作者：Leigh Alexander

在第55届格莱美奖公布提名的当天，《Journey》的作曲家Austin Wintory决定回家等消息,因为这能缓解他在工作室不断刷新网页查看结果所带来的压力。而当他刚刚钻进车里时，手机突然亮了；这是来自Christopher Tin的祝贺电子邮件。

Tin是首位获得电子游戏歌曲格莱美奖作曲家（游戏邦注：在第53届格莱美奖中凭借《文明IV》中的“Baba Yetu”荣获“最佳器乐编曲伴奏”）。困惑的Wintory立刻打电话给了Tin，并证实了自己为Thatgamecompany的《Journey》所创作的歌曲获得了可视媒体中最佳配乐的提名。

Wintory说道：“2年前当Tin获得格莱美奖时，那是首次非游戏本身获得认可，而是作曲家通过游戏得到肯定的情况。所以能由这位开拓者来通知我这一消息更是激动人心。”

这一提名让电子游戏的配乐也能够与像《艺术家》，《蝙蝠侠：黑暗骑士崛起》以及《龙纹身的女孩》等电影的配音进行角逐。但是对于Wintory，这个谦虚，健谈且让人敬畏感的人而言，其在《Journey》所扮演的角色获得认可更是锦上添花。

生活的改变

我们所谈论的是发生于2012年电子游戏颁奖盛典之前，即在该盛典上，《Journey》共获得了7项提名，其中便包括了最佳配乐和最佳歌曲。在所有的称赞中，Wintory更倾向于年初在游戏开发者大会上所获得的来自媒体，其它开发商以及音频社区同行们的反馈。他说道：“这些评价更能让我们感受到同行业人士的反应。”

与同事Robin Hunicke和Kellee Santiago共同出席VGA的Wintory说道：“如果电子游戏中也具有主流流行文化的接口便再好不过了。”尽管对于游戏的颁奖盛典来说，粉丝们真正关心的是那些高成本且具有较高曝光率的游戏，“但是对于我来说，只要能够与自己所关心的人待在一起，那么不管面对的是何种事件我都会感到非常兴奋。”

Wintory认为，接受《Journey》配乐的制作超越了自己的希望和预料。他回想道：“我们生活在一种真空环境中。我对游戏有着非常强烈的情感，甚至超越了我对TGC的敬畏之情；但是虽然我是真心热爱游戏，我却不知道别人是否会对其做出回应。”

自从游戏发行后，Wintory便收到了无数的电子邮件，他自己也承认“生活发生了改变。当然了，我也会期盼着自己的创作能够在将来的某一天带给别人不同的影响。而现实的回应甚至大大超过了我的期待。”

灵魂与灵魂之间的联系

《Journey》的开发团队的目标便是创造一款能够鼓励玩家与别人单纯且无偏见地联系在一起的游戏，就像朝着山顶穿越沙漠而不断前进，类似于Joseph Campbell的著作《Hero’s Journey》。

Wintory说道：“Jenova（Chen）和游戏设计师负责创造这种灵魂与灵魂之间的联系，”这也是为什么玩家经常会说游戏帮助他们回想起与配偶间的亲密关系，或为他们的生活创造出一种新价值的主要原因。

他表示：“我从未看过有人在幻想这种类型的经历，或以这种方式待在游戏中。”Wintory也表示他从未想过能够获得格莱美奖或其它颁奖典例的青睐，他继续说道：“因来自外界的各种回应让我觉得《Journey》的创造过程是我所经历过的最棒的体验。而除此之外我就不知道艺术家还能有什么期望了。”

journeybig(from gamasutra)

比起为游戏创造配乐，Wintory在创造电影配乐中更有经验。但是他表示早在接触音乐前自己便对游戏充满了激情，大约是在10岁左右。他说道：“要是我没记错的话那时候的我已经开始玩游戏了。”

Chen邀请Wintory共进晚餐，讨论如何创造出《Journey》并希望与之进行合作。Wintory描述道：“Jenova并不会在一开始便呈献给玩家各种新技术，而是通过情感力量去吸引玩家，这也是我最希望看到的。所他能够突显于众多游戏开发者之间。”

比起传统游戏，这种方法（即首先明确可能的影响并以此决定工具和结构）更适用于编曲，这也是Wintory选择将传统的编曲与TGC的设计态度结合在一起的部分原因。

他说道：“任何作曲家都不会以‘我拥有一个弦乐器，你希望我用它创造出怎样的音乐？’开始创作。有种说法是，如果你带着一把铁锤到处走动，那么你眼中便只看得到钉子。工具也是如此，这与着眼于某一场景并思考‘我该使用何种工具才能与该场景相匹配’是完全不同的。”

力求完美

在《Journey》的长期开发过程中，Wintory每天都致力于项目中，并伴随着游戏发展而不断修改音乐。Wintory也表示，在与Chen的合作过程中更是感受到设计师对于艺术创造过程的尊重。他回想道：“我一直都保持着‘游戏比音乐优秀多了，我必须重写’的想法。我也不时会打电话给Jenova希望他能听听我新上传的乐曲。”

