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Welcome to The Game Maker's Notebook, a podcast featuring a series of in-depth one-on-one conversations between game makers, providing a thoughtful, intimate perspective on the business and craft of interactive entertainment.
The Game Maker's Notebook is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a member-driven organization dedicated to the recognition and advancement of interactive entertainment.
Well, 10 years in the making.
Welcome to Vegas, your first time.
Thank you.
Something that I have wondered for 10 years is I've always needed to hear from you.
I need to correctly pronounce your last name.
Okay.
It can be challenging.
This is what I assume, yes.
I would rather be screwed.
So no one in Sweden pronounces my name correct.
It's a Hungarian name.
And so the correct pronunciation is Poyor.
Poyor.
Yeah.
Good.
Yeah.
Well, I try see if i can do it twice in a row.
It's questionable but uh, anything is good, really.
Yeah, so you're used to it.
I'm used to ruined.
Complete butchering yes, of my name.
Yeah, do the uh.
Do your italian friends call you benchay?
Yeah, and some people think my last name is Spanish.
They think it's Pahor.
Pahor, yeah, right.
Yeah, it's funny.
Actually, I didn't realize it was Hungarian.
I just It didn't strike me as Is it a common.
It didn't strike me as super obviously It's not a common name really.
But, yeah, it's quite uncommon.
Right.
My...
My first name is much more common, though.
So Bense is common Hungarian.
Bense?
Yeah.
Ah, okay.
I'm glad you said that.
Good to know.
It's always important to me.
Very international kind of guest list on this podcast.
And it's always... my wife is from Costa Rica, for example, and her name is Angela.
Yeah.
Uh, but it's spelled like Angela, right?
And so people always just say, Oh yeah, Angela.
And it's always, I've always kind of been like, it's not actually your name though.
Like I get that.
It's sort of basically her name, but it's, it's not.
And I don't know.
I have a weird, Fixation on trying to get people's names right, even if my tongue doesn't cooperate.
Yeah.
I want to pronounce names correctly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Bense Poyor.
Poyor.
Poyor.
Poyor.
It's with an R, which is really difficult.
Poyor.
Poyor.
Oh, Poyor.
I was flipping it.
Poyor.
Yes, Ben Sepayor.
Yeah.
Well, welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you for being on The Game Maker's Notebook.
I just needed a pronunciation guide, and I feel like we're covered, and that'll be it for today.
I think we're there.
Yeah.
And your first time in Vegas, how has that experience been?
It's crazy.
It's overwhelming.
Have you had a chance to like, go wander vegas, or is it all just been?
I haven't yeah, i've.
I've basically been inside for the last couple of days.
Yeah, It's like being on a space station.
Traversing slot machines and then not knowing really what time of day it is or anything.
I think they go very far out of their way to make that the case.
You're just in a blurry stupor gambling and spending money and buying food.
I had an early morning meeting, so before 7 a.m.
I had to go find a Starbucks.
There were people just sitting there.
Oh, I know.
It almost feels like zombies to me sometimes.
I like Vegas, but it is a weirdly... sort of almost inhuman vibe that you can get.
There's a very sad early morning hour on the casino floor where you go.
This person's been there about five hours.
Yeah, that's part of it.
In any case, it's so nice to be doing this in person.
Obviously.
Normally we do these most of the time over Zoom kind of video conferencing stuff so um so yeah well look, i always love to hear.
Most of our pattern on this tends to be that whenever somebody has had some kind of exciting release or a career milestone, we'll kind of use that as our quote-unquote justification to pull them on.
But that's usually kind of It's like the reward at the end of the story that people might want to talk.
Hear about Ark Raiders, for example.
But I always love to really luxuriate in hearing the path that got you there.
You point out we first started being in touch literally 10 years ago.
Yeah.
What I can't remember is what initially catalyzed that.
Do you remember?
Where were you working at the time?
I was working at EA at DICE making Battlefield games.
Right.
But I don't know I don't know what the reason was.
I think the reason must have been I played Journey.
And I was so touched by the music that I just I just had to find out who made it.
Uh, so I Googled it and then I saw your name and then I looked you up on LinkedIn and I just wrote you some probably a weird, really weird message uh, saying something about it.
Um, And then the conversation just started.
Well, here we've made it.
Well, that's very kind.
Yeah, I didn't remember.
Because what I remembered, if I just brought your name to mind in the last few years, I just remembered around the early... time of the pandemic give or take maybe right before right after it all started something around 2020 plus or minus yeah um you i remember you were at embark because i just remember you being like uh well there's some exciting stuff going on and it would be fun to tell you about it sometime and it was kind of all a little bit veiled in secrecy and then suddenly before we know it you know it's like you're riding the wave of one of the, the games.
And so it's like, Oh wow, that turned out well.
So, but let's, let's, let's, let's make our way to that.
So what, what, um, you know, give me the basics.
Where did you, where'd you grow up and what was the thing that put you on this path to?
You know, the audio end of a pool.
I, i went to school and then i started to play music, what of what nature?
Like jazz.
As what instrument?
Electric bass, oh nice.
So i was into jazz and funk and I had listened to that music since I was a little kid.
And then I started playing.
And at the time, I went to art school.
And then I figured, I'm going to play music instead.
I'm not going to paint or draw.
So Was that a real?
Was that like a serious crossroad where you were maybe going to go the other way?
Yeah i, i had gotten a scholarship to go to to japan to study under like a, a sculpture sculptor master uh, and to live.
Was that the focus?
Sculpture No, it wasn't.
But somehow, through my family, I had gotten to know this person and he thought that I was going to be his successor.
Wow.
So that was all figured out.
What age about?
20 years old.
And you were growing up where?
In Stockholm.
Oh, okay.
In Sweden, yeah.
But this sculptor master, he was a Hungarian guy who ended up in Japan.
Interesting.
Yeah, and he had like an amazing career there, uh.
And then he he felt like this thing has to, like he has some kind of heritage that he wants to pass on.
