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<H2>Game Boy: Video Game Virtuoso Ben Houge</H2>
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<I>(Article by David Lau,
originally 
<A HREF="http://www.thatssh.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=710&Itemid=36">published</A>
in the November 2006 issue of 
<A HREF="http://www.thatssh.com/index.php"></I>That's Shanghai<I></A>)</I>

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If you’ve ever been lured into desperate, late night video game binges, one of the architects of your misery/enjoyment could likely be composer and Shanghai resident Ben Houge.  After all, it’s Houge’s job to “immerse the player in a different world” through his compositions and arrangements for game audio scores.

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Though we often think of primitive ditties such as the <I>Super Mario Bros.</I> theme song, creating this audio ambience is a multi-media “collaborative art,” like ballet or film.  It combines disciplines from sound effects to visual art, to develop “a world that’s alive and changing.”

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With his bushy beard, nerd-chic glasses, and Birkenstocks, Houge, 31, looks fresh out of Seattle where he spent several years working for Sierra Entertainment.  At Sierra, Houge learned the ropes with his first project <I>Leisure Suit Larry 7</I>.  For the comedic <I>Porky’s</I> or <I>Revenge of the Nerds</I> type computer games, Houge helped compose jazzy tunes to match Larry’s smooth moves.  Later, he composed the soundtrack for the fantasy role-playing game <I>Arcanum</I>.  For this game, Houge drew on his knowledge of early sacred music and composed for a string quartet instead of a large orchestra, as is the practice in fantasy games.  The result was a critically acclaimed score which was equally well received by gamers—six years later he’s still receiving fan mail about it. 

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In 2004, he came to Shanghai to work as a senior audio designer at Ubisoft, a French game company that developed the best-selling <I>Splinter Cell</I> games. Although Houge says there’s still not a large game development community in Shanghai [<I>Actually, this wasn’t really true at the time of this interview, and it’s even less true now; the game community here is significant and growing quickly. –Ben</I>], he still finds the city an inspiring place for a composer. Indeed, his ideal virtual world is, in some ways, just “like Shanghai, always presenting new and interesting experiences that I couldn’t have predicted.”

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He has been listening to everything from mando-pop crooner Jay Chou (周杰伦) – to improve his Mandarin, he claims – to contemporary Chinese composers such as Tan Dun (谭盾). On the side, he is working on a project that involves chopping up the sounds of Shanghai’s grating and ubiquitous traffic which he recorded at several busy intersections, and remixing them into a slow moving ambient sound environment. 
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His current project at Ubisoft is still in development and therefore still top secret, but he did share with us his own personal game music theory. Game music, he says, should be first and foremost “dynamic” with no repeating loops. This aids in preventing dementia in avid gamers. Intermittent “random elements,” such as dog barks and cricket chirps, also help break the monotony and help produce a more textured audio environment. Houge also insists that music should be “interactive,” meaning that there should be a correlation between what you see (e.g., the monster leaping out) and what you hear (e.g., the monster growling). Those who’ve suffered, or rather, been entertained by, bad dubbing can well understand the importance of this principle. 

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Blips and bugs are inevitable in this nascent industry which, unlike the calcified film industry, is still inventing its technique and language. In fact, the industry has yet to really explore the potential of different gaming demographics. 

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Although the primary game audience has tended to be adolescent boys, Houge thinks there’s the potential for a large audience which is interested in “more than just shooting zombies.” [<I>Actually, I regret this rash statement; apologies to zombie shooters everywhere. –Ben</I>] 

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But would the cultured crowd, who would rather take in a night of theatre and a glass of port, really be interested in spending the wee hours in front of the television with a can of beer? Perhaps. Somewhere in the pipeline is an “interactive digital experience” designed to appeal to a new demographic of high brow adults, or what Houge calls, the <I>My Big Fat Greek Wedding</I> of the game industry. [<I>Um, what I was trying to get at with this statement was that there really isn’t much of a viable independent game industry at present to mirror the independent film industry; it’s mostly hobbyists and students from what I can tell, but I think it’s bound to change. –Ben</I>]

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It’s a fascinating concept, but we’re not giving up our season tickets to the opera just yet.
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