Sweet Sounds of Project Gotham Racing 2

It’s 1:30 a.m., and I’m hanging out at New York City’s legendary music club CBGB waiting to slip my business card to a band I just saw named “Digger.” CBGB is long and narrow, and making your way to the stage through a packed crowd is almost impossible. Over the deafening sound of the next act, I pitch Project Gotham Racing® 2 to a member of the band. Like everyone I talk to, he’s excited at the possibility in being in an Xbox game. Two years of these conversations, talking to everyone from indie bands in Seattle to major label suits in L.A., have helped to make the PGR 2™ car stereo experience the most realistic thing you’ve ever heard in a game.

Getting the Music
The first step, after consulting with Microsoft Game Studios music sourcing expert Peter Davenport and with Seattle DJ John Richards, was to reach out to the music industry. Indie artists, indie labels, major labels, publishers, friends—I toldeveryonewho would listen that we needed music, and everyone had something to send. Within a few weeks, thousands of CDs were stacked in my office. People stopped coming in for fear of being crushed beneath an avalanche of jewel cases.

The music for PGR 2 had to satisfy certain criteria. Is it up-tempo and fun to race to? Is it different from other music in the game? Is the production quality good? Will it be easy to license? Is the subject matter appropriate? Is it from one of the cities featured in the game? And finally: Is the song any good? There’s a lot of bad music out there, and I’ve heard most of it, but there’s also a lot of really great music to be found, and we were able to showcase it in our game.

The first version of the game, Project Gotham Racing, had 65 songs. This new version features more than 250, including artists from every country in the game—the most artists ever featured in a Microsoft Game Studios game. I handed off the list of songs to our hard-working licensing department, and I began to focus on the DJs.

Car Stereo
With the car stereo, we could expand on the realism of the vehicles and environments by having real music play on real radio stations with real local DJs. However, recording three local DJs in 11 cities around the world was a huge challenge. After calling Microsoft offices around the world and soliciting their recommendations for radio stations, we got our friends at Universal Records to provide us with radio station data from all over the world. We created a list of stations and DJs we wanted to target, but then we realized we had a big problem: We spoke only English. It was time to find some bilingual help. Exequo, a game localization company based in Paris, took on the task of helping coordinate some European recording sessions, while Moscow was coordinated by a Russian partner. Due to SARS concerns, Hong Kong was recorded with real Hong Kong DJs living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Xbox Japan handled the recording for Yokohama, and Bizarre Creations—the game’s developer—handled the recordings in Edinburgh.

After we found our stations and DJs and made sure that no two stations played the exact same list of songs (though most songs play on more than one station), I provided the DJs with scripted banter about everything from the weather to the time of day, along with information on every band that the DJ was to talk about. Finally, each script was translated into the language that the DJ would be speaking. We had voiceover recording sessions happening all over the world, around the clock.

When all was said and done, we had 7,000 DJ lines recorded. Microsoft Game Studios’ Andre Hoth mastered the files, while Bizarre Creations designed a clever audio engine that plays the DJ and music files to sound like real radio. The DJ talks over the music but never over the lyrics; the music is lowered when the DJ is talking; and there’s even real compression on the audio files to make it sound like radio!

This was easily the largest, most complicated project I’ve ever been involved with, but we’re very happy with the results. When you listen to the radio in the game, you really get the sense that you’re in one of the international cities featured in PGR 2. Now that the game is finished, I’ve cleaned out my office, and I’m able to see the floor. It’s a welcome sight.

By Fred Northup, Content Lead and Licensed Music Supervisor