Hi, I’m Dr. David Luis Ortega, I’ve composed music for mobile games like Where’s My Water, MyVegas, and Tetris Block Puzzle, and for companies like Ubisoft, Playstudios, Disney Interactive, and Dreamworks, and here are my 7 deadly sins of Mobile Game Music.
1 - Loops that are too short
In a 10 minute session, a 30 second loop will repeat 20 times, a repetitive recipe for instant boredom. 1-2 minutes usually works, if the music has an interesting internal structure.
2 - The audio cuts off during game transitions
This makes for a disjointed experience: It’s 2025 - adding musical transitions to bridge the gap when going from the main menu to the main play field is not rocket science. Do it.
3 - Your music is constantly playing
If your music is loud and incessant, your player WILL turn it off. You might as well not have any music. Use silence or periods of lower energy to keep it fresh and give their ears a break.
4 - No sonic brand
Everyone knows when you start a Supercell game, because they have a sonic brand. When your game is loading, you have an opportunity to do a little split second advertising - don’t leave money on the table.
5 - You don’t have a strong theme song
Without it, you can’t quote little motifs throughout the game soundtrack to tie everything together in a strong musical identity. Want your game to get stuck in your players’ heads? Music is the best way, and you do that by having strong themes.
6 - You’re not musically rewarding players
When players win or do something you want to reinforce, use the strong themes you’ve hopefully created to blast them with a quick dopamine hit, and they’ll be back for more.
7 - Your music is bad.
Yeah… that’s all I have to say about that. This is a pretty easy problem to solve - give us a call and you’re pretty much guaranteed to not suck. www.liortega.com
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