And then he thought that should be me and i and i was studying art at art school and i thought that was my thing.
But then i started really playing a lot of music and then i felt i'm gonna play music, i'm not, i'm not going there, and that was a big thing.
My parents were not less than thrilled, super happy uh, and not impressed with my decision.
So yeah, that was a big thing.
And then I started playing and applying for music schools and music college and so on.
Has art remained a part of your life in one way or the other?
Is it an outlet for you still, or does it feel like in what ways play?
Uh well, but the but, the but, specifically thinking about this parallel universe in which you were visual artist or sculptor, even.
Yeah, is that still you know, an outlet or anything?
Uh, sometimes i'm planning on painting in my country house.
Uh, my wife also paints, so Wow.
Um, yeah, I'm probably going to do that when I get time to do that.
Right.
Yes.
The reward for shipping a game.
Yeah.
Um yeah, I was just curious because usually that if you're good enough to be getting offered scholarships and people who have some pedigree looking to you as a protege um, usually that doesn't just vanish.
You know what I mean?
It's kind of like even if someone grows up being told you know you're a prodigy level pianist, but they end up becoming an architect.
They, you'll always find out.
They still play at night.
You know they still, or they, they.
They join a local orchestra or they play in a band or that kind of thing.
And I love that.
I love hearing how these things, they don't really leave our system.
So that's why i was curious yeah, i mostly play music.
I don't uh, i mean, i don't, i don't even know when i painted last time.
It was like years ago right right well, so okay, so you make this decision uh, to pursue music.
Yeah, but what was your, If you kind of were to close your eyes at that moment in your life?
You said early 20s and picture your dream career at that time.
What did that look like?
I'm assuming it wasn't video games.
My dream career?
I was probably playing bass in Prince's band or something.
Right, have to aim high?
Yeah, of course.
Um so yeah, i think that was my.
That was my ultimate dream, i guess.
And did you do that?
Like whatever the kind of stepping stones would presumably be, playing in bands or forming your own band, that kind of thing?
Was that what came next?
I mean yeah i, i was already playing in bands, but i wanted to become an educated musician because i thought that that might hold the key to something.
It's interesting.
I meet a lot of people, younger people, who were the equivalent basically to you then at that time, who i'm wired like you.
I always, i always think there must be more that i can learn that might make me better at this or give me a deeper appreciation, understanding.
Yeah, that's always the goal, but it's interesting.
I have more than what.
Many times i i would meet fellow students and whatnot, at various times in my life where, Especially among those that play in very intuitional settings, you know, like in a band, where they're not writing out charts.
They kind of jam together and settle into a thing and that's how they write music together in the kind of traditional way, a rock band or a funk band or RB or whatever might work.
I come from a little bit more of the nerdy classical side, where it makes much more sense to write out a chart and kind of look at it and understand it.
But anyway, the point is I remember a lot of them were always a little bit weary of education because they felt like it's going to sort of propagandize me into saying this is the only way to do it and that whatever spark of originality they might have would get sort of strangled.
And so I would see all these young musicians who were actively resisting.
They didn't see it as a pathway to learning more.
They saw it as like it would rob them of the joy, and I've always found that odd it's it's.
It's nice to hear a rare example of the opposite, because I agree with the opposite.
I really I didn't.
I mean, I
I didn't really appreciate my own possible creativity or talent.
I was really into the thought of Like, there is something there.
I need to learn music theory.
I need to do all of these things.
And that might make me better.
What sort of work did your parents do?
My dad was an architect.
And my mother was an engineer.
Okay.
I was just.
I found myself thinking there probably is some you probably grew up with.
Just the in the air was this idea that there's always more to learn and there's always more to you know.
It seems like those are sufficiently.
They were very academic.
Yeah, I was about to use that exact word.
Those are sufficiently academic type careers that That education would probably be held up high as a thing to it.
Yeah, yeah.
And they felt also like music, like you're going to be a poor person the rest of your life.
Well, especially they are Hungarian.
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like the sort of Eastern European outlook on that is a very pragmatic one that says, like there's these famous stories, one of my heroes, Leonard Bernstein, his father, you know they're coming very much from a similar mindset where they say you know a musician is is the guy who stands outside of the wedding with an open violin case and hopes you'll flip a coin into there.
That is what it is to be a musician.
The idea that it could ever be more is not even worth considering.
And so of course they're going to actively.
They love their children.
They don't want them to have to suffer for the a single nickel.
You know what i mean?
Yeah and um, but it does seem like yeah, there's a, that classic.
You know, hungary and poland and all these places that have a kind of an outlook on the world that goes life is tough and we should, you should prepare yeah exactly, steal yourself for it.
Don't don't don't uh, follow your dreams mindlessly, you're just gonna get hurt.
Yeah, and I remember my dad saying also he was also like a famous sportsman.
So he was a world champion in speed skating.
Yeah, and several world records and stuff like that.
So he was very much like an elite... he had like a mindset of, of an elite sportsman.
So he was like okay son, if you want to choose this path of being a musician, you better make sure that you become the best in the world.
Right.
Yeah.
Otherwise you're fucked.
Yeah.
And, uh, it's interesting.
Like yeah okay dad mission yeah, challenge accepted.
Uh, so then, what?
So then, where does where does this path intersect then with games or what was the?
You know you're working towards being in prince's band.
So yeah, and and at one point probably realized that that might be out of reach.
Uh, so I was, I'd gone in music schools, I was playing in bands, I was trying to produce music for people and making demos, making TV commercials.
And also at the same time working other jobs because that didn't support me.
Like unrelated jobs.
Yeah, I worked in clothing shops and I did all sorts of things.
And then, while doing like these TV commercials, I realized also that the music I'm right now making is the music that makes people leave the television when they're watching something, and then the commercial comes on and they're like oh, and then they leave.
It's like, is that what I'm going to... Right, right.
Is that what I want to do?
Yes, I...
