Video Games Live has been touring since 2005, bringing professionally performed video game music to people all over the world. Created by award-winning composers Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, the goal of the concert has been to raise awareness and appreciation for video games and specifically video game music. The show was performed for two nights in Dallas on June 20th and 21st, 2007, and we were able to talk with Tommy Tallarico about how it's been going, and what the future holds for the show and the video game music industry as a whole.

Video Games Live

"I think it's going well, I think we still have a long way to go, but we're not slowing down at all and we're gonna keep going until the world is convinced, " said Tommy. It's hard to avoid being caught up in his enthusiasm, and you can tell that the crowd really gets into the show. Gamers obviously make up a majority of the audience at nearly every show, 70-80% according to Tommy. But it's the non-gamers that prove how well the show is going. "They're the ones most blown away," says Tommy.

"I think it's going really well because whenever we play a show, the most e-mails and letters that we'll get together tomorrow after the show tonight will be from the non-gamers, will be from the people who never played a video game or used to play video games. The comments are always like 'Wow! I never knew video game music was that emotional and powerful. I never knew the visuals were so amazing, and the characters and storylines were so deep. Thank you! Now I understand why my kids are so much into video games, thank you!'"

But what goes into a show like Video Games Live? "We have a million things we have to do in order to prepare a show like this. The logistics are just absolutely insane crazy." With synchronized video segments, lighting, and of course sound to monitor, it's completely understandable. "Knowing the affect that the music and the presentation's going to have on all the people here tonight, gamers and non-gamers, makes it all worthwhile."

There are even segments that are interactive with the symphony. Frogger is played by audience members, and the symphony provides the soundtrack, changing at the same points in the game that the original soundtrack did. During rehearsal the symphony was having a little bit of a challenge. "I know, it's crazy. And that's with the white lights all turned on. Tonight they have lights going crazy in their face and flashes and fog and special effects, and they're trying to focus on the music. We just put them through the ringer unfortunately, but they get a kick out of it."

Coordinating all the segments and setting up in new venues constantly sounds like a lot of work. But Tommy Tallarico wouldn't call it work. "Oh, it's all fun. I wouldn't do it if it wasn't fun. But everything I've done in my career, I mean I've been composing for video games for 17 years, and I'm really passionate about it, and if you call it work, I 'work' 7 days a week, 20 hours a day right now. It doesn't seem like work to me, none of this does."

Brazil

Video Games Live has been performed around the world with symphonies in England, New Zealand, Spain, and recently Brazil. One might expect the reaction to be less in these places, but apparently not. "We went down to Brazil, and I gotta tell ya, there were more gamers, and more excitement around this thing down there than anywhere else we've ever played in the world," says Tommy. "Brazil was so crazy. They were so loud, they were chanting so loud that our front of house mixer Matt couldn't even hear the symphony, he couldn't hear! He's like 'I hope it sounds good,' because they were just chanting in his ear and screaming. It was like a soccer match to them, it was great. They were chanting 'Mar-i-o, Mar-i-o!' They were chanting like crazy, it was great!"

But Brazil is largely ignored by the mainstream video game industry, so it's unusual to hear about this kind of reaction is a place that isn't even a blip on the radar. But Tommy can explain. "The reason is, quite frankly, because it's all black market down there. There [are] no figures, there is no tracking of numbers, because for all intents and purposes, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft don't even distribute hardware down there. Yet there's million of systems that they get in on the black market, that they ship in, and all of the software is completely illegal. So none of the video game companies spend marketing dollars down there or even attention down there, why would they? Why would Sony run a TV ad when they know they're not going to make any money, because people are going to basically black market everything."

"When we went down there, they freaked out, they flipped out. For the first time ever the video game industry was paying attention to them." And many people will see this reaction when the DVD of the Rio de Janeiro show is released later this year.

next... Korea and the future of gaming...