Here at the Edinburgh International Games Festival and just seen an invigorating keynote by Steve Schnur, head of music for EA.

Basically his pitch is that games are the new medium for the promulgation and promotion of popular music.

A choice quote:

“In a typical EA sports game: songs rotate 2x an hour of gameplay, and games are approx 50 hours of game play. A song featured in fifa will be played 700million times… more than any no.1 record in any country.

Here are my rough notes:

steve schnur – EA head of music
videogames the new rock and roll

some slides paralleling the development of rock n’ roll and gaming, in terms of trends, styles and establishment abhorrence.

rock n roll: cultural touchstone

did i describe rock and roll or videogames?
they are idenitcal twins
fighting the same battles
courting the same controversy.

no matter how old you are you parents will still never understand.

diff between music in cinemas and games – musci upfront as soundtrack in games. games are breaking bands better than movies.

hollywood 2003 = $10b
games = $23b in 2003

55% learned about a new artist through a video game
more than 1/3 downloaded the song after hearing in a game

In a typical EA sports game: songs rotate 2x an hour of gameplay, and games are approx 50 hours of game play. A song featured in fifa will be played 700million times… more than any no.1 record in any country.

mtv generation: the song only becomes real when i see it
game generation: song only becomes real when they “play it”

conversation a few years ago a EA: what if sport games didn’t try and sound like real sports but real sports sounded more like our games. sports now sound like games.

like rock and roll, videogames have defined periods of our lives… social and cultural bond.

paul oakenfold has signed an exclusive deal to score games for EA.

video games will become hte next radio, the next MTV and the next record store rolled into one.