Video Game News - Video Games Live Dares to Redefine Interactive Entertainment, Part 2

Interviews

Video Games Live Dares to Redefine Interactive Entertainment, Part 2

“I think a lot of people's eyes are going to be opened when they see the music and the visuals kind of come together in a live entertainment experience.”

Game composer Tommy Tallarico continues explaining how Video Games Live will redefine and revolutionize interactive entertainment.

GameZone: I think your tour could be even bigger than you anticipate. Things have really changed in the past 10 years. Everywhere I went last year people were talking about Halo 2, and you guys are going to be performing the music from that game. People go on and on about the game's main theme. Now everyone's talking about the Xbox 2 unveiling... Everything is growing. It's getting bigger and bigger.

Tommy Tallarico: I totally agree. Obviously we're going to let all the video game fans know about this. The other thing that we want to get across to the world is, look: bleeps and bloops are not what video game music is. You take some of the pieces from Halo, Warcraft and Kingdom Hearts, and Final Fantasy, and Metal Gear Solid, and Metal of Honor. All of these games have these amazing scores that are just as good as any movie out there today. We want to really open the eyes and create a complete entertainment experience even if you're not into video games because this music so amazing.

You know Final Fantasy. That music's great. You know the Halo music is unbelievable. Once we put this whole package together, with the video, with the lasers, with the choir and the orchestra, you know what? You don't necessarily have to be a fan of video games to freak out about this show.

Your dad is gonna wanna go to it because it's this amazing show that people are talking about. I think that's what's really cool. Because it's not only going to put video game music on the map, but it's going to put the entire video game industry on the map and taken seriously. It's a serious art form and a serious form of entertainment.

I watch the cinematics to Warcraft and that's better than any movie that's out there now. I don't care if Pixar's doing it, or whoever's doing it, you compare the cinematics to Finding Nemo, and as beautiful as that movie is, Warcraft looks better. It's a different style obviously, but you know what I mean. All of these video game guys are producing this content. They're the filmmakers of tomorrow. I think a lot of people's eyes are going to be opened when they see the music and the visuals kind of come together in a live entertainment experience. I think it's going to be super – supernova.

Randy Green (known for his work on the Tomb Raider comics) made this sketch to demonstrate the potential of the event. It was colored by Val Staples (president/owner of MVCreations).

The more you talk about this the more I wish it were a week-long event!

TT: That's our hope. We're launching this now. This is the first tour. Our biggest hurdle is trying to explain what this is. We're starting big, but it's really only a test. 25 shows in U.S. cities is a test. Let's put it this way, if the Hollywood Bowl sells out and if [other venues] sell out, then within days we'll be announcing all sorts of stuff. We want to do 100 shows all over the world. And then we might break it up where one is traveling in Japan, one's traveling in Europe, and one's traveling in the U.S.

The great thing about this is that every year we can switch things in and out. Maybe this time around we have Tomb Raider and EverQuest and Medal of Honor. But then when it comes back six months later, we could have God of War, Fable, and some other newer games. We have 20 segments in our show, so we can easily take some out, add some new ones, this and that. This thing can always evolve. Every year it can be something new.

We're creating the greatest concert event on Earth. Putting the asses in seats – that's going to determine whether or not we can continue to do this forever. We're hoping that everyone's going to be as excited as you are and we are about. By supporting this thing, it's going to enable us to do this for a long, long time.

And it's not about the money. Take the Hollywood Bowl show for example. We're selling tickets for $1. We want everyone to come. We want this to be a celebration. So if a dollar is all you can afford, you can buy tickets for a dollar. If you want the $100 seats, they're available as well.

For us it's all about the community, celebrating the game industry, you know what I mean? It's not about, oh, you've got to have money to come see this thing. No, we want fans to celebrate with us.

It's great that you're doing it that way. Gamers have never been rich people. They save up their money, all their money, for that $50 game.

TT: Yeah.

You had said that you're going coordinate music so that when people playing games on stage, whatever happens in the game, the orchestra will play it live. How are you going to do this? Aren't there a lot of technical issues?

TT: The technology that we're using to do this is totally cutting edge, state-of-the-art. We have some really, really creative ways through use of color and lights on stage with the orchestra.

The conductor is Jack Wall, my partner. He knows this music as good as anyone. We've come up with this system, and we've come up with a way the musicians are going to see the music on the page. There's going to be different color-coded techniques. Of course Jack is going to have the video screen in front of him, so depending on what the player's doing on screen, we'll decide where to tell the musicians to go.