You know Michael Kamen, the composer who did like the Die Hard movies and – I don't know.
Well, he died 10 years ago or more.
But are you familiar with Michael Kamen?
He did a bunch of – he did the Iron Giant animated film.
Right, right, right.
Many Lethal Weapon franchise and – I've seen all the movies but not knowing who made the music.
Yeah, wonderful composer.
And you know there's always this kind of sentiment with film scoring.
Which game scoring has some overlap with which is this idea that very effective scores are meant to kind of hide in plain view where you don't really notice them.
That's one school of thought.
Of course there's scores like Star Wars and Jaws which wildly like contradict that conclusion.
But he had his own rebuttal where he said i i'm writing music to be heard, i want to be heard.
That's the whole point of writing music.
It should be something that's actually engaging and you've been.
People might actually like you know it's taking very much closer to the star wars side of it to say no no, i don't want to be invisible in the movie.
You know, i want to.
I want to be a part of it.
I want to be like another actor basically who's in the scene with them.
And I feel you.
That advertising world.
It's weird how it's almost a third option of just yes, it's the – here's how you know it's safe to walk away.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's painful.
I've done a little bit of it as well and it is pretty sold draining.
Yeah, it can be really frustrating, not to mention the.
I mean, i i'm curious if the culture there this was in stockholm still yeah, yeah.
So i don't know what production, music and advertising, what is like there, but if it's anything like in los angeles or new york, in addition to the fact that the final product is rarely a thing that you're super proud and want to show your friends and family, but the process to get there is is the most tedious and fucking miserable thing, where it's 20000 rounds of revision that seemed designed to make it worse.
You know where they're like.
Well, you know, could you make this a little less interesting and make that a little less original and less?
You know?
All these notes are just sort of is it?
Was it the same?
Yeah, i mean, is that a universal truth about?
Usually had some kind of idea what it should be like?
I want, i want a tune that sounds like la bamba And Dan's like yeah, this is one.
It doesn't sound exactly like La Bamba.
No, it doesn't.
Because then it would be La Bamba and you can't afford that.
Can you remove that sound that sounds like a frog?
There is no frog in there.
And then you just feel like okay.
Yeah, don't miss that.
This is not gonna How old were you?
At what time?
Were you kind of late?
I was?
I was 30.
Yeah, I was 30 years old.
Yeah.
So just at the age where you start going, I don't think I need to do this.
Yeah.
And it was depressing.
And also to survive as a musician just doing gigs.
You had to basically get all the gigs in Stockholm to survive, because the music scene is is not too big.
And I just couldn't, I just couldn't do that.
Meaning it was just a relentless hustle.
Yeah.
And and playing music you don't want to play, just because, like you have to take every possible gig right.
So it's probably like weddings and yeah, everything corporate.
Yeah, you know yeah, and and uh yeah, i just, i just, i mean, i just couldn't learn all that music fast enough.
I'm just not that kind of musician that just churns through 50 cover songs and then know them the day after, yeah right, so it just wasn't for me, I think, and then I'd always played games Like that has always been a thing.
And then I started thinking about, like, maybe I could do music for games.
What were, at that point, what were some of the games, like, 30-year-old you... Halo.
Yeah, that's what I can think of right now.
Halo, GTA, there were...
I don't even remember all the games I played at the time, but one thing that I felt was like probably music in games could be better.
I had this idea that it could be really like artsy music played on real instruments.
Not that Halo was in any way bad music, but that sort of inspired me.
There's a game with kind of real music.
Yeah, I would argue that Halo, you know Marty's theme that would play on that home screen with the men's choir was such a counterintuitive choice.
That for anyone with a remote kind of artistic inclination to go, hmm, that's not generic.
That's not the thing, that if you just – like today, in 2026 terms, if you were to ask an AI prompt, make me –.
You know, standard sounding video game music, it would the insight would not have been there to go.
How about something evocative of almost Gregorian chant?
Yeah.
For a big dramatic space opera kind of game.
I mean, it's just yeah, that's the kind of thing where.
I've always found it's interesting is that I have composer friends in all the different sectors of composing, whether it's film and TV, or Broadway, theater or whatever.
You meet people in all these different little corners of the world.
And the thing that I've always found noteworthy is that the composers that seem to understand game music the best tend to be the contemporary classical composers.
Because both camps, I think, are the most actively looking to try something new.
They're most wired to think outside the box, you know?
Whereas film and TV really have to fight a lot of gravity to pull that off.
And then similarly Broadway again, every there's there's examples to all their exceptions, rather to all of these.
Like there's tremendously original composers in every field you'll find, but some of them just have, I don't know, a strong sense of mainstream, whereas games are sure has that to a degree, but i mean, we'll get there.
But our greatest, a great example of one where you go well, this is this is not.
If i just saw this poster and i try to picture like what would be the most obvious and expected approach.
It's not what was wound up in there.
And similarly with With Halo and yeah, my go-to around that same time was Grim Pandango.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Where that was one of those that just blew my mind.
I was in high school, and I was like, this is something.
This is whole new.
This changes everything.
Yeah.
That was some kind of jazz, right?
Jazz mixed with kind of Mexican folklore, Mariachi and Day of the Dead kind of.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a masterpiece.
It's one of those that blends together these things.
And being an early CD-ROM title where they could actually record audio and stream it off the disc and not rely on chiptunes.
Yeah.
Yeah. it um they got the peter mcconnell got these performers that were just soulful musicians you know not just some day player sax musician sax player to you know okay play a tenor sax line but it was like no no i found i found the guy i found the perfect person yeah and top to bottom and it just yeah it made it timeless i mean it's the game's been out it's it's what are we 25 we're almost 30 years uh i think since it came out is that right and um it just seems like the 20th anniversary was like 15 minutes ago where the hell does time go um because yeah i think it was 97 or 98 crazy and um I mean, hell, before we know it, the pandemic will have started 10 years ago.
Yeah, yeah.
