PHOTO: Rudy Koppl

Spectrum: Are there technical differences in composing for a game?

JD: I would say structural differences. The technical sides are pretty similar, in terms of the way the music is presented or the way the music is recorded. But structurally, a video game is much more of a big puzzle. You have to write pieces of music that can fit with other pieces of music that are disparate from what you intended. There's a distinct art or a technique in video games that one has to observe too. It's more segmented. For one thing, it's used in a much bigger time frame. A gaming title—let's say it's 82 hours of game play. One has to bear that in mind as a composer.

With a film, you write a given piece of music, and it's supposed to be in a given place in the film. And it will lead chronologically into another piece of music. Gaming is horizontal and three-dimensional—you've got to make some music work as the game changes. You have to make sure that your music can change with what's happening in the game. In other words, it's a different technique of writing. The game is much more of a 3-D puzzle; in the film it's more of a linear, chronological approach.

Spectrum: I go to a lot of movies, and I hardly play games at all, so this is probably a naive question: Are there aesthetic differences as well? In a movie, frequently you're setting a mood or evoking a mood or some other moment in the film because of an emotion. Does the same thing happen in a game, or is it more narrative and action-oriented?

JD: No, that's a great question. I think the lines are blurring. We're finding that for a lot more games now, instead of a lot of action and no narrative, you're getting a lot of narrative. In Lair, the game I did, there are many more set dramatic moments and pieces and areas of the game where you sit back and watch these little minimovies playing in front of you. They give you the context of why you're going to go into battle or what the circumstances are that have led up to a given set piece. I think that's wonderful.

Again, the lines are getting very, very blurred. Many of these newest games that are coming out, these minimovies, though they're only a few minutes long, are really quite sophisticated. They have a wonderful score, they give you the characters, you're introduced to the world and the conflicts within that world. So by intent, the video-game designers want this to be more of a visceral, filmlike experience. That's a wonderful thing, because it adds depth and dimension to the video-game experience. It's getting much more filmlike!

Spectrum: So, correspondingly, film music used to lend itself much more than games to individual songs that could be released on a CD or even broken into the Top 40, and not so much for games. Is that changing too?

JD: Yes. As they're getting more sophisticated, games are going to need more, as it were, real dramatic scoring. Now you've got love stories and back stories and political intrigue stories. I think again, it makes it more interesting, more fun for the composer, and potentially a better listening experience.

There's been a wonderful advent of gaming concerts, which are becoming hugely popular—which, by the way, hasn't happened as much in the film arena. Guys like Jack Wall and Tony Telerico are presenting game music on the concert stage, and they're wildly successful. I just think it's a tremendous thing, and the film business could take note.

That's one example of where—and I hazard to say this—but I think the video-game community as a whole is where a lot of the more imaginative people reside right now. I think that's just a fact. When you look at the fare that Hollywood is producing and then you look at some of what the video-game community is producing, it's quite different in terms of just the sheer imaginative quality of the product. That's something that Hollywood really needs to look at, and I think they are starting to do that.

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