Rhythm and Music Game Trends

The rhythm game genre has been dominated by games that use a visual component to explicitly keep the player on track and on beat. Because of this, most rhythm games closely resemble puzzle games, where winning or losing is based on how well the player can keep the rhythm. The problem lies with turning rhythm into a visual display, with arrows and colored buttons taking the place of beats. When one takes rhythm and puts it into the visual space, the importance of it as an aural experience is diminished. This can be seen in games such as Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution, where success is not based on how well a beat is kept, but rather, based on how many “notes” were hit correctly. This may not seem like a problem, since having a good sense of rhythm helps immensely when playing such games, but if one were to remove all of the aural elements of Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution, the games are still perfectly playable, and it is quite possible to succeed by simply memorizing the patterns of buttons that appear. By creating a visual component to a rhythm game and using it as a mechanic that determines the success or failure of the player in the game, the developers of these popular rhythm games take the aural element’s importance away, which is quite strange when one realizes that the genre is called the rhythm game genre.

In essence, the problem with most rhythm games being made today is their emphasis on performance as a means to success. This may be a staple of almost every other genre, but in rhythm games, it holds less sway than it should. The best rhythm games involve being able to feel a rhythm and exploring said rhythm through a method that does not involve musical instruments. Rhythm games have the potential to allow users to explore ideas of rhythm and music without having to learn about music or how to create it.

The game Reset by Robin Burkinshaw attempts to do this by structuring the visual space around the aural space. The game involves the player piloting a spaceship while various asteroids and enemy ships try to destroy the player. These obstacles appear in time on the same rhythm as the music, and the visuals increase in intensity as the music grows progressively intense. However, Reset does not provide any motivation for the player to do well while avoiding these obstacles. The music remains the same for each play through and the only "score" available is presented at the end, and seems almost arbitrary. A large part of any game is to provide justification for playing it, and Reset fails at this.

However, the SSX series of games uses the aural space in a much better and more dynamic way. In the SSX games, players control a snowboarder in an environment that is, in terms of physics, greatly exaggerated. What always struck me about these games was how well they motivated the player to maintain a sense of motion or "flow". From the courses that played like roller coasters to the trick system and its rewards, the SSX series was always concerned about how well the player maintained his state of motion and how well he or she was able to navigate the course without interrupting this motion. A large part of this feeling came from the aural space.

At the beginning of a race, the player starts with no boost. The music reflects this state, existing in the most minimal form possible with only a beat and a couple harmonic lines. In order to move to the first level of boosting, the player must do tricks until he or she fills his meter up, and in order to stay at that level, the player must do 4 "super" tricks without crashing. Once this level was achieved, the music would add a few more harmonic lines, a vocal pat, or a melody. This feedback in the aural space encouraged the player and gave the player motivation to maintain his sense of motion, provided that the song was aesthetically engaging and in tune with the visual space. As the player reached higher levels of boost, more parts to the song were added and eventually, the whole song played when the player reached the final level, allowing him to boost as much as he wanted for a certain period of time. The layering of instrumentation provided feedback and encouragement for what the player was doing.

The SSX series did not only use the aural space as a form of encouragement, however. The games also created a tension and release mechanic through its use of music while the player was doing tricks. In the exaggerated physics of the SSX games, the player stays in the air for a long time compared to other games when he or she launches off a ramp. This allowed them to do multiple tricks, and created a dynamic that involved how many tricks a player was willing to do before he landed for fear of becoming to greedy and crashing. When he or she launched into the air, the music track's vocal parts and bass parts cut out, leaving only the middle frequencies while the player was attempting to do tricks. The game put a "flanger" effect on this middle frequency, creating a sort of distortion that fit very well with the sensation of flying through the air. Depending on how the player landed, all of the parts would come back in triumphantly, or the piece would start back in its base mode with only a beat and a few harmonic lines. If the song was good, the player would want the first effect and would try as hard as he could to maintain the flow of music. This effect is similar to the moment in a piece of dance music where the percussion cuts off and the listeners are left with only the vocals and melodic lines, more commonly known as a "breakdown". Most producers will build up to a climax with added melodic or harmonic lines, rehashing themes that have been established before in the song, and once that climax is reached, the artist brings back the percussion with all of the lines present, letting them loose all at once and creating a portion of the song where the listener can let himself go.

The SSX series did a very good job of motivating and encouraging the player to maintain these moments, and ultimately, pursuing this line of progression in rhythm game development will be a much more interesting and rewarding endeavor than continuing to force the player to perform well in order to "succeed". If the player is to be rewarded in a music game, the player should be rewarded with more or better music, rather than a score screen at the end of the song telling him how "well" he did. Music games should be about preserving these moments of tension and release, using them as goals or rewards for players to strive for, and providing challenges that justify these rewards.