Let's say that I am building a game with an extensive list of great soundtracks that are so good that they are worth having by themselves. What do you think about the notion of selling the soundtracks on an audio CD?

1) Don't bother.. nobody is going to buy your audio cd anyway.
2) Let the player hear the music while playing and offer the soundtracks for sale on an advert screen within the game.
3) Offer an in-game music menu to let the plyer listen and appreciate the soundtracks and offer an audio CD for sale on the same screen.

I voted for number 3.

I personally think it's a great idea. Even if you never sell an audio CD your game will benefit from having a major point of differentiation ie "that game where you can by the music on CD", also you are adding to the whole "entertainment" experience and mixing 2 disciplines ie games and music.

Alfie

The purpose of providing the music menu is to give the player the chance to hear the soundtrack content of the whole game without having to play each level and fight every mini- and mega-boss. I hope that this will in turn allow the player to appreciate the music even more, paving the way for the opportunity to sell him / her a a re-mastered audio CD.

While I subscribe to the aguments above, some might argue that providing the in-game music menu might be counter-productive to selling an audio CD, or perhaps that the whole concept isn't worth pursuing!

Anyway.. I'm posting the poll to get a feel of what you guys think :)

As long as it's a seperate menu system and does not interfere with gameplay then I dont think there is a problem, they can PLAY the music or the game.

Alfie

I think it's a great idea depending on the game. For example, if you are creating a RPG and you want to have a basic edition and an special edition, you can do like many of the older publishers used to: Offer extras.

One thought I'd like to do in the future is add a novelty item, with CD, extra sound track CD, all in a box for a premium price. I don't think this would work for puzzle games but it used to be a great selling point for adventure and RPG's back in the 80's.

- Leisure Suit Larry used to give you a cocktail napkin from the bar(I still have mine :))
- Ultima had cloth maps and medal icons.
- One game I bought had a book, soundtrack and a poster. I bought it just because of that reason.

Sell the basic game at $19.99 and for $29.99 you get the deluxe set with soundtrack.

Quake 1's NIN soundtrack ended up as a very popupar bootleg, quite expensive too, since they went the pro bootleg distance, and made a cover for it, etc.
I suspect they simply ripped the tunes from the Quake CD, and duplicated.

I'm not sure if there was an official CD of the Quake I music, as I've only ever seen the bootleg in used CD stores, but I've got this half memory of reading something about it... Not sure :)

If the music's any good, I'd say go for it : both publishing a separate CD with full CD quality tracks, and either a winamp (sonique, whatever) plug-in to listen to the tunes from the game out of game, or your own custom little player that allows the same.

If any of you guys are old enough to remember Factor 5's Turrican 2 on the Amiga [cue for nostalgic tears], it had a menu option to allow you to listen to the game's soundtracks. They were wrtten by a really good German artist called Chris Huelsbeck who at some point also wrote movie soundtracks and has published the game's tracks on CD (Kaiko, 1993).

So that's basically the idea that I'm looking into!

I think it's a really good idea and I'm definitely a believer of Deluxe Editions where you give the customer extra materials related to the game. Personally, I think that's how you turn customers into fans of your company. I really think there's a huge value in this (as you'll soon see).

The problem with downloadable only games is that your brand doesn't extend beyond the user's computer. Basically your brand just resides on the Windows start menu or desktop shortcut. But if you actually provide the customer a game CD, music CD, or poster, they actually have something tangible. Your brand actually enters their "real world". They might play your music CD in their car or hang your poster on the bedroom wall. Your brand or company is going to be a lot harder for them to forget. Whereas a downloadable-only product, after the user upgrades their computer or has a hard-drive crash, there's a good chance your brand/company awareness will be lost for good with that customer.

As the others mentioned, it'd probably be tough to have this type of a Deluxe Edition for a puzzle game, but if you're making a RPG, strategy, action, or adventure game then you definitely should explore offering a Deluxe edition with extra materials. It could really help building long-term customers. I know I personally remember the companies/games that came with extras, especially since it's fairly rare these days

Ultima 9 Dragon Edition ( I believe they were calling it that...) came with all the fun Ultima extras -- the cloth map, the Virtue cards, and one new extra:

A CD of the orchestrated music. I never listen to the CD as I always forget I have it, but it is a nice CD with some nice music.

I believe the GTA Vice City soundtrack is available for purchase, though that's kind of an extreme case.

I voted for number three, and have seen this in a few games (perhaps even Tyrian, the old shoot-em-up). though I think number two is equally viable. Having the game be a sort of jukebox seems superfluous to me, as games tend to take a while to load and I don't imagine many people would fire up the game to simply listen to the soundtrack, they'd probably buy the CD before they did that. I would. Having a standalone app with some nice visualizations, though, might be a nice extension to number three.

By all means, if you feel the soundtrack is good enough to sell you can pitch it with respect to the game and even use the soundtrack as a sort of marketting device for the game, though who knows how well that would work.

Up-sell options are always good. And if you only sell a few copies, that's still extra money. After all, you already had all the content, and so long as the price covers cost-of-goods with a nice profit margin, there's no downside.

I say go for it.

-David

"Up-Selling" is the right term actually, I tend to confuse it with "Cross-Selling" :)

Anyway.. the game menu shouldn't take much to load so I don't think the player will be put off firing up the game and going into the music menu.. and well.. it might be another incentive to get a more convenient audio CD :D

You could give the audio away as MP3s and just continue to heavily plug your game. Sometimes you have to give to get.

Sincerely,
Ariel
http://spoomusic.com/

ps: There is an underground community that will purchase good video game music... but remixes are already overflowing for free. Check out vgmix.com or ocremix.org.

If the music is good enough, it's nice to have a CD of it.

The CD soundtrack to Flatspace (http://www.lostinflatspace.com) has been on sale since the game launch in December 2003 and it has sold one or two copies. The game music is in ogg format, so it's quite easy to listen to on a PC, but it's nice to have a CD if you want to listen to music (personally I just don't like having the PC on just to listen to music... maybe that's just me).

I added an bonus track to the soundtrack CD, and extended and/or segued almost all of the rest so people do get something extra too.

Mark
Cornutopia Games
http://www.cornutopia.net

Nemesis,

I had a bit of a revelation: Remixes. If your game already has a great soundtrack, then you could get a bunch of talented artists to arrange the tracks. That CD might sell, kinda like when the London Symphony Orchestra did a bunch of Nintendo tracks. Plus, you get the artists to plug the disc to their network. And of course you give a bunch away.

Sincerely,
Ariel Gross
http://spoomusic.com/