But anyway, so yeah.
All right.
So Halo – so all right.
You started dreaming about games.
Yeah.
And what – how quickly did that become a real pursuit?
I had a friend –
In my martial arts class, who was a games, like a programmer, an engineer.
What kind of martial arts?
Chinese martial arts.
So he worked at a Swedish company called Starbreeze.
And I asked him, like, you're into games.
Like, I want to do music for games.
And he was like forget about it, why no?
But like the scene is so small, you'll never get in if you, if you're not part of it by now, you just like forget it, the very zero sum way of thinking.
And then i was like, but but at least tell me, tell me a few studios.
Then okay, there's starbreeze, there's dice, there's uh, and he named a few others And then I said okay,
And then I asked him, like, at least give me a clue.
Like, how could I get into it?
Then he said like yeah, maybe do a capture of a game you're playing and then do some music to it, and then you maybe you can send that to them and say hey, i did this.
Okay, so i recorded some halo and i i started making some music to it uh, And then I went on the internet and looked up DICE.
For instance, it said like, yeah, DICE is the biggest one of them.
And they had just recently, quite recently released Battlefield 1942.
Was that their first title?
No, they made other games before that.
They made pinball games, and there was a fusion of two studios, and then they made Battlefield.
Got it.
And then I went on the website and then they said they had a job ad out for a sound designer.
It's like sound design, what is that?
I guess that's someone who makes noises for the, for the games, and i've just since.
I didn't know anything about sound design, except that i I had, of course, recorded music and I had done some design for one commercial that sold garden products.
I had recorded like a hammer and something, but I'd never considered it being something that you do as a profession before.
But then so I applied for this job.
I felt like how hard can it be?
I didn't I didn't know what it was.
And then they replied and said like yeah, can you, can?
They sent me a list of basically, sounds that i that i have to make like a test, like a sound design test.
Right, it was like 25 sounds of like monster entering the room and i just started doing these.
Uh, i just had a microphone and i just went and did things and bought a melon, stabbing it with a knife, and i went down into the harbor with my mother's car and uh, because i had to record squealing tires and wow, how long was this?
I mean, it sounds like a lot of work yeah, but i, i had time, i had a part-time job so i i could, i could spend some time on this and and i really didn't want that part-time job, so i was quite motivated to do this test the best I could.
Sure.
So, and then I sent that, and then they called me for interviews, and I did these interviews and then they hired me.
I still don't understand why.
It's amazing one shot kill, yeah.
And then i started working on battlefield 2 uh, and just learning, learning how to do that were you, as someone who was so wired for music some people, some people see themselves as audio people.
I i, For example, consider myself really only a music person at any time.
Yes, of course there's a sound design element to a lot of what we do in music, never mind, you know, analog synths and things like that, but also just sometimes, quite literally, I'll put the sound of animals or wind or you know like, and you'll sometimes have to go record those yourself with a little Zoom mic or Zoom field recorders and that sort of thing.
But I would always feel it's overreach to label myself a sound designer, because I just think there's people that do that, who only do that, who just have more tricks up their sleeve than I do because they think about it all day.
And in theory, I know more about music than they do.
That's our tradeoff, right?
But there are some people that really are.
Very ambidextrous.
They're just sort of seemingly fluent.
So I say all that as preface because I'm curious if, as you got this job and having spent all this time dreaming about music and playing music and caring about music and doing music for games as the thing you were actively hunting for when you started looking up companies like DICE.
Yeah. were you excited at the prospect of doing sound design?
Did it feel like a cousin of your passion, or did it feel like this is a thing I will do for now, until I can get back to music?
No, I think I, as soon as I understood what I was going to do, I became super excited.
And I I had done a lot of really experimental music recordings in music college, so i love recording instruments and recording them maybe in in weird ways, or or just the whole process of setting up mics and and getting a cool recording and then working with the recording and doing maybe weird processing.
And I also got into electronic music and that also sort of tended to be weird noises used like as musical elements and I think.
So I had an interest in sounds but I'd never considered sound design really earlier.
But I think the music I recorded and the music I was into was like really I think my driving force was to create immersion for a listener.
And I think that was my inspiration, just to immerse people.
Yeah, well then, obviously sound design is going to be achieving that yeah, in its own way.
Like you're just same, it's the same goal, basically.
Yeah, so through music or not, music kind of didn't matter to me.
Uh, so i, i it was super nice to to start working with sound design kind of opened up a whole new field that i had never, never considered right.
And battlefield 2 this was what like 20 years ago or something yeah, it was more 20, 23 years ago, i think.
It released maybe now, maybe 2004, i don't know like yeah, 20 plus years ago.
And so you uh, obviously you're getting thrown straight into a very complicated game full of, you know, very intense sound design needs beyond just making sounds.
Were you at all involved in those days in the, the, the actual implementation and hooking it up?
So how, how quickly did that sort of come to the, you know, click with you?
Um I, it was quite.
It was quite easy to get into.
I mean, I went to science high school so I like math and physics were something that really interested me.
So this was of a dream thing with like combining math and physics with creative work.
So that was i.
I was so excited.
I i was like working day and night, super inspired and super excited about that.
Yeah, and also I I mean I in Sweden you had at the time when I grew up, you had to do mandatory military service.
So I, I did military service and I was like a recon sniper and I was doing like shooting endlessly and doing like sabotage stuff with explosives.
So that was also quite exciting to do all that.
And this, this was a war game.
So i kind of never thought i would make any use of the military service.
But here i was, suddenly knowing how guns sound and and how they feel to to shoot.
Yeah sure, making it like a gun game was kind of instantly up my alley, right.
Yeah, that's not a typical bit of baked in knowledge and expertise for a lot of folks.
I've i've, i worked on a game called uh, aliens fire team that uh, the audio director had military experience as well and had served in combat.
Yeah and was it was interesting hearing just the ways in which that, you know, manifested in his outlook on how to properly make these sounds, because there's a big difference between how they feel versus how they literally sound.
