Sound's Good

A series of special Game Developers Choice Awards for 2007 have been announced... and there's one for Wing Commander veteran George "The Fatman" Sanger. The man responsible for some of the most recognizable video game music in history has earned the "Community Contribution Award", detailed below:

The Community Contribution Award is presented to a developer who embodies the spirit of community and encourages improvement among peers. George "The Fatman" Sanger, music and sound designer for more than 250 games, including LOOM, Wing Commander, The 7th Guest, NASCAR Racing, Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo and ATF, will receive this year's award for his development of programs that enrich and encourage advancements within the interactive audio community and industry in general.

Sanger has been creating music and other audio for games since Thin Ice for Intellivision in 1983. In 1991, at the first Spotlight Awards, the Audio award went to Sanger's Wing Commander, and one of the only other two nominees was Sanger's LOOM. At various developer conferences, Sanger has hosted "Demo Marathons" to allow game producers to be exposed to the music of many musicians from all over the world in a single sitting. His writings in his Music and Computers Magazine column, "Ride the Wired Surf," were meant to promote ideals and attitudes that would lead to better music on computers. On the edge of the Canyon of the Eagles over the Colorado River, Sanger hosts both the annual Texas Interactive Music Conference and BBQ (Project Bar-B-Q), the computer/music industry's most prestigious and influential conference. Based on 11 successful years of influencing and galvanizing the audio and technical community at BBQ, in 2006 Sanger hosted the first Project Horseshoe, an intense think-tank aimed at solving game design's toughest problems. Sanger's book, "The Fat Man on Game Audio: Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness," is less a technical work than a treatise on the benefits of living creatively and treating people well.

Nobody Respects Tomb Raider

Take for instance the cinematization of Wing Commander a series of games whose major strongpoint was the gripping storyline that played itself out in a series cut-scenes as you progressed through the games. You grew to care about the characters, brought to life in later installments by such wonderful actors as John Rhys- Davies and Mark Hamill, as they battled alongside you tooth and nail( or mass driver cannon, and heat-seeking, missile as the case may be) against the relentless Kilrathi, while each dealing with the harsh realities of war in their own ways. The story driven action is what made the Wing Commander games a hit, yet when Wing Commander the movie arrived in theaters the storyline followed in the games was completely discarded and replaced by a helter-skelter plot about a long lost tribe of discriminated space navigators and a one dimensional, evil alien, crew obsessed with getting their paws on a human navigational computer. None of the games’ actors were even present and those that reprised their roles came off as second rate at best.