Not all of the segments are going to be like that. There's only a couple that are like that because it is such a huge, technical thing. Plus, some people just want to hear the Halo theme, so we're going to play the Halo theme. A lot of the pieces are medleys of the different games. Castlevania for example, it's not just one song from Castlevania, we're crossing all the Castlevanias.

We want to give the fan everything. So you hear stuff from the original, you hear stuff from Dracula X. Same thing with Final Fantasy, Mario or MYST. You're not just going to hear MYST III, you're going to hear MYST I, MYST II, MYST III, MYST IV and a little bit of MYST V maybe.

That being said, there's also pieces where we just play a song. EverQuest II for example, you'll be hearing the main theme. We sprinkle it all over the place. Some have choir, about half of the performances have coir, about half of the segments have lasers and video. We have about four or five sections with live actors on stage; a couple of them are interactive. Some of them have big drum/percussion additions. Japanese music is represented just as much as the American music. We really covered all the bases. We put together 20 segments that gamers are going to freak out for.

This is one show you aren’t going to want to MYS.

You've got some really big games on the roster. How hard was it to convince the game companies to let you perform their songs?

TT: That's a great question, and I gotta be honest with you, that's what took us three years. Imagine me calling up Midway and saying, "Hey, we're going to do this retro arcade classic thing." No one's ever done anything on this scale before. The Final Fantasy concerts are great, I've been to every single one of them. But they're more classical in nature. They don't have a lot of video. It's more about the music. Obviously the music's fantastic so they can definitely get away with that.

Our show is different from theirs. Theirs is more of a classical presentation. Ours is like rock 'n' roll meets symphony meets Cirque Du Soleil meets a live interactive video game all going on at once. It's a different level of entertainment.

Are you planning any surprises?

TT: Yes. We've got certain famous people who are going to show up at certain venues. Game makers, some of the very popular and famous game creators from all of the world will be popping in during different shows. Different musicians in different areas. Different video greetings via satellite from certain actors and actresses and musicians and CEOs of companies and video game designers.

We want to have, before our events, we want to create an atmosphere where fans can meet people like Shigeru Miyamoto and game composers and game designers. Stuff like that. These people are going to be at the events. Not at every event, but at certain events there will be different surprises.

I hear you have an interesting story to tell about how you broke into the game industry.

TT: I moved out to California when I was 21. My whole life, all I ever wanted to do -- my two favorite things growing up were music and video games. When I got out to California the only thing I knew was Hollywood. So I showed up at Hollywood and Vine, took a look around, and was like, "What the heck is this place?" It didn't look how it looked on television (it was kind of dumpy). The only other thing I knew was Disney Land. I literally stopped a bum on the street and asked him where Mickey Mouse lived. I figure he [Mickey Mouse] had to live in a pretty cool place. He pointed me down to Orange County. So I drove down to Orange County, and as I go in I see the palm trees and the beaches and the beautiful girls and the fancy cars. That was more of what I envisioned California to be like.

I was homeless. I was sleeping under the peer of Huntington beach. I picked up a newspaper the first day I got out here and I saw a job for selling keyboards at Guitar Center. I went down there the next day and they said okay, you're hired, you start tomorrow. This was 1990. I was wearing a Turbo Grafix t-shirt to work on the first day. Back when nobody had video game t-shirts I had video game t-shirts. I was a freak about it.

The first customer who came in, the very first person I waited on, happened to be a producer for a brand-new video game company called Virgin. He saw my shirt, we struck up a conversation, and I started there the next day. So I was in California three days and I was in the video game industry. That was 15 years ago and I've worked on over 250 games since then.

It's crazy. I've worked with all the masters. I worked with Miyamoto on Metroid Prime (sound design). I was the original sound designer for Tony Hawk. Earthworm Jim, games like Aladdin on the Genesis. For that time they were very new and unique and groundbreaking.

I've been lucky enough to know a lot of people in the industry and they keep coming back if you do a good job for these people. It's kind of like John Williams writing music for George Lucas and Star Wars. You do a great job and they're going to keep coming back. I've been very fortunate on that side, but it was all kind of crazy...it was like the stars were aligned and being in the right place at the right time.

