A Tiny Musical Postmortem of Threes!
My good friends and creators of both Puzzlejuice and Threes (Asher and Greg) wrote up a wonderful postmortem of the latter which you can view on his site here.
I sometimes get credited as one of the creators of the game and sometimes articles mention only Asher and Greg, and while I'm ok with both, I must say that Asher and Greg really are the true architects behind the magic.
Reading Asher's report above was extremely enlightening even for me, and I highly recommend that if you're a fan of Threes, or even just mobile gaming (whether as a consumer or developer) that you take the time to read through the whole thing. Â There's great information in there and I guarantee it will broaden your perspective.
For me, I can say that reading it last night was the first time I'd been made aware of really any of the design process. Â Part of me is a bit sad that I wasn't really included while the discussion was occurring but by no means am I upset or bitter. Â I'm not a designer or an artist, and I'm sure had I been given the option to provide feedback, none of it would have been as good as what Asher and Greg were able to work out between themselves and their developer friends who have a bit better insight and experience than I do.
I attended the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco last week (3/17 - 3/21) and it was a delight to see just how many people there not only play and love Threes, but that of all the other projects I've worked on that Threes is apparently the thing I'm now best known for.
[the cast of Threes. Taken 3/16 San Francisco.]
This is interesting to me simply because I was lucky enough to cut my teeth in the professional video game music industry working under Jack Wall on projects like Mass Effect 2 and Black Ops 2. Â And I'm on the tail end of wrapping up my $62,000 kickstarter project for an electronic chiptune album. Â All of which have music that sounds nothing like what I wrote for Threes. Thus, I typically grin extra wide when people come up to me and say "Oh wait, you're the guy who did the music for Threes!" The tiny game is my biggest credit it seems :) Â And I am ok with that!
Anyway, so back at PAX Prime of 2013 Asher approached me once again and mentioned he was working on a new game and whether I'd be interested in the music. Â "Of course!" was my reply, and that was pretty much all I knew for the next few months. Â Eventually Asher sent me a build, and the game looked nothing like it does now. Â It played similarly, but it obviously wasn't finished yet. Â And since I wasn't really included in any of the aforementioned emails between Asher and Greg, basically the only thing I knew was "ok, it's a puzzle game, and it's meant to be played for a long time". Â Asher has a thing (as do I) for glitchy IDM-type music (Telefon Tel Aviv comes to mind) so I got to work writing something that I hoped would be both non-intrusive and progressive with an overall ambient vibe to combat listening fatigue as well as simply stay out of the way to reduce likeliness of the player just muting the audio. Â There were no voices in the game at this point, and I was not aware of plans to add them in later.
The first draft was pretty good musically IMO and you can listen to it here. Reading both Asher and Greg's initial reactions to it last night was interesting.  Asher is like the best person to work for as a musician.  He's always 200% positive about whatever I send him, but always manages to be objective.  Somehow he manages to send great feedback about things that he likes and doesn't like while at the same time making me feel amazing about whatever I just sent him.  I've had plenty of clients where I felt like they just hated everything I sent them and that can be quite stressful.  I have never felt that way with Asher.
So while I think the song I wrote wasn't bad, I know that it wouldn't have fit well at all into the final form that Threes took on. Â Enter Greg. Â Something was obviously off in my first attempt. Â Decent music? Sure. Â But was it the right music? No, it wasn't.
I was actually surprised to read that Greg initially pushed for no music, and so while I view Greg as a great friend and better game designer, I'm deeply grateful to Asher for holding his ground and insisting that the game needed music. Â That said, I can also fully appreciate Greg's willingness to be open to the compromise, because strangely enough, the guy who initially didn't want music at all ended up being the most responsible for how well the final music turned out. Â As you can read in the email chain from Asher's post, Greg made some suggestions referencing some of the music from Waking Life (which I have never seen, but have a firm desire to as soon as possible).
