Game Music Town composer Andrew Napier wins 2017 Scorbit’s Video Game Scoring Contest

Contestants had to create a 30-second piece of music in the form of a seamless loop, broken into three different layers so that when three layers are played simultaneously, the composition of music is at its maximum intensity.

This Layering technique is very common when scoring for games, as this allows for seamless integration through the gameplay experience and it allows for extra layers of music to come into play when more intensity is needed based on the actions and events within the game. These layers, also known as stems, can become active or passive depending on what might be happening in the game and how the playable character responds to specific actions.

The music composition had to be written based on concept art, which is also reasonably common when writing music for games. Whether the concept art is of characters, environments, a storyboard or just different elements, these illustrations will give the composer a rough idea of what to work with and is an ideal way to bring inspiration when development is still at an early stage.

For this contest, the looping piece of music had to be written based on the concept artwork, “Promise of Adventure” by Michael Ackerman, an illustrator and art director who has worked on multiples games such as Assasin’s Creed Syndicate, Far Cry 4, Faeria and Full Throttle Remastered, to name a few. You can learn more about Mike Ackerman at his website www.mikeackermanart.com

To listen to Andrew Napier’s winning entry as well as the entries for the 10 other finalists, visit the contest page at http://www.scorbit.org/contest/