Music Muffled in Star Wars Game

Players can play Wookiees or bounty hunters and even musicians -- like those in the cantina band from the original Star Wars. 

As musicians, the characters play pretend, virtual instruments like the slitherhorn, ommni box or the nalargon, but are limited to a handful of canned tunes. Lawyers at Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts envision a legal nightmare if musicians were to re-create music copyrighted in the physical world.

"If we allowed someone to play anything they want, they could play a song by Madonna and then we'd have licensing issues," said Julio Torres, a producer for Star Wars Galaxies at LucasArts. "We don't want to give them the option to try, because the bottom line is, if we open that gate, they will go through it," he said.

Torres said the company also wants to keep the game consistent with the Star Wars environment. "To have a player in our game create a song that is Jon Bon Jovi or Metallica would throw people out of the fantasy," Torres said.

But players say making music would add to the fantasy and make the game more fun. They just want more freedom to innovate.

"We'd like to be as creative as we can," said Jonathan Mendez, who has been a "musician" in SWG for more than a year. "I personally have some music background and I would like to be able to use that to make some music."

The role of musicians in the game is to help other players recover from battle fatigue and lift their spirits. Combatants visit a cantina to listen to music and receive a "buff," which gives them added mental strength.

The ability to make their own music has been an issue from the early days of the game, said one former player(swg credits).

"The entertainer and musician community had been wondering for a while why it is that they couldn't make their own music," said Brian Srivastava, a computer science student from Peterborough, Ontario. He said it was a top issue when the game was first developed in 2003.