Are any of the games that you synchronized to music in the tradition of the early Disney cartoons?
There's some synchronization of music, of course, yes. It wouldn’t be a Disney cartoony game if we didn’t do that. But the more interesting thing about the music to me is it's dynamic in some interesting, unique ways.
I worked on a Wing Commander game back in the late 80s that actually changed what tune was playing based on whether you're in combat or exploring or not. Almost every game does that now, and we do it, too. For every place you visit, there is a different set of tunes, and we change those up based on whether you're in combat, exploring, in imminent peril, etc.
We do the dynamic music adjustment. But in addition, we're tracking your play style. So, if you're a character who’s just sort of erasing everything you see, going for the most efficient solution to the problems and not helping people along the way, we're actually changing the music in each zone based on that. If you're being a super helpful guy or a super efficient guy, we change the music. The dynamically changing music changes based on your play style, in addition to the situation, which is kind of cool.
Talking about music, can you quickly touch upon the composer who did the score?
I love talking about Jim Dooley. I had in my head this idea that there's a Disney sound. It's not like Sleeping Beauty from 1937 sounds like Enchanted from a couple of years ago or Lion King or something. But you can close your eyes and listen to a Disney soundtrack and know that it‘s a Disney soundtrack.
I'm not enough of a musician to know what it is that makes Disney movies sound like Disney, but there's something. I auditioned about a dozen composers. Some of them are really, really good and some of them are really close to getting it. I said, “Give me the Small World tune. You know, ‘It's a small world after all,’ that one.” I said, “Give me that, but turn it inside out.”
So, it's sort of recognizable but different. Then I said, “Give me a Mickey Mouse theme that sounds “Disneyish.” I narrowed my choice down to two or three when a sample CD came across my desk. I thought: it's too late, I don’t have time to do another test.
Then I looked at it and it was Jim Dooley, who is probably the best. He’s done a bunch of game works, but he is probably best known for the TV series Pushing Daisies, which my wife loved. So I listened to it. I would sit on the couch playing a game or something on my handheld while that show was on and I would hear this music, and I loved it. I said, “Oh my god. I’ve got to try this guy out.”
He won an Emmy Award for best original score for Pushing Daisies. I gave him the test and he sent it back and he nailed it. I swear this is the best music I’ve ever had in a game. You don’t have to agree, but I love the music. I listen to it for fun all the time. It’s spectacularly good.
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