And so much of the literal sound is actually really not that important in a game.
It's more about modifying the reality to then capture the emotion.
So if it's not...
It was not 100% accurate, but it feels right.
That's probably more valuable.
Of course, it's ideal if it can somehow sound perfect and feel – but it's interesting.
I always learned a lot.
It's fascinating, especially because also we were working on an Aliens game where also you have to kind of make it feel like it's part of that IP, and we would watch clips together. of the movies and then he would say you know that's interesting i think this is the way they sound designed this and so this is what i'm trying to do to recreate it it was all very yeah it's interesting and so so yeah so how long were you at dice then um and because you know obviously they're still going strong yeah yeah yeah i'm i was there until until what is it seven and a half year ago when i i left and joined embark it's it's i that's why i was like i didn't remember that you were anywhere in between but i i assume i wasn't yeah i mean that's an astounding track record to you did you apply anywhere else uh at the time no you So you basically have applied for one job ever in your time in the industry.
Yeah.
Because I'm assuming Embark – I mean isn't there a lot of vice people?
Yeah.
So yeah, it was like one of those studios.
There's a lot of examples of that where a core group will split off and make their own entity.
So you probably weren't applying for that job.
You were part of the – wave i assume i i had to apply because of uh like uh non-poaching uh agreement right so i like labor law kind of so i i when i quit dice i had no idea what embark was doing or anything i just know who was there so i I just resigned and sent in a CV and... CV is dice.
Yeah.
2003 to present.
You might know who I am.
Yeah, exactly.
I've made these games.
With you.
Yeah.
Before we leave the dice chapter uh, you started off as a sound designer, but obviously your title and responsibilities evolved over the span of your time there.
Yeah, walk me through that.
You know how?
Did that?
Barely remember.
Um, we were In the beginning.
We were quite a small team.
When we made Battlefield 2, we were just two sound designers.
Remember the size of the team overall in those days?
70 people, I think.
That's wild.
Or BFF.
We were around 70, maybe 80, towards release.
I don't know something like that.
I i assume that you know battlefield 6 that just came out is like a team of 500 or something, i guess.
I mean, i have no idea, i'm making that number up, but i'm five studios.
Yeah, it's like i remember when i worked on assassin's creed, when we finished the project, that one of the producers said our head count across the different Ubisoft teams and it was a thousand and 50 or something like that.
It's basically a thousand and change.
That sounds reasonable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just like, my God, you know, cause journey was like 12, you know what I mean?
It's, It's just like the contrast is absolutely staggering.
So the idea of a Battlefield game being made by 70, but it's similar.
I mean like I did a podcast with Tim Cain, the original Fallout creator, and he was saying that Fallout 1 was made by a tiny team in like.
I don't remember the number, but it was maybe a year or less.
It was barely not a game jam, essentially, compared to today.
I don't know.
I love those innocent days.
Yeah, it's insane what happened after that.
These games become such huge successes, and we kind of just kept going.
Yeah.
I mean understandably.
I mean I remember playing the original Battlefield.
You know there was that wave of, there were these games, you know the original Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, and there was a lot of interest in these World War II themed games.
But this one was so unlike obviously, this multiplayer aspect to it was so unlike even the multiplayer of those other games that stood out, it seems.
In hindsight, it seems quite inevitable that it would spawn something yeah yeah massive yeah, they had something that just appealed to to people.
Yeah um, and it was yeah, it was a, it was a great time.
I could, i couldn't, can't imagine any like better way to learn.
Yeah sure, in that.
And we did a lot of experimentation with just just making making the game sound like nothing else.
We were exploring these handycam sort of feel that felt like very documentary and so we did all our field recordings with with, like handy cams, Wow.
And just because we had watched, I don't know which of the conflicts that were at the time.
I think, like probably the Iraq conflict, and there were all of these uh, soldiers filming just in the field and that was extremely just felt so real because it was real as well, and then recorded with just like gopros or whatever it was and and it somehow we just felt that we wanted it to sound like that and at the time there was no, no games or films making content like that.
Everything was much more controlled and Maybe in a way like more professional old school.
I'm curious, if ever – you make me think of something I've never really thought about before, which is if the pursuit of that realism and that kind of visceral – quality that you would see, like you said, almost a documentary-esque quality is there.
Is there a world where it becomes in a sense too real to kind of yeah, be right for a game?
Yeah, it does.
And did you ever find yourself?
We had a lot of those uh, we discussed it quite a lot yeah, and we, We were thinking about it as well and making games about war also.
We had moral questions in our minds when we were making those, and i remember one thing that was a moment like that i i had to.
I was recording all the foley for was it maybe battlefield 3 or battlefield 4 or battlefield 3?
And i Was going to make all the sounds for getting hit by bullets.
And I went into... We had a little foley room.
And I...
I put a blanket on myself to get rid of.
We had a window there so it was a bit of an echo in the room.
So I pulled the blanket over me and I started hitting myself really hard.
To the point where I screamed from real pain.
Someone saw me as well, like, what's going on here?
Like a guy under a blanket.
Having a nervous breakdown.
Yeah, what's going on?
And I did that, and it was like a super visceral experience.
Yeah, no kidding.
And and i wanted to catch it.
So i had like a handy, like a little, you know, one of those small just recorders and i had it like under the blanket and it and it made all those noises because it scratched my my, my shirt and i was like screaming and hitting myself and then the recording was crazy, like distorting, and It was all mad and I put it into the game.
We were playing these sounds and also you could get shot and you ended up like in a state where you were just lying down but you were not dead.
And then...
And then one of the designers came.
I put that in the game.
And when I listened to it, it's like, this feels crazy.
This is awesome.
This is super immersive.
I was really happy with the recording, even though it was completely broken in a way.
But then...
The designer who was designing all the guns and everything.
He came to me and was like I don't want to play the game.
I can't play.
This is not good.
I get anxiety attacks.
Yeah, right.
