FEATURING CHRIS RICKWOOD BY:KRUPA KANAIYA
T
he artistry of the gaming world consists of more than what meets the eye or ears in this case. Since ‘99, Chris Rickwood has been making waves in the industry, working on some iconic titles we know and love, including Evil Dead: Hail to the King, BloodRayne, and Maximo: Ghosts to Glory. Raised on arcade games, it is no surprise that the world of Gaming captivated Rickwood. With a bachelors in music theory and a masters in music composition, he was originally set to be a film composer. While films remained a point of interest, Gaming offered a mysterious and uncharted territory. At the time, music in games was not what we know the industry to be currently. Everything started on the computer instead of live recorded orchestras or the limitless options tech
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now provides us. Computer chips played the music. It was a path with plenty of room for growth and the option to pave your own way. “[It] seems more interesting, more cutting edge and, almost punk rock because nobody was doing it or it wasn't mainstream,” says Rickwood about that time. The internet was still pretty new, and the tech bubble and Y2K were all the rage. “There was no precedence of how to break into the game industry, music for games was still so young that there was definitely no books. There were just no resources on how to do it. So it was scary in a way where it was exciting.” Rickwood’s introduction to Gaming came in grad school. “While reading an article about music and games, he stumbled upon the addresses of big audio directors at the time for SEGA
and EA looking for composers and their demos. Rickwood’s writing gave him a strong start, but his production was not as polished. “It's not like I was going to recording studios. It was the early sound cards, like basically making all my music.” With a call back from Tommy Tallarico, lead composer of the Evil Dead game, Rickwood showed his skills were strong enough to land him his first dream role on Evil Dead. The position allowed him to move from working on early sound cards to a live orchestra. “It was kind of a legitimizer of my career,” said Rickwood. Working with the Budapest Orchestra for Evil Dead provided Rickwood with the necessary experience to move forward. The ability to use a live orchestra has become almost standard for game composers. Although our computers are
