Sean R Scott, founder of GameDevMasters recently conducted a survey on his Facebook page asking game composers to answer 7 questions about writing music for games.
The thinking was that this information would be helpful for any game developers wanting to hire a composer.
Sean then kindly asked me to review and analyze the results, which is exactly what this article is about.
A Royalty free music library probably sounds like it’s the kind of thing that might be good for you to use in your games. After all, anything free is probably good right?
Thing is, it’s a term that is used a lot but few people actually know what it means.
On the surface it sounds ideal, but dig a little deeper and you’ll see that it’s often something of a false target to try and reach in the first place for games, and in some cases could act against you.
I see this question a lot online – game developers are looking for quality music for games, but at a reasonable cost.
Now, as a composer, you might be expecting me to say ‘you get what you pay for’ or ‘you should only ever use a composer’, but this isn’t necessarily true.
If you have no (or limited) budget for your game it may be tempting to see if you can persuade a composer to write free music for your games.
Whilst tempting, in this article I hope to encourage you to look a bit deeper about what the you are getting into and also offer some alternatives to free.
Making a game is a complicated process. There is so much to think about.
It’s no wonder that some things get put on the back burner and not thought of until the last moment.
Music is often one of these things.
So the very idea of a music budget when it comes to an indie game could be thought of as something of a luxury .
Trouble is, if you give it no thought at all until the eleventh hour, you will be at the mercy of whatever price a composer or website wants to charge you.
I hope by the end of this article to convince you that giving at least some thought to the music you might need and your budget in the early stages of development, will put YOU back in the driving seat.
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This is what it all comes down to – price, right? Just how much is an indie game composer actually going to cost you?
In this short article I’ll give you some typical prices (including my own) so you will have a better idea.
If you are thinking about music for your game, you might be thinking about getting an indie game composer to quote for you.
This can sometimes be a good idea (but not always!), but if you don’t even know what factors could alter the cost, it’s no wonder you might be a bit reluctant to ask one in the first place.
This article will give you a heads up on what you are getting into so you at least know what things will be going through the composer’s mind when he drops the ‘P’ bomb!