I can't play the game.
And in our game, you're going to get shot a thousand times.
I cannot listen to this.
I get panic attacks.
Yeah.
And I just felt like, yeah, mission accomplished.
That's what I I wanted it to feel super immersive and visceral.
And I wanted you to feel bad.
But then that was just like that was across the limit.
Well, yeah, I guess I guess.
Maybe if it was a different type of game.
If it was more of a Call of Duty campaign, where you play through it once and it makes an impression on you, and if you never come back to it, you still had this meaningful experience.
But obviously these games are way more of a repetitive loop where you're meant to go in again and again, and again and put maybe dozens or hundreds of hours.
So i can see it from the designer's point of view much more easily, given the sheer amount of repetition, that you're likely yeah, like you said, you'll die a thousand times if each one of them feels as traumatizing as a real death.
Yeah uh, we might be.
We might be damaging people The closest I've ever come to facing those kinds of questions, and I find them very interesting because it's a real thing.
You want to know, what is this?
It's kind of like when you think about when Steven Spielberg showed Normandy Beach veterans the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan and they all were like it was hard for them to watch because it was so accurate.
Yeah.
And it's one of those where he's going, then I know I'm doing my job right, even if it might even be alienating to the people to whom it is dedicated.
It's an interesting – like you said, an interesting ethical area you start getting into.
And the closest I've come to this kind of thing is I've scored some documentary films about living people where I think there's a chance they – might see this and likely they will.
And it, you know, it's about some heavy top.
Like I did one a few years ago.
Uh, about these kids in the seventies who were their school bus was abducted at gunpoint and and buried.
And the idea was supposed to be like a hostage thing.
And then the kids, while the hostage takers were, were um Trying to set up how to get the money transferred and whatever.
These kids had been buried – they had pre-buried like a shipping container that had a ramp.
And they literally abandoned the bus, dropped the kids down in this shipping container and buried it.
And the kids managed to somehow dig their way out and free themselves.
And this woman was studying –
They were trapped under there for the better part of a day before they freed themselves.
And everything we know not everything, but a lot of what we know today about childhood trauma is because of this woman who studied these kids for years, following that experience and how one day altered their life forever.
And they were struggling to process this for decades.
It's a really powerful documentary.
But I remember there's a lot of – these kids, most of them are still – they're adults kind of getting on in years, but they're very much adults.
And you have these moments where you go.
I want to make this moment of the documentary more powerful, more immersive.
But I don't want to come across like I'm somehow squeezing someone's real-life experience just for – for clicks you know or for audience retention that kind of stuff where you go i have to be careful and it and i don't know there's no answer that ever feels definitive but i i think about it i've had a few projects that made me think about it and these kinds of games are interesting tests of that you know it's yeah definitely And I was actually, when I left, I was relieved that I didn't have to do another war game.
It felt really good.
Yeah, right.
That's interesting.
I mean, I can see how you did a lot.
Yeah, it was like 20 years of killing people in a realistic fashion.
So, yeah, that was enough.
Right.
And now, of course, I'm kind of there again, but the motivations are different.
Well, and also, I think this is now more kind of – it is a little bit more stylized and not quite as – earnestly realistic.
At least it seems like it from the outside.
I don't know what the production process is like.
The sound design is more or less the same.
Record guns make them sound super real.
I think that's what I'm good at. just making things sound like it's happening and i think ultimately that's my goal to like immerse players into just forgetting that it's a game that they to make them feel that this is happening now right uh And so the time Embark was when?
What year was the beginning of this?
2006.
No, wait a minute.
Yeah, 16.
Could it be 16?
10 years ago?
No, it can't.
18.
I started there in 18.
Yeah, it was a pandemic.
2020 18 yeah yeah, then it's yeah.
2018 yeah uh wow, a while already yeah um, And because, remind me, I'm blanking out the top of my head.
Pre-Arc Raiders, the releases.
The finals.
Right.
The first game release was the finals.
That's right.
That's right.
But we were making Arc Raiders already then.
So Ark Raids was the first game we started to build.
Oh, so meaning, the studio was formed with the idea of this is our idea, this is what we want to make.
Yes, and then after some time uh, i mean, there were, we were a core group of people who had done battlefield games before and shooters, so at some point there were ideas of like shouldn't we just also make a shooter, Because we know how to do that?
And...
So we should explore that at least.
So there was a tiny group of people who started exploring with a game that became the finals.
And I did some work on that, but not too much.
So I hired two sound designers from My old team, they wanted to join.
Got it.
So they made the finals, and I was just there helping out in the beginning to get used to Unreal.
But your title from the start was as an audio director, right?
So you weren't already like from the beginning with Embark, obviously in a far more high altitude kind of view of the process?
Well no, because I was the only audio person at first and then so audio director, equaling sound designer and audio director.
And then I was joined by another dear colleague from from dice who, who is a great sound designer and also became a really good sound programmer as well.
So yeah my, my everlasting friend olof, joined and uh, so we were and, and since then we've been sound designing and implementing the sound in our creator.
So, or the director or sound designer, i don't care, yeah sure i.
That's actually in my experience that's not that uncommon, that you have folks who make it because, because audio direction frequently requires a pretty high level technical know-how of the game systems and how to interact with the other departments.
It's not.
It doesn't seem that it's.
It's the most common path to come from a very sound design background as opposed to a music background.
There are some composer-turned audio directors, but I feel like they're way outnumbered by folks with a path more like yours, because yours the skills required for audio director.
So many of them are built by being a good sound designer.
It seems like.
Yeah, I guess, yeah.
It's just sort of a natural consequence of it.
Yeah, I mean...
We didn't have titles even in the beginning at Embark.
Oh really, everyone was a game maker, which was a very nice idea, because I didn't really care what my title was.
I just wanted to make like a great game and I just happened to know a bit about audio and sound design, so It was natural that that was what I was going to do.
And so, I mean, obviously, like I said, that Ark Raiders ended up being such a, just a colossal hit.
