Korea

The last place Tommy, Jack, and the VGL team visited before coming to Dallas was Korea for the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational, where StarCraft II was announced. The reports came in, along with video, of a stadium full of people cheering and screaming for the new game. But Tommy said that wasn't expected by many of the people there. "So everyone in Korea, they were telling us, 'the Asian culture doesn't really scream and get as loud and crazy as the Brazilians and people in the U.S.' ... And the crowds were crazy! And then those same people would come up to us after the show going, 'Oh my God! I've never seen a reaction like that, they don't even cheer like that for U2!' So it was pretty cool."

The Symphony

The group that performs the music changes at every venue, it's not one symphony traveling across the country. The show is really an agreement between Video Games Live and the local symphonies to bring this music to the public. But do the symphony members enjoy it? "The symphonies always get a kick out of it as well, because as much as I love Stravinsky and Beethoven, and Mozart... Beethoven's my boy, but people don't scream and cheer for Beethoven when they come to a symphony they way do for Mario and Zelda! So they always freak out, and after the show the symphonies always come up to and are like 'Oh my God, when are you guys coming back? That was awesome! No one's ever given me a standing ovation for my oboe solo in Zelda.'"

And as the show is performed more, more symphonies hear about the reaction from the crowds. "I'll tell you, the symphony world, it's a small, tight-knit community. The reason we're playing here in Dallas tonight, for two nights... We've never even been here before but they wanted us to do two shows, right out of the chute! Normally you go to a place, you play once, and if it does really good, they have you back and they do two shows the following year. We started with two shows in Dallas, the reason for that was because last year in Houston when we did a sold out show there, the Dallas Symphony was down there, and they talk to each other. And then Houston will talk to Indianapolis, and the Indianapolis symphony talks to the National Symphony. Once they see the show and see how cool it is, and how different it is, and how unique it is ... that's when it all comes together."

Going to the Dallas show, how good of an experience is it? "I've got to say, we've played this show about 30 times now, we're coming up on 30 shows, something like that. And the Dallas Symphony, I would definitely put them in the Top 3. And I'm not just saying that because I'm here in Dallas, they're not here, they're not over my shoulder. You see no PR people..." And the choral members? "The choir is probably the best choir we've ever worked with," says Tommy. "They just nail everything. We were blown away."

The Future

After seeing a show with both old classics and fairly recent titles being performed, including music from Halo 3, anyone would begin to wonder what the future holds for Video Games Live. Tommy sees a lot of potential. "every single year we keep growing and growing and growing. The first year when we launched this, 2005, we did three shows. The second year we did 11 shows. This year we're doing about 40 shows, so you can see every year it's just getting bigger and bigger."

"Every year we team up with E3, well now it's called the E4 convention, E for All Expo, so we're going to be playing there the next couple years in L.A. right there on site. We go down back to Brazil every year, each year it gets bigger and bigger. Last year we played two shows in Brazil, this year we're trying for six, we've confirmed three. Of course all over Europe, this year we're playing Spain, New Zealand, London again, all over Canada, Calgary, Vancouver. So next year you're going to Seattle, you're going to see Vancouver, you're going to see Los Angeles, we always play at GDC, the Game Developer's conference in San Francisco. Next year we're doing China, we're doing the Sydney Opera House in Australia, these are the kind of places that we're looking to conquer next year."

And when you talk about the video game music industry further down the road, Tommy Tallarico is even more encouraged. "We're the first generation to grow up on video games. Now that our generation is starting to have kids, you'll see it evolving in our culture. Anyone 40 and under I think gets it, understands video game music is great. As this generation starts to get older, you're talking 10 to 15 years from now, we're going to have a President of the United States who grew up playing video games. And I think it's all gonna change. The people in the orchestra are going to be people who grew up playing video games, eventually. So I think it's just a matter of time and continuing to do things all over the world."

Tommy is also hoping to bring more attention to the industry through another project he started several years ago. "I founded the non-profit organization called the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.). We have over 1200 video game composers, audio people, sound designers, etc. in that organization. When we started that, that's when we really started to see it change, where we all kind of came together, and educated the publishers and educated the developers about how important sound and music is. [It's] Something I've done my whole career, but I wanted to share that information with the rest of the gaming community."

"Is there room for improvement and bigger budgets? Absolutely! People always say 'Do you get upset when a film composer does a game soundtrack?' I'm like 'Hell no! Bring 'em on!' John Debney just did Lair, Danny Elfman worked on Fable, Bill Conti did the Godfather last year, Howard Shore's working on SUN. So absolutely, I want those guys in there." He's hoping that bigger names will bring more attention as well, and expects "in five or six years we're going to be on the same level as film composers."

Video game music has evolved a lot from the simple bleeps and bloops of the original Pong, but a lot of people aren't aware of the artform it has become. Video Games Live is slowly changing that perception, and pushing the industry to make better, more engaging music. With enthusiastic people like Tommy Tallarico at the forefront, the video game music industry is sure to eventually get the attention it deserves.