Ben Houge has been composing music for about 12 years now. Recently, he got involved in creating music for Sierra On-Line. You can hear his work right now in Leisure Suit Larry 7, or you can wait around until King's Quest 8 is released to hear his most recent efforts.

VGD: What type of music do you listen to in your spare time?

BH: I listen to all kinds of things, classical, pop, jazz, whatever.  Current discs in heavy rotation on my CD player include Elvis Costello, Bjork, James Brown, Joseph Schwantner's Percussion Concerto, Weather Report, and the former Prince.

VGD: Is there any particular type of music that you prefer to compose?

BH: I've at least attempted to write in most of the styles of music I listen to.  I enjoy writing pop songs because they're short and self-contained, like little sketch books where I can explore an idea quickly and move on.  They're usually in a synth-pop idiom, with some jazzy chord progressions thrown in here and there.  Writing a larger scale classical piece brings a different kind of satisfaction, since it has different limitations and is generally more involved.  My classical pieces tend to show the influence of minimalism distilled through people like John Adams.  The type of music I write for games is generally somewhere in between.  Electronic music is particularly interesting to me.  Recently I tried my hand at writing a country song (it would probably get me lynched in certain circles).

VGD: Why did you want to become a game musician?

BH: It's an interesting compositional challenge to write music to accompany something else, a collaborative art, as opposed to just a stand-alone piece.  I've written music for dance, and a bunch of pixels moving around on computer screens isn't all that different.  Plus there's the challenge of the indeterminate length of a computer game; you never know how long someone's going to stay on a given screen, so that forces one to take the interactivity of the game medium into account.  With games I get to help tell a story, in much more detail than is possible with music alone, and it is entertainment, after all, so it tends to be pretty light-hearted.  It's an awful fun way to earn a living, and it's taught me a lot about composition!

VGD: Where do you see video game music in the next ten years?

BH: It would be nice to present game music at the 44.1 kHz, 16-bit CD standard for digital audio.  I would imagine games will probably be on DVD by that time, and perhaps we'll even be able to fit 96 kHz!  (Hopefully PC speakers will have evolved to allow gamers to appreciate the difference.)  It's also possible that more intelligent ways of actually including computers in the creation of music will have evolved, perhaps along the lines of Tod Machover's hyperinstrument research at MIT, with the goal of allowing the average untrained person to truly interact with the soundtrack and derive creative satisfaction from the music making process.

VGD: Tell us about the soundtrack to King's Quest 8. Do you incorporate elements of the soundtrack to previous games into your work?

BH: The music for King's Quest 8 is really fun to write. I'm attempting to retain the heroic aspect of the music as set forth in previous games, as well as its medieval associations.  At the same time, this game taps some non-Western musical traditions that give it a pretty unique sound.  No themes from previous King's Quest games are directly quoted in Mask of Eternity, but I think fans of the series will notice an aesthetic kinship between, for example, Cassima's Theme by Mark Seibert from King's Quest V and my Sylph Theme; or the Mask of Eternity Main Theme, by Kevin Manthei, and the main theme from King's Quest V, also by Mark Seibert.

VGD: How much freedom are you given when you have to compose music?   So they say "make it sound like this, but different", or do they let you have a lot of freedom?

BH: They've given me a lot of artistic freedom on this project, as well as on Larry 7.  Usually I'll discuss exactly what we're aiming for on a given scene with the producer, Mark Seibert, and once we share a common vision, I'll come up with something.  (Mark is also a musician, as mentioned above, which has been a great help.)  Of course, Mark or Roberta still have the final say on whether or not a certain piece of music is working in the overall scheme of the game, but generally they are very supportive, and my first idea usually sticks.

VGD: Are there any genres of music that you would like to hear more in video games?  If so, which ones?

BH: In general, I think music for computer games (and, for that matter, film) would do well to be a bit more forward-thinking. Rather than writing something that sounds like Mahler, why not try something genuinely new?  I think there are late-twentieth century styles of music that would serve very well to compliment the late-twentieth century medium of the computer game; for certain titles I could see doing something along the lines of John Zorn, Philip Glass, or Laurie Anderson quite effectively.  Having said that, I realize that there are certain circumstances in which a more traditional approach works best, as in Mask of Eternity, for example, since this is a game set in the past.  Even so, I'm trying not so much to write medieval music as medieval music filtered through a modern perspective.

Instrumentation is also an area that has room for development.  As a synthesizer player, I'm all for keyboards and synthesizers in game soundtracks, but at the same time, it's great to see Quest for Glory V using a live orchestra for their score.  And I think it would be wild to do a computer game score for string quartet or a similar small acoustic ensemble.

If there's something I'd like to hear less of, it's bad techno/electronica.  I have nothing against the genre, and I've even been guilty of it myself on occasion.  The problem with it is that it's really easy to do poorly, as evidenced by far too many games out there, particularly in the racing vein.

VGD: Lounge music - after Leisure Suit Larry, do you love it or hate it? :)

BH: I'd have to say that I don't really consider much of the music in Larry to be "lounge music." There's a lot of classic music that goes along with the whole cocktail culture phenomenon, in jazz and other idioms; I think it's more of a throwback to a certain sociological classification than a musical style of its own.  It's great to see some of that experiencing a resurgence, and some of it is probably best left in the past.  But in Larry, where all manner of cultural anachronisms are dredged up in service of a cheap laugh, nothing's off limits, and it's hard to hate that!

VGD: As a video game musician, do you get much chance to play live?

BH: Well, no, not as a video game musician (I'm trying to imagine someone sitting on a stage in a club, playing Leisure Suit Larry 7 while I provide live accompaniment).  I definitely see my strengths more in the realm of composition than in performance.  I would like to get out and play more, although it's difficult to do so while King's Quest is in full swing (at least, that's my current excuse).

VGD: What do you think to the concept of getting 'big name' musicians in to do music for games?

BH: I'm not aware of many projects in which getting a big name musician has significantly bolstered sales or improved the overall gaming experience.  It has been my observation that the big names cost an awful lot more and seem to get by with contributing less.  The fact of the matter is that there are plenty of very qualified musicians out there, lots of them more qualified than the "big names" due to the very fickle nature of fame, and most of them can work for less, as they don't have Lamborghinis to maintain.

VGD: Which Hanna Barbera cartoon would you most have liked to do the theme tune for?

BH: That's a toughie.  I'd probably say the Jetsons; love that lydian mode!  In the realm of cartoon music, I admire Carl Stalling, who wrote a lot of Looney Toons music, and Alf Clausen's wide range of work on the Simpsons.

VGD: Thanks!