IDIG Music Festival 2016

By Ronan Leonard

 

Being an avid gamer I could not turn down the chance of attending the second Dublin International Game Music Festival that is taking place in the RDS. Whilst prepping myself for the conference I interviewed one of the co-founders Eimear Noone for the Irish Tech News podcast and you can listen to that here or on iTunes.

Eimear and her husband Craig Stuart Garfinkle, the other co-founder, are well known video game composers with Blizzard Games. They are best known for their work on World of Warcraft and the festival is their brain child. During my podcast interview with Eimear, I learnt more about the festival’s history and what I would see at this year’s festival.Eimear, Craig, Ronan Leonard and Damo.

The festival started off with Craig as seen above, giving a masterclass on how he composes for film and video games and also demonstrating what software and hardware he uses. Craig did this using some of the actual sessions from some of his most famous scores  and it was easy to follow what he was doing.

As well as other talks and presentations, the best upcoming Irish games developers and artists were showing of their wares. Some of the games on show had a retro feel bringing back memories of games that I remember playing when I was a teenager, and you can read about some of them in my next IDIG article.

For me one of the highlights was seeing a preview of the latest game that Eimear composed music for, Runes of Aran a roll playing game, set in Ireland’s prehistory. It was also great to hear

Craig, and a panel of visiting composers, game developers and directors, listening and critiquing music submitted by our attendees. The invaluable advice and tips given by the panel is something that any games composer would love to receive.

Blizzard Games have launched some of the biggest selling games in recent years including World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 and Startcraft 2 and their head of audio and music Russel Brower in conversation with Craig explained what he does in his job and how he oversees Blizzard scores.

Of course any musical festival has to feature some live music and an excellent live performance from the DIT Traditional Irish Music Ensemble who presented a special “Celtic Link” performance, debuting excerpts from the upcoming CD ‘The Celtic Link; featuring themes from The Legend of Zelda.’. There will be more live music on day 2 of the festival and on May the 1^st in the Convention Centre, Video Games Live will close the festival.

Here you can experience your favourite game tunes played live by an orchestra, along with an extreme video and lights show, led by Eimear. Tickets are still available for Video Games Live and can be found here.