My Favourite Game

The award-winning composer on Commodore 64, Commando and creating moods

Composer Jesper Kyd on Commando and creating moods

Jesper Kyd has been scoring videogames since the 1990s, emerging from the demoscene to become one of the industry’s leading composers. Born in Denmark but based in Los Angeles, he’s returning home in August with Copenhagen’s Gaming In Symphony concerts, where the Danish National Symphony Orchestra will perform music Kyd has created for Hitman II: Silent Assassin, Assassin’s Creed II, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and more. Which came first for you: music, or games? Wherever I went with my family, there were always pianos around, I don’t know why. When things got a bit boring, I would always sit down and try to figure this instrument out. I didn’t really have much interest in learning how to perform on it, it was more like, ‘How does composing work?’ Then I got a Commodore 64, and that’s when things really opened up. I could take all I’d been teaching myself on the piano, and start creating full songs with the Commodore 64. I was 13 or 14, and that’s when my interest in music exploded and I got the urge to make a piece of music every day. And so by the time I became a professional when I was 19, I was already used to creating music. I didn’t play videogames before the Commodore 64, so my interest in both naturally happened at the same time. Which games did you play back then? Oh, I remember things like Commando – great soundtrack, right? – and Parallax. Mercenary was fun. Delta, Sanxion, Uridium, Zoids… I played a ton of games with great music. After that, you were involved in the Amiga demoscene, right? So I actually got my feet wet in that scene on the Commodore 64, but it was on the Amiga that it really took off. My friend Mikael and I were in a demogroup called The Silents Denmark. We met a bunch of programmers called Crionics and we got together and started doing demos, and soon after we founded Zyrinx, which was our game company, and started creating videogames. It was a natural progression. Ideally, do you like to play games you’re composing for to get a feel for them? It does help me. Sometimes you see the game and it’s so early that you’re just looking at a bunch of polygons with no texture and trying to imagine how it’s eventually going to look. I find concept art really interesting, because that’s what the graphic artists look at as far as how they want the game to look and feel. Looking at that gives you more of a sense of where the game is heading. Do you get the opportunity to play the finished games, and do you find that instructive? Absolutely. I like to see how it all ended up coming together, because what I’ve been playing and seeing is bits and pieces of things that might not be put into the full version, and also the polish is often missing when you’re sitting down with these early demos. So it’s a great pleasure to play the final game, and I’m always taking mental notes about it. Which of your scores is the one fans talk to you about the most? Assassin’s Creed II is the one I keep hearing about. It was also one of the most fun and challenging projects to work on. Some of the tech demos they were showing me were all about ‘creating romantic moods in Venice’ and I was like, ‘Wow!’ I had never heard of any game trying to do something like this. It was apparent from the beginning that this score was going to be very atmospheric. That’s probably my favourite music to write.

“I was 13 or 14 when my interest in music exploded and I got the urge to make a piece of music every day”

So what’s your favourite game of all time? That would be Subnautica. I played it in Early Access on Steam a couple of years ago, and they recently released [the finished game], and so now I’m playing through it again. It’s just an incredible game, what can I say? I love open world games, and the fact that this game takes place underwater... I’ve never played a game like this before. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was another one that caught my attention. Grand Theft Auto III was the first in 3D, but with Vice City they really nailed the whole thing. It was a great experience to roam this world with all the ’80s music playing – very Miami Vice, and very cool.