And I think it caught a lot of people by surprise by, you know, it was... just really took over the world in so many ways and i mean it's it's one of the in fact our our uh one of our wonderful producers of this podcast claudio was one of the When it first came out, it was one of the first people to ping me and go, we got to play this together.
This is so good.
And so, yeah, it stepped me through.
I mean, I didn't realize it was such a long road to getting it done.
I mean, how much does the final game that shipped resemble what it was targeting in those early days, or did it evolve a lot?
It did.
Some of the things are still the same.
It was a game about uh, fighting robots.
So i mean the backstory and all that, that is the same uh.
But then we were doing all these machine learning uh initiatives.
We felt that there is something there like a machine learning how to walk and and move.
There was something there that almost felt like magic.
But that was super hard to work with because there was such an experimental field.
So it took a long time to make the game and we...
At one point we did this strong pivot that we introduced player versus player play in the game as well.
And that was somehow, I think, the thing that saved the, the game, and i think it was also a little bit of the.
The qualities that that brought out of the game was also the qualities we were talking about in the early, early stages when, when conceiving the idea of arc raiders, oh.
So, in other words, that's interesting, that it sort of brought it home to the original goal.
Yes, it had wandered a field somehow and made its way back, yeah.
So i mean, that's rare beginning.
It was like this this, this needs to be a game where you explore a world and And we were thinking like you're going to go through this vast world and explore every bit of it.
And then at some point it was it more felt like just an action robot killer game where you didn't really care about the surroundings.
You just, We were just shooting robots.
So it felt much more true to the earliest fantasies about what you were going to do.
Because we wanted to make a game where you care about where you are and you appreciate the surroundings and you want to explore something.
And I think it ended up being that.
Oh, yeah.
Still was the reaction were you expecting?
By the time you were ready to launch, you thought we've got something here.
Or has the reaction been surprising?
It's a surprise.
I mean, we felt that it was, we like to play the game.
And we felt that it was really intense and a good game, a game we wanted to play.
Right.
And we?
I mean I assume that like, If I really like this, there must be someone else that likes it as well.
That doesn't necessarily mean that there's millions, though.
Exactly.
So I thought, yeah, it's probably going to be a good game.
And some people are going to play it and enjoy it.
We didn't expect so many people to like it.
Right.
As part of your audio director role, did the choosing of music and composing?
Was that something that was decided by you?
Was that sometimes creative directors go, here's what I want.
Can you go make it happen?
So what was the process there?
Again, games like this, usually the music takes a pretty backseat role.
But it's amazing how this game, I've yet to talk to anybody who Who played it.
Who isn't really quite struck actually.
It makes a statement.
It knows when.
It's judicious about when.
It's not a game that's constant music.
Nor is it constant silence.
Which is usually the two choices.
That a lot of people go.
So walk me through that.
Our creative director.
He used to be audio director at DICE.
We used to work together.
And he started working at DICE, I think, two weeks prior to me.
Oh, wow.
A lot of history there.
Yeah, so we worked through all of these games together.
And he was...
He turned creative director when we released Battlefield 1.
That was a World War 1 game.
I remember, yeah.
And then, so he was creative director and I was audio director there.
And then I came in touch with Johan Söderqvist.
And so he did the music.
He and Patrick and Dren did the music for Battlefield 1 and then later Battlefield 5 as well.
So when we were doing all the concepts for our creators, we just felt and wished that we would have them on board as well.
So they were on board quite early.
I mean, we had worked on Ark Race for one year, maybe, when they got involved.
So they've been working on this game for six plus years.
And just doing a... insane amount of music to it.
Just presumably to find the formula, right?
Because it's not a game that comes across as though it's buried in music.
No.
And both of them are also just like into immersion and and emotions.
So there was a long process of just exploration, right like three years of just exploring and just throwing things at the game.
Uh, Out of curiosity, I was having a debate with a friend the other day.
Do you by chance remember the total amount of minutes, the runtime of the final score, of how much music is in the game give or take?
I don't know.
I don't know.
It must be hours at least.
Well, I was asking because I have a friend who was convinced it's like 30 minutes.
And I said, it can't be.
But I said, I think a lot of it is that there's probably a lot that hides in plain view.
You don't realize it's there.
Helldiver is a similar game that Everyone knows this theme that plays at the start.
But there's actually a lot of music woven into the gameplay.
But some of it becomes so subtle.
Like you said, immersion becomes very much the mandate at that point.
And so I said, I'm sure there's more than that.
But I said, I'll have an answer soon because I knew we were going to be chatting.
It's full of weird ambiences that are playing during gameplay.
Right, but they're at a quite a low sure yeah, volume and they sort of just blend into the to the general soundscape and and just to evoke like an emotion without being music.
Yeah sure oh, i know there's.
So i mean, For me one of the greatest games ever made is Playdead's Inside and Martin Stjernsen.
Similarly, there's music all through that game, but most of it is barely different from the sound of the equipment and the room tone.
But it's really modulating your emotions more than you think.
Yeah.
It's more like a texture that you're not aware of.
Yeah.
It's like there's dust in the air that you're breathing in without knowing.
Yeah, agreed.
But multiple hours worth is impressive.
Yeah, it's insane.
The amount of music is insane.
So, I mean, what's in the game now is also just a fraction of what's there.
Yeah, of course.
But yeah so, so and and, and it took a long time finding this balance of of like also it's it's.
It's quite difficult to where do you inject music in our creators?
Like you can't have it during gameplay too loud and it can't be musical, Because then people are going to turn it off.
Yeah, sure.
Because it's a game about you want to hear someone... Especially any game that has a PvP aspect.
Yeah.
Yeah, the stakes are a lot higher for the player all of a sudden.
Yes, that too, also, because it matters if you die.
Yeah.
You lose your shit.
Yeah, exactly.
So that also took a long time to find this balance.
And what is it like?
