Profile of a Game Composer

MikeT writes "If you have played a game made by Blizzard in the last five years you've heard Jason Hayes' work, from Starcraft, Diablo II, to Warcraft III. His latest position at Blizzard was lead composer on World of Warcraft. Hayes recently left the software company and decided to venture out on his own in the form of Music By Jason Hayes. FileFront profiles his trials and tribulations and his future aspirations."

My favourite composer...

[ActionJesus]

Maybe slightly offtopic, but Im a huge fan of the works of Richard Joseph [mobygames.com].

He's made such great music on the amiga such as Gods, Cannon Fodder, Chaos Engine and more. I even have some of the music from these games ripped into mp3 format.

Re:My favourite composer...

[Dachannien]

To continue the slightly offtopic theme, I'm a fan of Jeremy Soule, [jeremysoule.com] who did music for (among others) Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, and my personal favorite, TES3: Morrowind.

Re:My favourite composer...

[Richie1984]

To continue the slightly offtopic theme even further, I have to commend Nobuo Uematsu for his work on the Final Fantasy X soundtrack. Now there's a guy who knows how to make a good rock song!

Re:My favourite composer...

[wheany]

Laguna's battle theme in FF8 was the best evah!

Re:My favourite composer...

[wheany]

Because everyone loves crappy 80s synth music when fighting monsters.

Maybe not everyone, but apparently I and my friends do.

Re:My favourite composer...

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

Don't forget Total Annihilation. One of the classics as far as computer game music; I still listen to it from time to time.

Re:My favourite composer...

[The Evil Couch]

my vote goes for Timothy Steven Clark [score-music.com], who did the music for Tribes 2 and its predecessors, Tribes, Starsiege and Earthsiege, as well as Aces Over Europe and a bunch of others.

morituri te salutant

[Fëanáro]

Seems like this was one of the guys who made the music for the starcraft broodwar intro "morituri te salutant".
One of my favorite songs, so anything he makes just has to be good :)

you can get it from blizzard btw: bwintro.zip [blizzard.com]
More songs from blizzard here [battle.net]

Re:morituri te salutant

[andfarm]

Where did you get the name "morituri te salutant"? I can't seem to find a reference to it anywhere.

Re:morituri te salutant

[Fëanáro]

The name is just from my flaky memory.
Usenet seems to confirm [google.com] it, but I think i got it from somewhere else

IIRC the song starts with "Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant".
But maybe it does not have an official name at all.

Re:morituri te salutant

[andfarm]

Oh, ok. Thought you meant the title screen music.

Transition to composing movie soundtracks

[dolphin558]

There are a few game composers who I want to see working on soundtracks for films. Joel McNeely(Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire) would have been my replacement if John Williams croaked. I desperately would like to see Koji Kondo(Mario,Zelda) and Nubuo Uematsu(Final Fantasy series) making movie soundtracks. Fortunately there is the case of the Spielberg prodigy Michael Giacchino who scored the Medal of Honor series. He has done work on tv shows such as Alias and Lost and composed the soundtrack for Pixa

Re:Transition to composing movie soundtracks

[ChibiOne]

composed the soundtrack for Pixar's Invincibles.
That would be "The Incredibles" :)
BTW, I think he also was responsible for the music of a Jurassic Park game, though I don't know which one. And I agree, he is a great composer. His work on the MOH games is fantastic.