aid — the music industry initiative where famous musicians get together to organize a concert for charity — and I actually wondered if something like that would be possible in the video games industry," he says.
If you think about it, de Ronde says, the video game industry is always bragging about how it's making more money than music and movies.
"At the same time, I was seeing all these charitable efforts from within the music industry and the movie industry, but I wasn't seeing a lot happening from within the games industry," he says.
So along came Ciaran Walsh, audio director for the U.K. video game developer Zoe Mode. He'd been tossing around an idea where the player can remix songs by playing a puzzle game. Walsh says Zoe Mode decided it would be a good fit for the OneBigGame project.
Chime's integration of music and game play is similar to the games Rez and Lumines, but gives the player greater control over remixing the music.
The object is to arrange Tetris-like blocks into rectangles on a grid; depending on where you place the blocks, different sounds are triggered.
"We figure out where is that in time, what is the height of the block on the grid, and we decide on a note to play. Higher on the grid means higher pitch, lower on the grid means lower pitch," Walsh says.
All of the samples are pulled from the original works of music.
"The main challenge was that there wasn't money on the table — that isn't normally how you go about getting music into a video game, calling people up and asking, 'Hey, can you give us something for nothing?' " he says.
The artists donated their tracks to the game, and everyone who worked to put it together did so pro bono. But de Ronde says video game developers at OneBigGame still retain the rights to their games.
Chime is a hit, selling about a copy a minute on Xbox Live, according to de Ronde. That means Zoe Mode has the option of creating a different version of the game and selling it commercially.
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GUY RAZ, host:
Welcome back to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz.
TRAVIS LARCHUK: And I'm Travis Larchuk.
And now it's time for our weekly Xbox 360 Live segment.
(Soundbite of music)
RAZ: Travis, I thought we talked about this. And just to reassure the folks listening, we do not have a weekly Xbox Live segment.
LARCHUK: Not yet.
RAZ: Travis Larchuk is one of our producers. And Travis, what are you doing in the studio?
LARCHUK: Well, Guy, I came here to play a song for you.
(Soundbite of song, "Brazil")
RAZ: Oh, this is actually kind of nice.
LARCHUK: Yeah, this is the song "Brazil" by the composer Philip Glass. And actually to be more precise, it's a remix of the song, which was created in a game for the Xbox 360. And I actually brought my Xbox 360 into the studio here with me.
RAZ: Aha, I see it.
LARCHUK: And Guy, I understand you've never actually seen one of these before.
RAZ: That would be incorrect. I have actually seen one at Best Buy.
LARCHUK: Yeah, but have you played one?
RAZ: No.
LARCHUK: Well, you've been missing out.
RAZ: On pretending to be a carjacker or a serial killer? I don't think so. And plus, I like spending time with my family, Travis.
LARCHUK: Well, Guy, it's not just about killing people and stealing their cars. There's puzzle games. There's music games, trivia. You can watch Netflix movies through the Xbox.
RAZ: That sounds a little more promising.
LARCHUK: Right. And the game I'm about to show you is called "Chime." It came out earlier this month, and I think you'll really like this one.
RAZ: Okay, so what does it do?
LARCHUK: All right. Well, you know that Philip Glass song we just heard?
RAZ: Mm-hmm.
LARCHUK: This game lets you remix songs by well-known artists as you play the game.
RAZ: Okay, go on.
LARCHUK: All right, so have you ever played "Tetris"?
RAZ: Yeah. That's the game where you've got these different shaped blocks, and they're falling onto the screen, and there's Russian music in the background, and you have to arrange the blocks into lines.
LARCHUK: Yeah, well, it's kind of like that. Here, let me show you.
(Soundbite of video game, "Chime")
LARCHUK: All right, so the basic object here is you're trying to arrange these Tetris-looking blocks into rectangles. And depending on where you drop them, you're remixing this song by Philip Glass.
RAZ: Okay, so I'm looking at this TV screen now, and I'm seeing a big, empty, white grid, and then obviously we're hearing this music loop.
LARCHUK: Right. And I'm going to drop the blocks on different parts of the grid, and just listen to what happens.
(Soundbite of video game, "Chime")
RAZ: All right. So it's triggering different musical notes.
LARCHUK: Exactly. So if I put one high up, it'll play a higher pitched note. And if I put one lower down on the grid, it'll play a lower pitched note. And if you arrange these shapes into a rectangle, it'll make an even cooler sound. Here, I'll show you.
(Soundbite of video game, "Chime")
RAZ: And all these sounds are actually created by the composer Philip Glass?
LARCHUK: Yeah, that's right. I talked to the guy who created this game. He's with the UK game developer Zoe Mode. His name is Ciaran Walsh.
Mr. CIARAN WALSH (Creator, "Chime"): Everything you're hearing comes from the original song. So there are phrases like flute phrases and percussion phrases, all sorts of different parts that we've pulled out. And you might hear them in the original in one place, but you hear them combined with a completely different part of the piece when you hear them in the game.
LARCHUK: So there are five different songs you can remix in this game. And each song is a different level that gets harder as the game goes along, and each one's by a different artist.
RAZ: Okay, so let's hear another one. Who do you have?
LARCHUK: All right. Well, this one is the song "Oh Yeah" by Moby.
(Soundbite of video game, "Chime")
RAZ: Okay, I'm hearing a computer voice that seems to be saying: Oh yeah.
LARCHUK: That's right. Unlike the Philip Glass song, which is instrumental, in this level, you really get to play with the vocals. So here's Ciaran Walsh again.
Mr. WALSH: We really picked out the vocals as an interesting thing for you to play with and trigger. You know, you can take a vocal phrase, and you can transpose it. So its the - you hear the same phrase at different pitches.
What that gives you is a kind of mosaic effect of all the different phrases.
(Soundbite of video game, "Chime")
LARCHUK: I mean, one of the really cool things about this game, actually, is that all the people who worked on it and all of the artists whose music are in it gave their work for free because the proceeds of this game actually go to charity.
RAZ: A charity, I gather, to rehabilitate video game addicts?
LARCHUK: No, it's for Save the Children and the Starlight Children's Foundation.
RAZ: How do you get this game?
LARCHUK: Well, you can download it through the Xbox for five bucks.
RAZ: That is one of our producers Travis Larchuk, who, believe it or not, was actually paid to play video games this past week.
Travis, thanks.
LARCHUK: Thank you, Guy. And by the way, I was carrying my Xbox through the hall, and I heard this rumor that Daniel Schorr is a huge Xbox fan.
RAZ: That would be a false rumor.
(Soundbite of music) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