Wintory笑着说道：“他总是会说‘我要问你一个问题：你是否认为这已经是最出色的结果？’而我的回答总是‘我想不是的，所以我需要为此更加努力。’他总是会鼓励作为艺术家的我们，如果觉得自己创造出了最佳作品，那就算完成了创作。而我之前就从未遇到过这样的合作伙伴。”

在游戏编曲中最独特的元素便是我们需要在一开始便将音乐作为一种互动元素——针对于音乐本身进行创作只是过去20年的做法。《Journey》的配乐能够获得格莱美奖提名其实非常有趣，因为它是参考Wintory根据直觉和游戏的响应式音景所创造出来的唱片集。

Wintory说道：“我并不是先创造一个唱片集并将其整合到游戏中，而是先创造出游戏配乐后才思考着如何将其转变成唱片集。这便花费了我3年的时间，所以我才如此迫切希望将自己的编曲有效地整合到玩家的游戏体验中。”

Wintory继续说道：“这也是我为何在提到游戏时便非常兴奋的主要原因。一遇到游戏，我们关于音乐的所有认知便不再起作用。与戏剧一样，音乐也是少数受到时间约束的艺术形式；所以我们将受到时光流逝的支配。所以为了面向游戏创造音乐，我们必须将一些非线性原理整合到基本的线性原理中，但这却是一个让人抓狂的过程。”

他补充道：“我们不仅需要用户为此付出情感，同时还希望他们能够清楚音乐中的事件发展与传统的古典乐是不同的。”

开阔的环境

Wintory认为自己能够在如此“开阔的环境”下，也就是随心在游戏中创造音乐是一件非常幸运的事，这能让那些不是很了解游戏的音乐人也能够理解并接受游戏理念“正逐年趋于简单”的事实。

他同时也在幻想着游戏音乐能够变成传统的音乐节目的一大组成部分，而不只是游戏音乐。他说道：“一周前，在科罗拉多，Boulder Symphony交响乐团演奏了《Journey》中的一首乐曲，当然也有其它古典乐——这既不是游戏盛典也不是流行音乐会。在演奏开始前我与观众进行了交谈，并向他们解释了创造非线性音乐的兴奋感。而即使是交响乐观众，他们也对我的游戏编曲赋予了极大的期待。”

Wintory说道：“他们并未对‘电子游戏’感到不屑。他们愿意接受自己耳朵所听到的内容，而对于我来说，这便是真正获得世人认可的一刻。”

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Journey’s composer finds a game’s soul through his music

By Leigh Alexander

On the day the 55th annual Grammy awards revealed its list of nominees, Journey composer Austin Wintory decided it’d be less stressful to just head home than wait at the studio for an official website to refresh and tell him whether he’d been nominated. Just after he got in the car, his phone blinked; it was a congratulatory email from Christopher Tin.

Tin enjoys the distinction of first composer to win a Grammy for a video game song (“Baba Yetu,” the Civilization IV theme, won Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist at the 53rd Grammys). A bewildered Wintory quickly phoned Tin — and fittingly, learned from him that his score for Thatgamecompany’s Journey was nominated in the Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media category.

“When he won that Grammy two years ago, it was the first time … the game itself wasn’t being acknowledged, it was the piece he had extracted from the game,” says Wintory. “So it was really wonderful that of all the people, by chance the trailblazer would be the one to call me… how perfect.”

This nomination puts a video game score in consideration alongside the soundtrack for films like The Artist, The Dark Knight Rises and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a momentous statement by any measure. But for Wintory, an ineffably humble and chatty man with an endless reserve of what feels like awe at the role he’s gotten to play in Journey’s overwhelmingly positive reception, it seems like icing on the cake.

Life-changing

We spoke just ahead of the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards, for which Journey leads nominations with seven — including one for Best Score and one for Best Song. Amid all this acclaim, Wintory seems equally pleased to recall the early feedback he’d begun getting from press, other developers and colleagues in the audio community at the Game Developers Conference earlier this year. “That stuff, it feels like you’re with your people,” he says.

“I do think it’s awesome there’s a mainstream pop culture outlet for video games,” says Wintory of the VGAs, which he’ll attend with colleagues Robin Hunicke and Kellee Santiago. Despite the mixed opinion some fans have about a heavily-sponsored, Hollywood-style event acting as games’ most visible award show, “I’m always happy about anything if I’m with people I care about, so it doesn’t really matter what the context is.”

For Wintory, the reception for Journey has exceeded his wildest hopes, and surprised him, too. “We’d been living in kind of a vacuum, making it,” he recalls. “I felt very strongly about the game, out of my own reverence for TGC… but as much as I genuinely loved it, I had actually no idea if anyone was going to respond to it.”

