Is there a lucrative career in video game music composition?
right now there are about 4 people making a lucrative career out of it. right now game music doesn’t have royalties, so it’s a flat fee, or commission to provide the music without any residuals. Many people who do game music also do film or TV music, it’s a similar process. if the game industry grows more there may be more demand and more money in it, it’s possible that when the game industry shifts to Blue-ray discs they’ll want to fill up the extra space on the disc, and this could mean more money into game music.
There was a similar question recently about video game music and the short answer is “yes, but…” The musicians union in LA (i.e. the studio / session players and recording engineers, etc.) recently added a section on video game royalties, as the video game music (VGM) scene is finally gaining recognition and the musicians want to get paid residuals for their hard work. With the LA guys finally acknowledging VGM’s importance, I think that’s a positive step in the right direction. Many game studios will require you not only to write music but to do audio engineering. This will require a fairly extensive home studio setup – most of the job applications require all applicants to have a good chunk of the recording equipment themselves. Bring portfolios / samples of your work to the video game industry shows and get in good with smaller publishers to get your foot in the door. There are only a handfull of big name composers (Koji Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu, Matt Uelmen, etc.) but if you’re very