As soon as I got hired at Virgin, the first game I worked on was Prince of Persia. I was hired as a video game tester originally. They were just starting the company so I would bug the vice president of the company everyday, "Hire me, hire me to do music! I'll do it for free! If you don't use it you don't lose anything!" Prince of Persia came up, everyone was really happy with it, so they hired me full-time as the music guy.

The first big game I worked on was Global Gladiators on the Genesis which won an award for best music of the year. So for my first year in the industry I won that award. It was really cool. It was an awesome experience being involved in the game industry way back then and seeing it grow and mature to what it is today. It's been quite the adventure.

When did you finally get to the point where you were financially stable enough to start your own studio?

TT: I was at Virgin for four years. Then in 1994 is when I did my very first video game soundtrack album. It was the very first time a game composer had released a worldwide video game soundtrack. I released it on Capitol Records. It was called Tommy Tallarico’s Greatest Hits Volume 1. I had music from Cool Spot, Terminator, Global Gladiators, and some other games I worked on. It was the first time it was ever done. They did a lot of magazine ads. I had interviews and I was on MTV and CNN and Entertainment Tonight.

What happened after that is I would get a bunch of calls from all the different gaming companies. [They were like], "Oh my gosh, we want to hire you!" EA called me and they wanted me to work on Madden. My friend David Perry, he left Virgin and was working on Earthworm Jim and he wanted me to work on that. I decided at that point that I should start my own company and go to work for all these people. So the transition occurred in 1994 and that's when I signed Madden, I signed Earthworm Jim, I a big deal with Playmates to do all their games. I signed with Capcom to do a game. I was doing games with Virgin as well. I was working with everyone at that point.

Video games have come such a long way that it makes me wonder: what level will we be at five or 10 years from now?

TT: I think that over the next five years... The thing to remember is that the game industry is still so young. We're kind of like the wild wild west right now. It's really incredible to be a part of it.

How many times in your lifetime can you be in on the ground level of a completely new form of entertainment? Like the film industry was in the 20's or like rock 'n' roll and television was in the 50's. Video games are that thing of the 21st century. It's really a privilege and an honor for me to involved in something that's changing pop culture. It's changing entertainment. What I think is happening – I'm 37 years old. I grew up on video games. I was weaned on Space Invaders and Pac-Man and Intellivison and Atari.

When I grew up, I never stopped playing games. So I think what you're seeing is now that my generation of people are having children, what you're seeing is kind of this evolution of video games. It's evolving into our culture. The next President of the United States might be a video game player. So what I think is going to happen is that there's a whole generation of people over 50 that never grew up on games. They know them because their grand kids play them or maybe because their children play them. I think what you're going to see is that games are going to be taken a lot more seriously as a form of entertainment and pop culture.

Everyone goes to the movies. Your grandmother goes to the movies. Your aunt goes to the movies. Your little sister goes to the movies. But all of those people I just mentioned don't play video games. Your grandmother probably doesn't kick your ass in Halo 2, though if she does I'd have to make fun of you [laughs].

No, no, of course not. She’s never even touched an Xbox controller before!

TT: I think that's where you're going to see the change. I think over the next five to 10 years you're going to see video games be played by everyone because it's part of how they grew up.

Thanks Tommy for such an entertaining interview. Your passion for games and dedication to this concert assures us that it’ll be nothing short of a breathtaking event. I can’t wait to see it.

Video Games Live – Tour Dates (ADDITIONAL SHOWS ON SALE NOW!)

Wednesday, July 6 – Los Angeles , CA – Hollywood Bowl – 8:00 PM

Thursday, August 11 – Atlanta , GA – Chastain Park – 8:00 PM

Saturday, August 13 – Holmel, NJ – PNC Bank Arts Center – 8:00 PM

Sunday, August 14 – Camden , NJ – Tweeter Center – 8:00 PM

Wednesday, August 17 – Toronto , Ontario – Molson Amphitheatre – 8:00 PM

Friday, August 19 – Bristow , VA – Nissan Pavilion – 8:00 PM

Monday, August 22 – Boston , MA – B of A Pavilion – 8:00 PM

Wednesday, August 24 – Cleveland, OH – Tower City Amphitheater – 8:00 PM

Thursday, August 25 – Columbus , OH – Germain Amphitheater – 8:00 PM

Friday, August 26 – Cincinnati , OH – Riverbend – 8:00 PM

Saturday, August 27 – Chicago , IL – Northerly Island – 8:00 PM