Fall Artwork: Invaders! Possibly from Space!

Invaders! is my Fall beer cap photo art. I have no idea if anyone actually gets as much interest out of these as I do, but I think this is my most visually interesting set to date.

Blogs of the Round Table: These are the Soundtracks of our Lives

I added Corvus Elrod's Man Bytes Blog recently to my feed reader, having been lead there via one of his Escapist articles. He's a consultant working towards narrative in games and every month he "hosts" a round table discussion of blogs on a given topic. This month's topic These are the Soundtracks of our Lives was too hard for me to resist not giving my few copper monetary units on the subject, and I probably have too much to say here.

Game music really seems to be the defining soundtrack of my life: I love it, I listen it to too much of it, and it's hugely influenced how I approach games. I don't think I have anything too life shattering to say about any of this, but maybe I'll touch on something that might be of interest. I'm going to keep this semi-informal and not do too much research, so correct me if I make a mistake or let this lead to your own voice in the conversation.

First, let me show you a little bit of how much Game-related music I listen to. In my last.fm top 25 artists overall (of 3-Jan-2008) alone you can see the following game-related/game-influenced artists: Machinae Supremacy, Jared Emerson-Johnson, Celldweller, Nine Inch Nails, Freezepop, Starsiege, Jack Wall. There's more scattered in there, but I'll leave that as an exercise.

I would probably have even more game music that I listen to in my "normal" music listening sessions if a) I found good compilations, b) I didn't fear damaging the overall experience in separating some games from their soundtracks, and the obvious c) I had more money to spend on music.

I think games are particular blessed with a wide swath of ...