Metronome: the metrognomes

Metronome is a promising title in development for the Playstation 3. The game is said to rely on sounds, combinations of which help you progress through the world of Metronome and defeat various enemies. What really sparks my interest in this is the 'micro-scoring' that might be involved, a la Troels Folmann's efforts in Tomb Raider: Legend. I got in touch with Troels to ask about his connection with the Metronome project. Posting the entire email correspondence seems more like an invasion of privacy than anything else, so I'll keep things to a few brief lines -- that way things will stay consistent with my usual motto of conversation, "Anything we discuss is strictly between you, me, and anyone else I tell."

Micro-scoring is something I invented for Tomb Raider and some of our next-games. It is essentially about breaking a musical score into tiny components, which is a delicate and time consuming effort. The end-result is similar to the experience you have in a motion picture, where the score compliments action and/or interaction.

I recall the quip about mixtapes back in the heyday of the walkman, "People are creating soundtracks for their lives," and micro-scoring doesn't seem that great a departure from this. That said, it is a delightful innovation for digital entertainment because it means the sound can be integrated into the very digital 'bits' of the media. Presenting sound effects and music in this way makes the soundtrack more haunting. Given that the sound of wind blowing leaves from a tree doesn't materialise in quite the same way as the visage of leaves falling from a tree, it seems reasonable to suppose that the integration of sound into the minutiae of digital media reduces the distance between the activity of consumption (ie playing the game) and the appearance the media. Rather than the mise-en-scene having an atmosphere, micro-scoring seems to deliver a cinématique to the mise-en-scene by drawing a tight association between place, movement, and purpose (ie where in the level you have progressed to, what you are having your ingame persona do, and why you are doing anything at all with the ingame persona).

Unfortunately the project is stil in a somehow frozen condition

It would be a pity if Metronome didn't appear on the PS3 or another next-gen system because the idea of playing through sound and sonority promises a future development in the structure of interactive narrative design: the formula for a 3rd-person rpg based on sense data that moves away from the optical bias common to almost all videogames. I remember the most terrifying moment I experienced when I started playing games on my home PC was when I finished Doom. Suddenly I was stuck in a pitch black room suffering damage and unable to escape. Even when you used some invincibility code and managed to slaughter your attackers, there was nowhere to go, nothing to do. In short, Doom revealed its ceiling to me and the only thing I could understand as signifying movement was sound. Sound presented me with the nightmarish situation.

I think Schopenhauer would have liked this integration of soundtrack and media. Especially because in his theory of art, it is music that has the most direct access to the will (of man) because it is an objectification of the Will (of existence) through the meager perceptions of humankind.