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Journey composer Austin Wintory nears expulsion from AFM
Seven months after the American Federation of Musicians threatened Grammy Award-winning composer Austin Wintory with a $50,000 fine for recording the soundtrack to The Banner Saga against regulations, the music union has issued an official fine of $2,500. Despite a looming January 19 deadline, Wintory refuses to pay. "Doing so would be to agree that their failed policies, selective tactics and threats work," the composer told Variety. Instead, Wintory claims his lawyers are examining the options available to him should the AFM make good on its threat to boot him from the union. As a further snub, Wintory claims he will write a check to the Education Through Music - Los Angeles charity "where the money can be used toward building on dreams instead of destroying them." When the AFM first notified Wintory of the potential $50,000 fine he faced for not following proper union regulations in recording music for a game, the composer was defiant. "Ultimately I don't think this is about me," Wintory stated. "This is about what's right. This is about composers and musicians being able to work in a medium that we love without fear of threat and intimidation, and it's about the next wave of musicians and composers who want to get into this business and dream of working in games, who shouldn't have to fear being attacked." [Image: AFM]
Journey composer says new AFM contract won't solve 'intimidation-based culture'
Earlier this week, the American Federation of Musicians threatened Journey composer Austin Wintory with a $50,000 fine for creating music for a video game. Wintory's actions were allegedly in violation of a contract enacted in October 2012, but a new agreement between the AFM and Microsoft is changing the rules, at least for the house that Bill Gates built. Variety reports that effective immediately and until December 2016, Microsoft will be able to use composers who belong to the AFM, so long as they adhere to a scale wage agreement of $300 per musician for a three-hour session. According to AFM president Ray Hair, the new contract "allows the game publisher to record a track, use it for that video game, throughout the franchise and across all platforms for that franchise." Wintory expressed his thoughts on the new contract via Twitter, stating that, "There are DEFINITE problems with this contract but if even ONE session emerges from [the contract] it's a substantial step up from the last two years." Wintory also believes that the contract will not get rid of the "threat and intimidation-based culture within the union." You can listen to the theme Wintory has composed for the upcoming Abzu via SoundCloud. [Image: American Federation of Musicians]
Music union threatens Journey composer with $50K fine
The American Federation of Musicians has threatened Journey composer Austin Wintory with a $50,000 fine for working on video games, Wintory explains in a video. AFM President Ray Hair and a committee enacted a video game recording contract in 2012 that bars union members from working on new projects in the games industry. The contract was passed without a vote from union members, Wintory says. Wintory composed the score for The Banner Saga, and days before the game launched, he received a letter charging he worked against union regulations and threatening a $50,000 fine. Wintory has been vocal online about his stance on AFM's anti-gaming contract.
Dive into ex-Journey art director's new game Abzu, only on PS4 [Update: Trailer]
Development studio Giant Squid and publisher 505 Games will take players on a journey underwater for their first game, Abzu. Get it? Journey? Because Giant Squid is the studio formed by Matt Nava, the art director for PS3 hit, Journey. Abzu will arrive exclusively on PS4. The game will also feature the talents and music of Austin Wintory, whose score for Journey earned him a Grammy nod. Update: 505 Games clarified in a subsequent press release, found after the break, that Abzu will launch in 2016.
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Austin Wintory takes inspiration from Banner Saga's exhausted warriors
Austin Wintory doesn't like manipulating people. He could, pretty easily, if he wanted to, because he's a gifted musician with a knack for creating evocative music, but he doesn't have any interest in forcing you to feel a certain way. His approach to scoring a game like The Banner Saga is less about the obvious and more about the subtext – opening a door to an emotional space and letting you decide whether to walk in or not. Which sounds pretty high-minded for a game with giant warriors sporting goat horns, but that's just what's on the surface. Music's job lies in subtext. "The game should already be, for example, sad," he explained to me at DICE. "My job is to make you understand why and add a sense of stakes and weight to what's happening, not to try and make you have this base understanding that 'Now it's sad!' as if you would have missed that." Wintory, who admits to having worked on "not so good" movies, acknowledges that his job as composer is "a lot easier to do" when he's given excellent material to work with. Journey, he said, was so brilliant that he barely had to do anything. He could just "go in there and play" (and get nominated for a Grammy). Stoic Studio's The Banner Saga was similarly inspiring, but first he had to figure out the right way to handle its turn-based-strategy nature. He did at least know what he didn't want to do with it. "How to score the actual turn-based-strategy combat was a big question mark for me," Wintory said. He didn't want to take the same musical route as Banner Saga's most obvious recent comparison, XCOM, which featured fast-paced music. "All due respect to XCOM, I wanted to be the exact opposite of that, where I'm doing this, trying to contemplate the best strategy and I'm hearing pop-pop-pop-pop-pop that's like wailing away telling me 'Isn't this exciting?'"