I was intrigued by this musical direction, but while I like to think that I can reasonably pull off most musical styles given ample resources and time to prepare/research, as someone rooted primarily in electronic and retro/chiptune music such a style was completely foreign to me. Â
I was very unsettled by how intimidating I suddenly found this project.  I was excited at the idea of broadening my musical style, but as I played the game alongside the Waking Life music, I felt like nothing I could write would possibly be as good as the reference material, and that's a very scary feeling for any composer.  Nevertheless, I trudged forward, uncertainly, and eventually sent this draft to Asher along with the following, somewhat self-destructive message.
Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 6:38 PM
Yeah, I dunno. Â Greg's feedback is definitely a very tricky pitch. Truthfully, I am not certain I'm the guy to pull off what he has in mind. Â I'd like to think I'm a reasonably versatile composer, but that stuff is just not something I feel I have the skill to write or the resources to produce. Â Can't be a master of it all :\Â
I spent several hours today experimenting with a similar sound palette and this is what I came up with.  It feels more like the backdrop to a pixar movie than the game to be honest.  I'm not sure where to go from here.  What do you think, what do YOU feel needs to happen with the music?  I have a feeling I'm either under-thinking it or over-thinking it by a large degree.
I paced around and bit my nails for a while until to my great delight I received the following response:
Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 7:22 PM
Dude dude dude this is so good oh my god. This adds so much personality to the game I love it <3 Thank goodness for Greg's input. Looping him in because collaboration.
BTW the game looks something like this now: http://cl.ly/image/3W2u0P1a2A0d Notice that it's waaay less dark.
This part is kind of crazy, but something like it miiight work for some interstitial moments. Like scoring/loading.
This is our bread and butter. I feel like I could listen to this part forever. The piano part feels a little too... strong? It's sort of pushing me to make a move every few seconds, but we want players to feel like they can play at their own pace. I feel like if the piano was toned down somehow it would be perfect.Â
Ahahaha oh man I love it. So happy when this came in. I am super super down for peppering in this kind of instrumental overlay at randomish intervals.
I think this music will totally fit once we start dropping in some cute sound effects for the little dudes.
Do you feel like you could keep going down this track, Jimmy? Because I am super impressed and would love to follow through with this <3
That was like the greatest feeling, to be validated in a work effort that covers unfamiliar ground and makes you feel totally exposed while waiting to hear that first impression.
Anyway, it wasn't all done after that, there were a few more versions, and some things were changed or removed entirely, but while Greg enthusiastically conveyed his initial approval of the new song, it was mainly Asher providing feedback beyond that. Â But that still doesn't diminish the fact that had it not been for Greg then the music almost certainly wouldn't have been as effective as it turned out.
I'm not going to post any more of it, but those emails I shared above are just two of a chain of 92 emails regarding the sound/music. Â And that doesn't even count the skype and google chat conversations we had. Â I later had the pleasure of editing and cleaning up the vocal clips as well, and oh man, there were some funny outtakes of that. Â Notably, how many times Captain Triad says "Avast!" while Sean "Day9" Plott hilariously coaches her through each take towards the "right" one (which to be honest, they all sounded pretty much the same) :DÂ
At any rate, so eventually all the VO was nicely edited and the music was done. Â One of the greatest compliments people have said to me is "dude I hate you because I can't get the music for Threes out of my head!" and while it would normally upset me for someone to declare their hatred to me, they were all of them smiling when they said it, so I can't help but smile back. :)
Anyway, there's probably not as much to be learned from this blog as there is from Asher's, but here's the general takeaway I hope you get.
Asher and Greg are awesome and make great games.
Greg is ultimately (and somewhat ironically) responsible for the music turning out so well.
We all feel daunted by uncertainty but optimism, open-mindedness and hard work seem to be effective remedies.
While great art and great games can sometimes happen quickly, most of the time there's a TREMENDOUS amount of work going into them that the general public never ever sees.
I am tremendously grateful for the opportunity I had to work on this amazing little not so Tiny project :)
I hope you've enjoyed reading this! Â I'll end with this delightful text that I received from my good friend @g_shonk as I was writing it.
