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Game makers now realise the power of music, and employ composers such as Nitin Sawhney to create original scores. Guy Clapperton plugs in
Heavenly Sword
Heavenly Sword, which features music by Nitin Sawhney

In the 1950s and 60s, the likes of Bernard Herrmann and John Barry emerged as serious composers for their work in the movies, and you could buy a favourite film soundtrack on long-playing record, including suites of incidental music. It was a measure of how writing film scores was being appreciated as a genre in its own right, by both movie makers and audiences - and evidence of the vital role scores could play in films.

Computer and video game music might not have reached the same level quite yet, but soundtracks are now starting to get separate releases. Not only that, but composers with established reputations are starting to write them. Take Heavenly Sword, a game for Sony's Playstation 3: rather than opting for stock music, the game's creators brought in the award-winning musician and composer Nitin Sawhney; instead of suggesting he knock something out cheaply on a computer, he was encouraged to use orchestras in London and Prague.

Sawhney is no stranger to movie soundtracks, but writing for the game market is different. He got into it through the actor Andy Serkis, who did voice work for the game. "I don't really play games very much, and it wasn't originally something I'd considered an area I could get into - but I've learned a lot since then," says Sawhney. "You've got a lot of films like Sin City, 300, A Scanner Darkly and even the Lord of the Rings stuff where there's a lot of crossover and cross-fertilisation between the games world and the film world. The processing power in video games has increased astronomically over the past few years, so they're able to incorporate a lot of incredible visual effects and amazing performances." Enhancing the musical score was a logical next step, and the game developer Ninja Theory was up for something orchestral and epic.

The challenges of writing a game score are quite distinct from those of creating a movie soundtrack. In a movie, the writer, director and composer collaborate to create the appropriate mood. The story is linear, and the creators can structure their efforts in a particular direction. In gameplay, though, the lead character might be killed at any moment; there can be unexpected changes of scene and atmosphere. In the case of Heavenly Sword, the makers decided they still wanted the score to flow from one scene to the next despite the lack of a fixed narrative. For Sawhney, writing the music was less like composing than walking through a tree diagram. "You have to create small sequences of music for each possibility [within the game]," he says, "and you have to make sure, in terms of key and modulation and so on that they're compatible, so you can stop at any point and cross over to another scene. Also, you have to provide the individual stems of music, so if they want to fade a part down but keep the percussion going, they can do it."

Sawhney was involved early in Heavenly Sword's development cycle; it's not usually so well planned. Game developers looking for a famous name to give the soundtrack a boost usually have to act more on a wing and a prayer. When the Japanese game developer Capcom was working on Devil May Cry 4, it knew what music it wanted: the popular Japanese band L'Arc-en-Ciel. The game's producer, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, explains that the theme song the band wrote - which only features on the Japanese version of the game - came about almost by chance. "I'd heard that the members of L'Arc-en-Ciel were fans of the Devil May Cry series and they'd been enjoying playing the games a lot," Kobayashi says. "So they already had deeper understanding and interpretation for DMC's world as well as its gameplay, and we didn't need to put so much effort into explaining what DMC's story expresses in order for them to compose music for DMC4." OK, but they must have at least played the game before writing? "Unfortunately, we couldn't get a chance to invite them to our office for them to actually play the game, but we provided them with the movie to show Nero's story and action, to give them better ideas about DMC4."

For some musicians, such as Nathan McCree, writing for games is a springboard. "My degree was in computer programming and I got a job as a programmer," McCree says. "I was working on a music sequencing programme for the Sega Mega Drive; I finished ahead of schedule, wrote some music on it and showed it to the boss. We changed my job overnight." He went on to write the music for the Tomb Raider series, and now runs a company supplying specially composed music for games.

Even though his living depends on writing original music, he is agnostic about the use of stock music to fill out game soundtracks. "It's game-dependent," he says. "For instance, in a racing game, you're not necessarily describing the mood as it goes by from second to second, but with something like an adventure game, when the adventure unfolds and the user is unpredictable, the music has to work and be cutable into sections that work back to back, front to back and so on."

It's the same skill, McCree insists, as any composer needs. "Whenever you're writing a piece of music, you're telling a story: there's a start, a middle and an end," he says. "Obviously, with a story-based game, you're trying to describe the game and characters, leave little clues in the music as to what's happening next."

So will music obsessives come to treasure the works of game composers the way they already value the music of Ennio Morricone? Best, perhaps, to wait and see if the Barbican puts on evenings devoted to the music of Nathan McCree before answering that.

Point Scoring
The groundbreakers in console music

Grand Theft Auto series (PlayStation)
Paul Bennun walked off with a Bafta for his work on the sound for Grand Theft Auto: London 1969, released in 1999. He has nothing but praise for the original way the hugely successful series used music to enhance the game-playing experience. "You stole a car and the radio inside was suitable for the type of car you'd nicked," he says. "So it was funny. Consider how, in a film, you'll put up with music you don't like if it fits the whole piece. In fact, it adds a lot."

Nintendo games
"A special mention needs to be given to Nintendo, who have always understood that games were about play and nothing else," says Bennun. "They went for a playful feel to their music, even when the best that could be done was a couple of simultaneous thin tones. Think about the Mario games - addictive, surreal nonsense. This music would never stand up to home listening. It doesn't work out of context, unless ironically."

BioShock (Xbox 360, 2007)
Although it used mainly stock music rather than specially commissioned work, BioShock was influential for the way it constructed a soundscape, according to Bennun. "Set in an Ayn Rand-inspired dystopia, it mainly used 1950s crooner pop tunes as incidental music, together with a genius original score of menace, suggesting art deco but in a very modern manner," he says.

Okami (PS2, 2007)
Although Okami had a Bafta award-winning score, Bennun doesn't regard it as one of the very best scores musically. What it does, he suggests, is show how the music can work in the context of a game. "¯Okami had great contextual music, seamlessly changing when the player did different things. Out of the system, it would just be a bunch of stabs and riffs."

Halo 3 (Xbox 360, 2007)
Halo 3 is one of the games to have its soundtrack - composed by Marty O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori, and recorded with a 60-piece orchestra - released separately on CD. In the US, the album even scraped into the Billboard 200 chart, at No 200. The game's predecessors in the Halo series have also been noted for their lively scores.