Watch: How do you soundtrack a video game?
Pump up the Volume.
Game soundtracks are getting standalone releases with ever greater frequency these days, which is great; they lend so much to our gaming experiences, whether we notice it consciously or not, and they absolutely deserve greater recognition.
A number of my favourite albums from the last few years have come from video games, in fact; The Red Dead Redemption soundtrack is a wonderful, evocative tour of the wild west. The superb score for Sunless Sea has soundtracked numerous days spent writing since its release earlier this year, and The Last of Us' soundtrack is a brooding masterpiece from Gustavo Santaolalla.
Another video game composer I greatly admire is David Housden, who soundtracked Volume and Thomas Was Alone. On a more personal note, his music has also provided the soundtrack to numerous Fading Suns gameplay sessions.
Fading Suns is both a pen and paper RPG and a sweeping space opera, allowing for all sorts of weird and wonderful characters. I played as the drunk, immoral space pirate Baron Silas Pullo in a campaign that ran from 2012 until July of this year, and for about half of that time we looked to the Thomas Was Alone score to provide the soundtrack.
I met David Housden a few weeks ago, which was lovely. He is a nice man, has many interesting things to say about composing for video games, and didn't seem perturbed when I started gushing about drunkenly rolling dice and talking in silly voices while listening to his music. You can check out the interview below. Don't worry, I cut out all the stuff about d20 systems and victory points.