But since the game’s release, Wintory has received “hundreds and hundreds” of emails, any one of which would have been “life-changing,” he says. “I’d never in a million years… I mean, of course you hope, but to reasonably expect that something you work on would actually impact somebody in that way! The response has been so beyond what would have been my wildest hopes, dreams and expectations for it.”

Soul to soul

The team’s aim with Journey was to create a game that encouraged players to connect with one another in a pure and nonjudgmental way as they travel through a desert toward a mountain peak, an analogue to Joseph Campbell’s classic “Hero’s Journey” monomyth.

“Jenova [Chen] and the designers of the game went out of their way to make this… almost soul to soul contact,” Wintory says — he believes that intention helps explain why he hears from players who’ve said the game helped them remember a lost relative, bond with a spouse or even to develop a new sense of value about their own life.

“I never in a million years saw people imagining those kinds of experiences, living in the game in that sort of way,” he marvels. Even without the recognition of the Grammys or any other awards ceremony, Journey “would have still been the most gratifying experience of anything I ever worked on before, because of those responses from people. I just don’t know what an artist could possibly hope for in their life more than that.”

Wintory’s done far more film scores than game scores (he first collaborated with fellow USC alum Chen on flOw, as the latter’s Master’s thesis). But he describes himself as a lifelong passionate gamer, even before he got into music at the age of 10. “By that point, I’d already been playing games for as long as I could remember,” he says.

Chen asked Wintory to dinner to discuss what would become Journey, and to ask him to collaborate. “Jenova doesn’t start with some cool new technology; it’s always, ‘what’s the emotional takeaway that I want the player to have,’” he describes. “It’s remarkable that’s sort of unique among game developers.”

That tactic — deciding on the intended impact first and then determining the tools and structure from there — has much more in common with music composition than with traditional game development, part of why Wintory’s approach to classical composition marries TGC’s attitudes to design so well.

“Among composers… you don’t start typically with, ‘okay, I have strings, what do I want to do with them?’” He says. “It’s the old saying, that if you just walk around with a hammer, then everything in the world looks like a nail. If it’s all about your tools, it’s different than looking at a scenario and asking ‘what tools do I need in order to deal with that scenario.’”

As good as it can be?

Over Journey’s relatively long development cycle, Wintory worked on the project daily, revisiting and revising his music as the game evolved. And yet the process of working with Chen highlighted how much the designer respects the artistic process, Wintory says. “I kept feeling, ‘this game is so much better than this music; I have to rewrite this,’” Wintory recalls. “And every now and again I’d call Jenova up, and ask him, ‘did you get a chance to listen to this latest thing I uploaded?’”

“And he’d say, ‘I have a question for you: Do you think it’s as good as it can be?’” Wintory laughs. “And I’d always be like, ‘no, I guess not, I need to work on it some more.’ He just appeals to you as an artist, where if you think it’s done, it’s done. I’d never worked with someone like that.”

The fundamental unique factor in composing for games is that the music needs to be conceived itself as interactive from the beginning — a development for music itself that’s only unique to the last 20 years or so. Journey’s Grammy nomination is interesting in that it refers to an album that Wintory essentially extracted from the intuitive and algorithmically-responsive soundscapes of the game.

“I didn’t create an album to stick into a game; I had to create a game score, and then figure out how to reverse-engineer it into an album,’ he says. “That is what took three years to do, that’s what I desperately wanted to happen, that it would feel like I am sitting right behind you composing in realtime and matching everything to your experience.”

“That’s why I get so excited about games,” Wintory continues, “it throws everything you know about music up in the air. Music is one of those art forms, like theatre and only a couple of others, that is bound by time; you’re at the mercy of the passage of time. So to create music for a game is to apply a nonlinear aesthetic onto something that is fundamentally linear, and it’s like… holy shit, this is really kind of insane.”

“To think of not just having the audience’s emotional input, but to have them directing the flow of events in the music is as far from traditional classical music as possible,” he adds.

Wild West

Wintory says he feels incredibly fortunate to be participating so visibly in what he sees as the exciting “Wild West” that games can offer those that create music. Getting other musicians less-acquainted with games as a medium to understand and receive that concept “has gotten easier every year,” he says.

He still dreams of seeing game music widely performed as part of traditional concert programmes in a way that isn’t about the fact it’s game music. “A week ago in Colorado, the Boulder Symphony played a piece of mine from Journey in a concert of otherwise all classical music — it wasn’t a game night or a pops concert,” he says. “I got up and spoke to the audience before they played, and as I was explaining the thrill of nonlinear music and why, as a composer, that’s so exciting… the audience was the expected orchestra audience, but they were really interested.”

“That dismissing, as soon as they hear the word ‘video game’… I didn’t sense any of it,” Wintory says. “The idea that they were receptive to what they were going to be hearing, to me, it was one of those humanity-affirming moments.” (source:gamasutra)