Torchlight Music Interview

A four-page interview with Runic Games’ Matt Uelmen is up at Gamasutra, during which the video game composer is quizzed about his previous career at Blizzard Entertainment, the contributions he’s made to Torchlight, his musical influences, and more.

How did you approach writing material for Torchlight, which had to clearly reference Diablo without simply rehashing it?

MU: It was a little tricky, just because the games do have so many similarities that it’s hard not to make a lot of the same choices. I really couldn’t judge if I was successful. I’m sure some people found the music way too derivative and referential to Diablo, and other people didn’t feel that way.

But it was really different to just sit down at the piano. I tried to write a relatively strong basic melody first, so hopefully that makes it significantly different. The actual melodic structure is actually a lot more conservative than [Diablo’s] Tristram in some ways. It’s more of a traditional progression and melody.

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Similarly, I was speaking to [Runic co-founders] Max and Erich [Schaefer], and they were saying how strange it was to be showing Torchlight at PAX last year, and then across the hall seeing this huge Diablo III banner.

MU: I’m sure it will be great. It will be interesting in the next few years to see how viable single-player is as a genre. That’s the real challenge. I think Torchlight was so successful because we marketed it so cheaply, and we depended on the good will of any potential pirates out there — you know, keeping the DRM on the light side, and trying to make it easy and convenient. That seemed to be relatively vindicated.

But it’s hard to do that with a big game. Blizzard may be one of just two or three companies that can really do a viable single-player game and doesn’t need to monetize it beyond the box. It’s really hard. The more you go from a $5 download to a $50 box, the harder it is for the average player to resist the temptation to grab it from a torrent. That’s the dynamic you have to fight with.

Of course, the math doesn’t always pencil out. If you want to spend $10 million or more developing a game with that level of content, you can’t really have the pricing scheme we had for Torchlight. Torchlight was really only successful in the context of the time and the money that went into it.

It’s a shame. I feel, in a lot of ways, it’s a bit like the Busby Berkeley era — you know, the big MGM musicals that had their day, and those old big bands that used to barnstorm across the country with 20 or 30 pieces.