Film legend John Carpenter (They Live, The Thing, Halloween) really wants to compose a video game soundtrack. The only problem is that he doubts anyone will let him.
“I think there’s a part of me that’s dying to do a game score,” said Carpenter in an interview with Consequence of Sound. “I’m just dying to do it, but I don’t think anybody will hire me. No one thinks about me to do music for games, that’d be great!”
While we doubt that nobody thinks about Carpenter when considering people to score their video games (it’s probably closer to true that studios didn’t think he’d be interested in scoring their games), we’re going to give Carpenter the benefit of the doubt here by assuming that he has actively been trying to compose the score for a video game for at least some time.
What we don’t have to assume is Carpenter’s genuine interest in the video game medium. Carpenter has previously made no effort to hide his love for video games (he confessed to being addicted to Destiny 2 not long ago), and he tried for quite some time to direct a film adaptation of Dead Space (one of our absolute favorite horror games). Sadly, nothing ever really came of his desire to bring Dead Space to the big screen.
However, we have the feeling that something may come of Carpenter expressing his desire to compose a game score. Destiny 2, for instance, has previously featured guest composer work from Paul McCartney, and Carpenter’s iconic electronic music stylings would fit perfectly into that game’s considerable universe. Of course, we’d also bet that Carpenter would be more than willing to compose the score for a horror game should anyone like to make him an offer.
Actually, it’s kind of interesting to see how much Carpenter’s music has influenced recent video game soundtracks. Titles like Hyper Light Drifter practically flatter Carpenter with their familiar – yet undeniably compelling – musical styles. Some of the games that utilise such sounds rank among the most underrated of all video game soundtracks.