Michael Curran

Michael Curran is a composer and sound designer who has worked in the game industry for more than 20 years. His sound design and composition work has earned several awards, including IFMCA Best Original Score, and ASCAP Composer’s Award Nomination for Beyond Earth OST. His original music for Civilization V has been performed worldwide as part of the PLAY! A Video Game Symphony world tour.  

Technical Music Design in Ara History Untold

October 29, 2024

2:45 – 3:45 PM

 Academy 2

MusicSound Design & Technology

This talk will take a broad look at the Music Design for the 4x game Ara History Untold and share our answer to the question: “How can we create a modern, interactive, and dynamic score for a 4x game?” We will cover everything from our initial approach to composition through iteration on our design throughout the development of the game. Graphic displays of our algorithms, videos from recording sessions, sheet music, and final music samples will all be shared to support our approach and process.

The technical meat of the presentation will focus on the dynamic design of the soundtrack which uses game data to drive the musical experience. Picking the right cue for the right game context happens in our music manager which uses game data from our notification system. Additionally, we created a layer-based system, recording each of the games 117 cues in 5 separate layers. The layers are interactively picked using camera zoom data, and “Living World” data such as population, resources, and buildings to create a unique mix. This data driven approach required a complex weight balancing system to achieve our intended results.

Supporting our technical design is our approach to writing and recording music to satisfy a culturally and historically diverse game. When creating the score for Ara History Untold, we looked beyond an orchestral score, writing for, and recording instruments from all over the world and time periods. We will share in detail how we found, wrote for, and recorded for Orchestra, Morin Khuur ensemble, and soloists who specialize in ancient, modern, and world/ethnic instruments including Indian Violin, Korean classical instruments, Swedish stringed instruments, and more. Additionally, we worked in-house, purchasing, playing (and practicing), and recording ourselves playing many instruments. Working in the Mid-Atlantic Region, we are especially proud to say we contracted with local musicians living and working near our studio.

Speakers

Phillip Klassen

Audio Designer, Oxide Games

Michael Curran

Audio Director, Oxide Games

Jonathan Peros

Sound Supervisor, Formosa Interactive

Ara History Untold

On September 24th, 2024 we released Ara History Untold on Steam and Xbox!  The Complete Soundtrack is available for download with the Premium Edition of the game on Steam only. This download includes the complete soundtrack, over 7 hours of original music. This includes High Quality MP3, and FLAC formats, as well as Dolby Atmos True HD, and Atmos Binaural. I recommend the Dolby Atmos True HD for an amazing 7.1 or 5.1 surround experiance! This Complete OST will be released on all streaming platforms soon, date TBD.