Composer Stephen E. Cox says the chance to write the music for Farpoint, Impulse Gear's ambitious Virtual Reality game for Sony, was a dream come true because it's exactly the kind of science fiction world he's loved since he was a kid. As he told me, getting the right vibe for the music without relying on the usual clichés was a fun challenge. What sets Farpoint apart from many VR games is its full length story, and the chance to really interact physically with the landscape in the game, which

Olivier Derivière pushes the envelope of how music can be part of a game in his score for the psychological thriller, Get Even. Olivier grew his music organically from the in-game sounds, and as he explained after I caught up with him after his session at the Game Developer's Conference, it took lots of experimentation! Olivier worked with the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra, because, he says, working with the world's best orchestras pushes him to write the best music he can, and he says it

Gareth Coker describes The Unspoken from Insomniac Games, as "Fight Club for Wizards!" This unique virtual reality game gives players a chance to battle each other using incredibly powerful spells. Gareth says he spend weeks experimenting to get just the right palette for the soundtrack, then found the perfect musicians to perform it. Gareth wrote disctinctive music for each of the classes of magicians and lined up singer Mimi Page, cellist Tina Guo, and violinist Bonnie Brooksbank, who both

Austin Wintory' s music for DeFormers , from Ready at Dawn Studios, is a kaleidoscope of iconic sounds of Spaghetti Westerns and circus bands. He said his only direction from the studio was to make it fun, and he did! Austin featured accordion virtuoso, Ksenija Sidorova, and built the music around her incredible ability to get to the heart of the music. In fact, he says she totally made him rethink the kind of playing that was possible on an accordion. DeFormers is an old-school brawler, like

Mikolai Stroinski says writing the music for Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 was the biggest challenge he's had so far. In fact, he wrote two soundtracks -- the in-game music, as well as an album of pop songs that play whenever you're driving through the terrain of the Republic of Georgia. There are lots of tense moments in the game. Surprisingly, Mikolai says writing suspenseful music for "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" helped him get just the right amount of stealthy quietness into his music for Sniper

Neal Acree 's music has been bringing the worlds of Azeroth to life for years! His latest project is a collaboration with Frostkeep Studios and their new game, Rend. He says as soon as he heard the description, it got him thinking about the raw, ancient music of Vikings: Neal tapped Norwegian singer Einar Selvik, from the band Wardruna , and incorporated his expertise in Old Norse, as well as using some traditional Scandinavian instruments, like the kantele and nyckelharpa, and a viola da gamba,

Newcomer composer Lyndon Holland was as surprised as everyone else that his soundtrack for Virginia was given the BAFTA award for Best Music last month! In the atmospheric thriller, his music does much of the heavy lifting, since there's no dialogue, or even reading. As he explains, the music works with the game to help the player get to the bottom of the mystery. Virginia is set in the early 1990s, a time that gave the team plenty of inspiration from such atmospheric, mysterious TV series as

Composer Daniel James was blown away by the music in the first Metal Gear Solid game he played as a kid, and decided that his goal was to work on a Metal Gear game any way he could. He told me it happened a lot sooner than he thought when he was asked to be part of the music team for Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain! Daniel gives a lot of the credit for his success to the tightness of the game composers' community. He says once you've proved your level of competence, the community helps each

After 13 years, Inon Zur reunites with some old friends and meets new ones, as the composer for Benoit Sokal's adventure game, Syberia 3! Heroine Kate Walker sets out on an epic journey to save the Youkal Tribe. Sokal said his inspiration for the Youkals is the nomadic Siberian and Mongolian tribes, which gave Inon plenty of musical ideas, as you'll hear in our conversation. Syberia 3 releases in Europe on April 20th, and in North America on April 25th. Inon says he's proud to create the musical

Winifred Phillips says that when she was just starting as a composer, there was no friendly reference guide to writing game music, so recently she wrote her own! A Composer's Guide to Game Music has been a huge success. I caught up with Winifred after her session about creating tension in music at the Game Developer's Conference. Winifred's award-winning credits include God of War, Spore Hero, Assassin's Creed Liberation and Dragon Front . She says that a side effect of writing the book is that