Without, without coming too obvious, because also we, we don't want to impose too much of of an emotional like um, what do you say?
Uh, We don't want to impose emotions on the player too much because you don't know what the situation is.
It can be not intense.
It could be you're afraid, but it could be anything.
So we can't do too much.
So that's why it's super subtle and just, i always think of it as you're trying to invite someone to feel a certain way.
It's like you open a door and make them feel welcome to walk through it and knowing that if they do, they are the one walking through and feeling these things, whereas if you're just trying to shove them um, And they're not feeling that, they're just going to read it as inauthentic or read it as manipulative and it's not going to stick the landing.
And especially yeah, you mix that with the kind of gameplay of something like art graders and it's really a high risk proposition.
You know, like you said, they're just going to turn it off.
Or even worse, they might just hate the game.
Or just become un-immersed.
Yeah, exactly.
Which may turn them off from the whole game.
They may not realize the music was the tipping point, but it could actually make them go.
I guess this isn't for me.
And that would be the worst case scenario.
Yeah, that's interesting.
And you said it took years to feel like you... kind of landed on the right balance of that.
I think we found the style pretty early.
I mean I think several of the most liked uh tracks in the game are from the absolutely first sketches right.
So in a way they they instantly find found the vibe right because they had access to all of the concept drawings, all of the concept art and they were just like spending weeks just looking through all the concept art and just getting immersed in the world.
And then they started buying old synthesizers and just trying different textures out and arpeggios.
I think we quite early.
We had like a wish I think the creative director also wished for, like I want to have arpeggios.
Can we have arpeggios?
It's a very specific wish.
Yeah, I'm sure we can have arpeggios.
That's so funny.
So we started exploring that as well and then we did a bunch of bizarre music exploration.
They bought weird russian synthesizers where you could like put electrodes into things and make it just sound weird.
And we bought fruit and and put like needles with cables on it into bananas and And does stuff make it into the game.
Yeah, some of it is in the game.
Oh, that's great.
That's funny.
You'll have to send me the audio of that.
I'd love to hear specifically what it became.
Yeah, it feels like some weird Japanese noise music.
Right.
There's a lot of that in the game as well.
Just really weird stuff and really abusing synthesizers.
And I think Johan Söderkis, he has a reverb that has broken years ago and he uses that and just cranks it up really loud and then starts making strange noises, and that's also part of nice.
So yeah, style wise everything, everybody was appealed by this synthy.
Yeah, analog vibe Yeah, it's funny because it does a good job at stylizing the world and the environment and the kind of experience
But it doesn't come across as a kind of 80s retro synth wave.
Like, it doesn't overtly feel like I'm suddenly in some Mad Max's, I guess, more 70s.
But that, you know...
80s film.
You know like uh, what's that?
Schwarzenegger film um, um god, they just, they just did a remake of it uh, this past year with glenn powell um Running Man.
Yes, thank you.
Yeah, like, it doesn't feel kitschy.
Actually, it's impressive that Ark Raider seems to take itself earnestly.
You know, it doesn't feel like it's a game.
It's not like Guardians of the Galaxy or something where it feels like it's sort of taking the piss on itself.
You know what I mean?
No, no, and we...
We never intended it to have like an 80s vibe.
It's just a trapping.
It's one of those things that anything that becomes very – especially analog synth, it's an inevitable question mark on if it's trying to evoke that.
I think we've gotten to a place culturally where we're sophisticated enough that you can differentiate – this is trying to sound like aha or Duran Duran or something versus um.
It's just using those sounds and it's become its own thing.
You know, not everything has to be Blade Runner and and um yeah, but you guys, even still it's a challenge because sometimes I've worked on projects before where I thought Ooh, it could be cool to build in some analog synths.
I have my I have my Deckard's Dream, and I want to sneak a little bit of that into this.
And then the pushback is, well, it's suddenly very 80s feeling.
Then I go, well, I know why they're saying that.
I don't think that's true, but I get why it's so coded.
Anyway, you guys managed to stick a very successfully kind of in a unique place where that's not least not for me i'm sure some people might hear it and think that, but for me it doesn't.
Yeah, it really i don't know.
It came just genuinely just i don't know fit.
Yeah, and i think also, like johan, he's turning 60 this year, i think, and and he was playing in in bands in the 80s, so that music, somehow that sound is from his youth, right when he was like becoming a, a musician.
So i think it just came naturally for him, some of that music, without us telling him.
We never had a plan to make it sound like the 80s, but i think the, the concept art kind of evoked that subconsciously i think.
Yeah, i certainly.
When i see the logo it certainly has a little bit of that, but it again it feels like it's a, It's a gentle touch.
It's really not this aggressive bit of stylization, you know, which is which is nice.
It seems like so many things these days are very aggressively nostalgia built.
And this doesn't really feel like it's doing that to me, at least to me.
I mean, we are all parts making the game.
And some of the things that appealed to us as young, like teenagers, like cassette tapes right sure, i would buy my cassette tapes and i would sometimes buy the cassette tape that had the coolest logo right sure, and uh, And just looking at them while listening because there was no screen or phone.
And those aesthetics just, I think, appeal to us and evoke some kind of youthful curiosity.
I don't know vibe, uh.
So to us, this was, this was like going back to our, to our youth.
I guess it shows that uh, Even when you're not trying to make something nostalgic, we're essentially all just trying to read.
We're all either trying to recapture our childhood or reject a traumatic one.
I feel like that's probably all art is one of those two things.
Well, I'm really happy for you.
It's been awesome.
It's funny when I think back to those early messages of ours, not the very first ones, but somewhere in the middle, when you first started at Embark.
And I just remember you writing saying, oh, yeah, we're excited about the work we're doing here.
And hopefully I can share it with you someday.
Yeah.
And just, boy, did you over deliver.
Yeah.
And I'm just, yeah, that's awesome.
I'm really stoked.
And it's a pleasure to meet in person at long last.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for joining us for The Game Maker's Notebook.
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