It's interesting, because lately I've been realizing a handful of interesting things. My latest comes from the sound area of a video game. As many of you have noticed I'm sure, video game music is a vital part of a game. Thousands of people even purchase the music for listening outside of the game. But the thing that is getting everyone interested is the fact that video game music is getting amazing popularity to the masses. This is done by giving awards away for it at something like the MTV VMAs. There are a lot of music composers who are getting a lot of publicity from all of this. One major person is Jeremy Soule, who has made music for Guild Wars and Total Annihilation, and has won an award for his work on The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Other such artists to note are Nobuo Uematsu, who is now retired if rumors are true, and did music for the ever popular RPG, Final Fantasy. One other composer to note is Martin O'Donnell, who is doing the score for the Halo games. I, personally, have purchased music to all of the above games, including the soundtrack to Need For Speed: Most Wanted, which is more of a different type of music though. People all over the world are buying music from games, and in some cases, this music is even more popular than what you might hear on the radio. Some games decide to use music that is already released, but that is not what I am considering in this subject. Original scores made by original composers is what sets these games apart. I'm still quite shocked when I find an excellent original soundtrack in a game that I like. It always makes me wonder what else that they've done, and gets me interested in their work. As you may have noticed, game soundtracks are also starting to populate very popular means of download, such as iTunes. A couple of months ago, iTunes began to sell the Final Fantasy soundtracks, and I assume since they are still there, that they are quite popular. The question is, will video game music ever become their own genre, or will they still be in the background? I feel that video game music continues to emerge every day, and hopefully, with the increase in everything else that a game is getting with the next-gen systems, from graphics to control to gameplay, that video game studios will not forget about the music in a game, and will continue to make soundtracks that will wow us for years to come.