Funky free roguelike Soul Fjord out now, exclusively on Ouya
Soul Fjord is now available on the Ouya store. Developed by Airtight Games, the rhythm-action game stars an afro-sporting viking named Magnus Jones, who is hacking through enemies to get to the afterlife nightclub Valhalla. The developer describes its gameplay as "an extreme mash-up of rhythm game meets dungeon crawler with a roguelike twist," so death in the Norse mythology-based world holds some permanence, as seen in the game's launch trailer. Soul Fjord is free to download and supported by in-game purchases. Airtight previously launched first-person puzzler Quantum Conundrum for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Creative Director Kim Swift also served as co-creator of Valve's hit puzzle-platformer Portal. If that's not enough star power for the funky game, its soundtrack comes from Grammy-nominated Journey composer Austin Wintory.
Hit List Q&A: Journey composer Austin Wintory
In the "Hit List" from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the video game industry's top talents describe their current gaming addictions, their most anticipated releases and more. This week: Austin Wintory, Grammy-nominated composer for games such as Journey, Monaco and The Banner Saga. Grammy-nominated and two-time BAFTA-winning composer Austin Wintory's diverse career has straddled the worlds of concert music, film, and video games. In 2012, Wintory's soundtrack for the hit PlayStation 3 game, Journey, became the first-ever Grammy-nominated video game score, also winning two British Academy Awards, a D.I.C.E. Award, a Spike TV VGA, and IGN's "Overall Music of the Year," along with five Game Audio Network Guild awards, and a host of others. Austin's score for flOw made him the youngest composer ever to receive a British Academy Award nomination. An orchestral version of this music has been performed at the Smithsonian Museum as a part of their "Art of Games" exhibit; flOw is currently on display at MoMA in New York City. In his upcoming 2014 D.I.C.E. Summit session titled "Music's Rising Tides," Wintory offers his effusively positive outlook on the future of music in general, particularly in games. He contends, through a look at both history and the rapidly changing present, that music's best days lie ahead, and that it is not a hindrance to progress that anyone can whip up a half-decent tune in about 5 minutes ... which he will do while on stage.
Thatgamecompany's flOw swimming to PS4 next week
Thatgamecompany's flOw will launch next Tuesday, December 17 on PS4, Sony Santa Monica announced in a PlayStation Blog post today. The port of the artsy aquatic indie game will cost $5.99, with its lone DLC priced at $1.99. Developed by Jenova Chen and Nicholas Clark as a Flash game in 2006, the game was ported to PS3 in February 2007 by thatgamecompany as the developer's first release with music provided by Austin Wintory. Chen and his team went on to develop Flower and Journey, the former joining the likes of flOw, Sound Shapes and Escape Plan on PS4. All four games are Cross-Buy compatible, so owners of any one version of the respective PS3, PS4 or Vita games will have access to the other ones as well.
Beatbuddy breaks out the turntables this summer
Beatbuddy has been jamming on its own for far too long, and it's finally ready to share some sweet tunes with the world. Beatbuddy is coming to PC and Mac this summer, but first it's stopping off at PAX East, in booth 1048, to show some hands-on demos.Beatbuddy is a musical platformer, featuring levels and enemies synced to the individual rhythms of entire songs, all of which are manipulated as you travel throughout the worlds. One level is put together by Grammy-nominated Journey composer Austin Wintory.Play the demo on Steam, for free, if this news alone doesn't set your toes tapping.%Gallery-183260%
Let Austin Wintory guide you through Journey's soundtrack
We absolutely adore the soundtrack to Journey, but going through the complete score with composer Austin Wintory's commentary proves that guy experiences music on a level we'll never understand.
Journey art director opens new studio, first game to include music from Austin Wintory
Matt Nava, former art director for Journey and Flower, announced that he will be opening a new game development studio, Giant Squid. Nava teamed up wth Los Angeles television and film company Ink Factory to found the studio, and will serve as creative director.Nava is joined by Nicholas Clark, who assisted in developing Journey, Flow and Flower and will act as an advisor to the developer. Grammy-nominated Journey composer Austin Wintory has signed on to score the music for the first Giant Squid game, according to the developer's official site. It's unclear if Wintory will join the team on a permanent basis.
Journey soundtrack loses Grammy to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Austin Wintory's composition of thatgamecompany's Journey soundtrack earned him a Grammy nomination in the Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media category, an accomplishment Wintory was shocked to achieve. It marked the first time a full video game score was recognized by the Academy, following Christopher Tin's win in 2011 with the song "Baba Yetu" from the Civilization 4 soundtrack.Last night, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross took home the Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, for their The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo music. Wintory took the news in stride on Twitter, congratulating Reznor on the win."Obviously I didn't work on #JourneyPS3 hoping to win a Grammy," Wintory later tweeted. "The entire point was the game itself and that's gone beyond my wildest dreams." Journey won the top honor at the DICE 2013 awards and we were fairly fond of it as well. Good work, Wintory.
Journey composer Austin Wintory lends a friendly hand to Beatbuddy
Beatbuddy is a platform action game in which all of the on-screen elements are musical – the arrangements of the enemies and other things that make up levels each sync to part of a song, Sound Shapes style. One of those levels will be set to new original music by Grammy-nominated Journey composer Austin Wintory."When Threaks first reached out to me, I couldn't wrap my head around what the game would be like, but I couldn't help but be incredibly intrigued," said Wintory in the announcement of the collaboration. "Very quickly thereafter I came to realize what Beatbuddy could be and I had to be a part of it. It is a chance to explore a type of music I'd never touched before within a gameplay style I'd never worked with, and that combination is a dream."To understand how Beatbuddy works, check out the free demo on Steam. The game is set to be released on PC and Mac this year.
