Enthusiastic animal lover Jason Graves jumped at the chance to create the soundtrack for Moss, a virtual reality game created by Polyarc Games . He says he was brought in so early in the process that there was only concept art and a few videos of Quill, the lovable but fierce mouse heroine of the story, but he knew immediately that he wanted to write the music for her epic adventure! It's your job as the player to help Quill solve puzzles and fight tough enemies, and right from the beginning, it

Creating an immersive experience is the number one goal of studios that make virtual reality games, and that extends to the music, too. I talked with composer Winifred Philips at this year's Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco about how she approaches writing the music for VR games that run the gamut from tense first person shooters like Scraper to the cartoon-style Fail Factory . In our conversation, Winifred told me that just like any other game, the implementation of the music in a

A lifelong love of science is the spark that galvanized composer Austin Wintory to mount an ambitious Kickstarter campaign to bring his October 5th concert "A Light in the Void" to a worldwide audience. Austin teams up with Emmy-nominated filmmaker Tony Lund to create a unique concert experience that features a massive orchestra and three internationally renowned scientists. Austin told me he wanted to share the same wonder and emotion of science that it gives him.

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is described by its creators, Dim Bulb Studios, as "a bleak American folk tale." After losing a bet with a mysterious character (voiced by Sting), you criss cross the country in search of stories, which become a currency you trade with the interesting characters you meet on your travels. Composer Ryan Ike told me that the Depression-era setting, and the chance to create a soundtrack that's a patchwork of iconic American music was too good to pass up!

Writing music for games is a dream that Nikola Jeremic has worked very hard to achieve. After winning several music and audio design competitions, and contributing additional music for games including Destiny 2 , Nikola got the chance to score a game on his own. He says he combined his admiration for the music of Vangelis as well as Paul Ruskay's music for Homeworld in his OST for Starpoint Gemini Warlords . Nikola says he's very grateful to the team at Little Green Men, the studio behind

March 2 through March 4, game music fans and performers will gather in the Twin Cities for the annual VGM Con , a celebration of all facets of video game music! As Thomas Spargo, the Con's creator told me, there'll be a lot to enjoy, including panels by special guests Jason Graves , composer of Lone Echo, Far Cry Primal and The Order, 1886 , and Rich Vreeland, better known as Disasterpeace , whose credits include Hyper Light Drifter and Fez. Thomas said the inspiration to start this convention

Although it seems like a simple platform game at first, Celeste actually is a brutally difficult journey of self-discovery for Madeline, the main character, as she bravely faces challenges climbing the namesake mountain. Composer Lena Raine had her own set of difficult challenges writing a soundtrack for a game that turned out to be quite different than she expected. Lena told me she drew on her personal experiences of dealing with depression and anxiety to give her music an authentic, heartfelt

With several earlier Star Wars games under his belt, composer Gordy Haab was ready to take on a new challenge: creating an iconic theme for the new character of Iden Versio, who has an incredible story arc in Star Wars Battlefront II. In our conversation, Gordy shared an exclusive cue of battle music that's never heard in the game! Writing music for a new character was Gordy's opportunity to add to the Star Wars canon, and he found ways to extend and modify Iden Versio's 20-second theme so it's

Matthew Carl Earl's music for Honor of Kings, created by China's Tencent Studios, has been heard by tens of millions of players. A North American version of the game, Arena of Valor , launched in December 2017. In our conversation, Matthew said writing music for Tencent's games is a dream come true because he gets to write music for games he'd love to play! The Chinese version of the game features iconic Asian characters. Matthew told me as he was scrolling through the new characters for the

More than four years after it was finished, Music of the Spheres , the prequel suite for Bungie Studios' game Destiny by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori, was released in its original form – by a pair of devoted fans on Christmas Day 2017. Now that the authentic version of Music of the Spheres is out in the world, for the very first time Marty is able to talk about the theme-rich suite he and Mike wrote to put the creative wheels in motion for Destiny's development team. Once Bungie had