Multi bafta-nominated composers Olivier Derivière (Get Even, Remember Me, Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag – Freedom Cry) and James Hannigan (Red Alert 3, Dead Space 3, Harry Potter) discuss the state-of-the-art in music for videogames.

The early days of videogame music promised much - a new form of music – perhaps even a new art form.  Integrating music composition deeply with gameplay was an exciting new world of creative opportunity.  So where did all the truly inventive ideas go? Is linear music plus a few standardised interactive techniques overlaid really the zenith of game music design?

Game Music Connect co-founder, James Hannigan, was an acclaimed early innovator and proselytizer of interactive music composition whose extraordinary journey from the nascent days of highly flexible midi music to unbridled ‘quad-A’ linear orchestral scores furnishes him with a unique, historic and thoughtful perspective on the role, function and placement of music in games.

Meanwhile, creating music for Get Even provided radical composer Olivier Derivière an apparently highly rare opportunity for a deep and early involvement with developer The Farm 51. They trusted him to realise a unique vision for an intricate integration of music and sound design from the get-go which led to a recent Bafta nomination. But with the proliferation of today's middleware tools why is such an approach so rare?