Inon Zur Interview

Composer Inon Zur (whose most recent works include Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas) has been interviewed by the folks at Game Central about a variety of topics related to his video game composing career. A couple of excerpts:

GC: So when you’re composing music, how much do you take into account that your music will be heard in a video game?

Inon: Pretty much 100%. And basically with video games, the whole media is what determines exactly how the music is going to be heard, how the music is going to be played, and how the music is going to be received. You have got to understand that when you compose music for video games there are way more components to it than just the pure music.

Of course, we would like the music to be as good as it can get, basically. But this has to do a lot with what the video game needs. And if the video game needs just one hit of the drum every ten minutes, that’s what I’m going to give it. Basically, I will first tend to the need of the video game before I think exactly about the music.

…

GC: Are you pretty big into the game music scene, like have you ever been to a Video Games Live concert?

Inon: Oh sure! You know, and they also played my music from Crysis. So I’m involved in concerts; there was a big concert in Australia, they played my music from Prince of Persia and Dragon Age a few months ago. So I think that computer gaming music to the world as a standalone product or art is very important.

Video Games Live was recently near my area, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it to the show. I really need to make it to one sooner or later to see what all the fuss is about.