Austin Wintory's journey to the 2013 Grammys
On the day Grammy nominations were scheduled to be announced, Austin Wintory didn't get much work done. As the composer for Journey, Wintory had an inkling that he might be nominated in Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, and he was distracted all day, constantly refreshing the Grammy page, scanning for his name. By evening the list still wasn't posted and he gave up on trying to focus. He got in his car, determined to go home, make dinner and then check the page again."The instant I got in my car, my email started blinking. Of all people, it was from my friend Christopher Tin, emailing me to say 'CONGRATULATIONS' – in all caps."Tin won the first Grammy for a piece of video game music, Civilization 4's "Baba Yetu," in 2011. He and Wintory had been friends for years. When Wintory saw that email, he quickly called Tin and the subsequent conversation went something like this:"What are you – are you on the website?" Wintory asked Tin. "What's going on?""Yeah, I'm looking right at it! There you are!" Tin replied. And then, after a second, the situation dawned on him. "Wait a minute – you didn't know this already?""No! I'm in my car right now.""Oh, this is perfect."Just then Wintory's phone began buzzing, beeping and possibly sobbing under the barrage of emails, texts and calls from friends and well-wishers. Two weeks later, Wintory agrees with Tin's assessment of events."As fate had it, I heard from Chris himself," he says. "I had no foresight, I had absolutely no plan, and yet in hindsight, I wouldn't have it any other way."
Journey composer Austin Wintory writing score for Leisure Suit Larry
We can't think of two games that could possibly be more disparate from one another than Journey and Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, but we apparently live in the wackiest of all possible universes because Journey's Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory will also be lending his talents to Larry's upcoming adventure. Weird."That's my era as a gamer growing up," Wintory told Polygon. "This was like a fantasy to work on a game like that." Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe confirmed with Wintory that he was okay with writing "seedy, back alley kind of stuff" before finalizing the deal, so we probably shouldn't expect the same sort of grand, sweeping orchestral majesty that Wintory penned for Journey, as heard above.Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards is slated to really class up the joint sometime next year.
Video Games Live at E3: Journey, Skyrim, Diablo 3, Earthworm Jim and more
During the week of E3, on June 6, Video Games Live will take over the Nokia Theater L.A. Live arena. Being E3 and all, and L.A. being one of the most frequently played venues for Tommy Tallarico's live video game concert, this year he wanted to add some special scores – like Austin Wintory's Journey score, conducted by Wintory himself.It's just one of the more recent audio accompaniments added for the June 6 show. There are also select tunes from Skyrim, which will be handled by a secret guest conductor; composer Russell Bower will conduct some Diablo 3 tunes. Donkey Kong Country, Star Fox and even a Street Fighter segment – to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Capcom's fighter – are planned. Akira Yamaoka will also play guitar at some point.Finally, there's Earthworm Jim to consider, a game that Tallarico himself worked on. Apparently folks have been asking him to add it to Video Games Live for quite some time now, which we're totally in favor of – as long as we get that thrash metal remix of "Use Your Head" we've been waiting our entire lives for.
BioWare vets' Banner Saga Kickstarter a massive success, one day left to support
"This Kickstarter has renewed my faith in humanity," Stoic Games' John Watson said in the upstart game company's latest video update, addressing the successful funding of Stoic's project, "The Banner Saga." His company just raised well over its original goal, and he's understandably elated. Stoic Games is comprised of three self-described game industry vets (their latest digs were BioWare's Austin studio), though the studio is hiring a few more positions in light of its recent Kickstarter success.The project, which aimed to raise $100K, now has over $620K banked with another 32 hours to go (as of this writing). All that extra money means that the Stoic Games trio can give The Banner Saga a fully orchestrated soundtrack composed by Journey songsmith Austin Wintory.As one last push, Stoic is offering Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network ports of the game should the team reach $650K. If the Kickstarter reaches $700K, Stoic promises to include a feature it had to cut from the game: player-run, upgradeable cities. Are you way into being a virtual mayor? Now is the time to donate, then!Wondering what you're getting into? The project's pitch video is available just below the break.
Journey is fastest-selling PSN game ever, soundtrack coming April 10
We thought Journey was a very good game, as you may recall, and apparently we weren't the only ones looking forward to its release, as Journey is now the fastest-selling SCEA-region PSN game in all of recorded history. Previously, that honor was held by Sucker Punch's Infamous 2: Festival of Blood."We thank you so much for your support, for spending time and money to play our game and for spreading the word about Journey to your dear friends and family," said thatgamecompany co-founder Jenova Chen in a post on the PlayStation Blog. "We have received more letters from fans in the two weeks since Journey's launch than we did for Flower over the past three years!"Chen also announced that Journey's brilliant score (composed by Austin Wintory) will be available on the PS Store and iTunes come April 10, with a "limited" CD release to follow shortly after.
