Grant: Idea to Innovation

The aim of this proposal is to improve the use of music in the video game industry by creating intelligent, user friendly software that can dynamically generate aesthetically pleasing music. Traditionally, the focus in game development has been on increasing the realism of graphics to produce a life like portrayal of the action and characters. Only recently has there been interest in significantly improving the musical content in video games. The patent pending software developed at Western attempts to build on this movement by dynamically changing the emotional feel of the music based on developments within the video game. Furthermore, the rich musical texture and innovative pipelined approach to generating music should be attractive to developers that require economical ways of generating music while providing best in class musicality. We have named this software AMEE (Algorithmic Music Evolution Engine) and intend on capitalizing on this catchy acronym through trademarking. The value of AMEE for video game companies resides in the improved musical texture and complexity that would differentiate their product from increasingly similar competitive products. The short term commercialization plan of AMEE revolves on generating industry interest from local video game companies. London, Ontario, has long been a hub of activity in video game conception and is backed by strong academic research in this field, led by Michael Katchabaw at the University of Western Ontario. Montreal and Vancouver have also strong video game creation communities and could also be tapped for licensing and/or further commercialization activities. It is expected that the console manufacturers such as Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo also may be interested in AMEE. Apart from creating the consoles, these multinationals also generate their own video games and may be interested in marketing AMEE to promote their brand.