Looking for work in the game audio industry? Dan Gentile talks to various composers and musicians in the industry, and how they were inspired to find work in video games.

For the year-end project of San Francisco State University’s video game composition class, the assignment was to help players find their way out of a hedge maze. The only clues revealing the correct path to the exit were of the musical variety. A wrong turn might result in a dissonant clash of violin harmonies, while a correct decision shifted the tone to an uplifting melody that sounded like something from a Danny Elfman soundtrack.

“Movie music is very linear, it goes from point A to point B, from the beginning to the end,” says 23-year-old Sydney Roberts, who commutes two hours from Livermore. “Video game music gives the illusion of linear music, but it’s very non-linear. The music follows what the player does, not what the story does.”

The hedge maze was an example of the unique functional challenges presented by music in games, which has in turn spawned a cottage industry of composers and sound designers hoping to find the professional musician’s holy grail: steady employment.