Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Deeper Video Game Radio

While playing through the campaign of the videogame, Saints Row IV I was impressed by the music selection found on the various radio stations accessible from vehicles in the game.  The songs that were chosen by the developers are quite enjoyable and diverse, unfortunately the game is limited to a single albums worth of music per station.  One way for gaming company's to increase the available music to the game, without increasing their licensing costs, would be to integrate real world and internet radio stations into the game environment, so long as the game is connected to the internet.  For games that are attempting to have quite thematic stations, the game would integrate with digital music services like Pandora and Spotify to create radio stations that are based on the games offline playlist.  Alternatively during the install process of the game could ask users where they are in the world and would attempt to access any radio broadcasts that are shared online, and provide the option of integrating said media into the game in real time.  A third option, find or create an open radio station software package that allows for gamers to share their music selection from anywhere in the world, by making the standard open, any game could share its music experience, for larger games, ex. EVE online, various factions could produce music and media that could more readily integrate with the game directly, minimizing the potential for programs causing each other to crash.

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