Posts tagged with “Steve”

Vincent Diamante and Steve Johnson are two of my favorite people. They are the two sound geeks behind the music in Flower, and they are VERY good at what they do. Here is a talk they recently gave on using sound and music to create narrative in that game, and it’s a really cool listen! They discuss influences, how they went about creating music on a shifting project with an abstract goal, and what interesting things they did to make the game sound awesome. And considering that Flower is (in my opinion) one of the best sounding new games out there I’d say they did a great job?

Yes, this is only the first 8 minutes of an hour long talk. Wanna watch the whole thing? You can catch it the full talk (chopped up into 8 sections) here.

SEMI-RELATED TANGENT TIME!

1. As long as we’re talking about video game music, does anyone else think that the Bionic Commando Rearmed soundtrack was extra awesome?

2. I’d like to point out that in addition to being a composer nerd Vincent is also has a kick ass blog on photography, food, and anything else interesting that comes to mind. Definitely a fun read.

Welcome back to part 2 of the series on GDC 2009. While the last post covered some of the more interesting sessions from the Game Developer’s Conference., today’s post will focus on some of the more interesting people I had the pleasure of meeting. While you may not recognize all of their names (at least not yet), these are the guys and girls and who are doing new and exciting things in games. Perhaps unsurprisingly they are all independent developers and academics who are truly trailblazing new areas in gaming.

Alex Austin, Cryptic Sea
There are a large number of us who try very hard to make serious games that teach users real life skills in a fun way. Then there’s Alex, who just does it on a regular basis. He’s the brilliant mind behind Bridge Building Game (which eventually turned into Bridge Construction Set), a fantastically fun game in which you have to build suspension, draw, and railroad bridges over rivers and pits using real world physics. Alex isn’t stopping there though, and is currently hard at work on a new game… set on the moon. The premise is pretty simple, you’re an astronaut in a lunar lander, and you’re trying to take off from the moon and rendevous with the lunar orbiter so you can return to Earth. The catch? Limited fuel, a moving target, and a nasty case of gravity. It’s not enough to simply aim at the orbiter and go, you need to estimate where it will be, shoot ahead of it, and hope that you can meet up. The game sounds like a lot of fun, and will be available on Steam (hopefully soon!). The best part is that the game is just going to be part of a six pack of small, bite sized offerings, though I personally hope they all involve space, rockets, or bridges.

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