Far from the bleep-driven online game soundtracks of yesteryear, French composer Olivier Deriviere is decided to assist craft the audio sensation of a medium he believes remains to be discovering a voice of its personal.
Deriviere’s twin passions for music and gaming have pushed a profession creating music for massive-selling video games together with Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed”, typically managing tasks equal in scope to a movie soundtrack.
“I think we need to get away from the reflex that we need to look at our ‘big brother’ cinema and say that we’re going to do the same thing,” Deriviere instructed AFP.
“If you compare what video games offer in artistic terms, it’s vast compared to the cinema or theatre,” he provides.
Deriviere’s private journey with video games started very early in life.
“I’ve never left the house without a console since I was six years old,” the 46-year-old says.
That ardour has borne him as much as creating music for one installment within the massively common “Assassin’s Creed” sequence, or million-selling “A Plague Tale: Innocence”, launched by Asobo in 2019.
But his present venture, “South of Midnight” by Canadian developer Compulsion Games is “my biggest creation yet,” Deriviere says.
The tracks he performs again borrow their sound from the American South setting of the journey recreation, set for launch on April 8.
More than 100 recording classes have gone into the work, break up between Nashville within the US, London’s legendary Abbey Road studios and the composer’s personal workspace within the Paris suburbs.
Deriviere loved “a musical childhood” rising up in Nice together with his businessman father and choir-leader mom.
“When I was five years old, I was getting into U2 and Pink Floyd thanks to my dad, while my friends were listening to French songs,” he remembered.
It was on the identical time that he was first uncovered to video video games.
“The day someone first showed me a Commodore 64 moving a pixel around, it set off a revolution in my brain,” Deriviere mentioned.
He went so far as studying to code in order that he might write music on the machine.
Deriviere struggled to search out his area of interest, making false begins into a number of music and computing programs earlier than securing a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music throughout the Atlantic in Boston.
A daily on the metropolis’s Symphonic Orchestra, he struck up a friendship with John Williams, author of soundtracks to many Steven Spielberg films and the “Star Wars” saga.
Deriviere says that the movie legend turned an “example” for him, educating him to be affected person.
Back in France, his first work on a recreation got here with 2004’s “Obscure”, developed by a small studio.
Since then, he has labored on round 20 releases together with the mega-blockbuster “Assassin’s Creed” sequence.
“I got started in a tiny little room. A computer, two speakers and that was it,” he remembered with a smile.
Now in demand from worldwide builders, he employs six folks in his 300-square-meter studio.
Percussion fan Deriviere clutches a pair of drumsticks as he wanders from the recording cubicles to the enhancing suites to maintain up with a number of tasks, a few of that are nonetheless beneath wraps.
But in his spare minutes, he permits himself a couple of rounds of tennis recreation “Top Spin” in a room full of consoles going again a long time.
“I’ve always played, I’ve never stopped,” the composer says.
For Deriviere, creating a chunk of music has two phases: first writing a rating, however then integrating it into the sport to mirror the participant’s enter.
The second activity would usually be tackled by a recreation’s music designer, quite than the composer.
But “I do both”, Deriviere mentioned. “Since I play video games, I understand this language and that’s an advantage.”
In “South of Midnight”, Deriviere is attentive to the actions of protagonist Hazel, accompanied by a choir of women’ voices, in addition to growing the tracks related with the huge creatures that inhabit the sport’s universe.
He is not a one-trick pony, having composed the music for 2023 horror film “The Deep Dark” and for an episode of TV sequence “Star Wars: Visions”, in one other tie again to mentor Williams.
But linear film-making cannot hold him away from the “unique experience” of video games for lengthy.
“It’s up to us to bring new experiences to players,” Deriviere mentioned.
© 2025 AFP