Composing for Independent Games – 3rd Annual Group Chat
Game Developers Conference is a meeting for cool kids in the game industry: designers, programmers, musicians, all them folks. Droves descend upon the unsuspecting sleepy town of San Francisco, bringing with them the mortal sin of networking.
At the past three GDCs, a few musicians have convened for an informal round table discussion about composing for indie games. This year’s discussion was hosted by Emily Ridgway (sound design, BioShock) and featured Daisuke Amaya (everything, Cave Story), Baiyon (art design and music, PixelJunk Eden), Mattias Häggström Gerdt (music, Cobalt), Darren Korb (music, Bastion), Daniel Olsén (music, ilomilo), and Pocket Groovy (music, You Have No Legs).
IndieGames.com published a transcript of the discussion today, and it’s full of all kinds of good stuff: music implementation details, thoughts on the game scene in Japan, and so on. Recommended read.
ER: Do you aspire to do bigger budget or traditional AAA games?
DK: I aspire to have these games become popular. I work with guys who used to work at EA LA, so I know the horror stories of working at large studios. I’ve only known working this way, and I’m sure that if I were to work under the conditions they talk about that I would want to die. Obviously, I’m new to games, so I have no idea whether I’ve been labeled or not, but I want to make interesting things. It doesn’t really matter what it’s called. I just want to make something cool.
DO: When I’m working on a game for a couple of years, I tend to get really tired of it. The fun parts are the start-up and the polish. The other part I could skip. I definitely prefer working on smaller titles.
MHG: I think, like you said, with small games part of the charm of being in audio is that you never end up in-house if you’re just a composer. I bounce between all different types of projects. You have these really short timeframes, but you get to put everything in it.