Success Stories: Game music for Kuuasema
Ari Nykänen, the creative director at Kuuasema, tells us a little bit how they used AudioDraft to crowdsource the main theme of Supersonic. Supersonic is a fast paced tunnel ride game for iPhone, iPad, Android and WebOS devices that was released few months ago.
Hi Ari, congratulations for releasing the game! Supersonic is Kuuasema’s first indie game in many years. Can you first tell us a little bit about how the game was born?
We’ve been creating games for publishers since 2004 and we felt it was the time to create and publish a game of our own. Janne Piekkola, the creator of Supersonic, had a catchy game idea and we decided to go forward with it.
You crowdsourced the theme music for the game. What made you decide to use AudioDraft to get the music?
Supersonic is a mash-up of music and racing game, so we wanted to have an outstanding soundtrack with fresh sounds from up-and-coming artists. A tune competition on AudioDraft offered a tantalizing opportunity to listen through a lot of ideas and tunes from many artists. I feel that there is much room for indie music in gaming.
You obviously handled the communication well with the designers, because from our point of view everyone seemed to be extremely happy with the contest. Were you satisfied with the contest results? Do you think active contest holder participation helped you to get what you want?
Glad to hear people liked the contest. We were really happy with both the quantity and quality of the contest entries. We got amazing amount of 130 tune candidates from the community.
I think being active as a contest holder is a must. The artists do a lot of work and they deserve timely and frank feedback. AudioDraft folks helped us a lot. We had a designated community manager dedicated to our cause.
You received entries from all over the world and the winner, Bence Tasnádi, is from Hungary. How do you feel about getting producers from all over the world to make music for Supersonic?
I think it makes perfect sense to get ideas from all around – games are universal fun, after all. We were excited to hear the variety of approaches people had taken.
What’s going to happen after Supersonic? Hopefully Kuuasema is planning to make a lot of inspiring and cool indie games?
Aye, we’ll publish more Kuuasema titles later this year for handhelds and pads.
Are you planning to use AudioDraft in future game projects as well?
Sure. Our experience with Supersonic was super fun and we got a perfect tune tailor-made for our game. Bence’s song was composed with care and a perfect fit to the visuals.
What would you like to say to all of those companies out there maybe thinking of trying AudioDraft?
You can try some tips we’ve learned: When you’re writing the design brief for the community, try to briefly describe the mood and characteristic of the tune and submit a preview video of your product if you have any. Encourage the composers to throw in their creative ideas. If you want to narrow the scope, name a few reference tunes and preferably point out what you like about them. Log in daily to listen to the tunes and send the artists timely feedback about their work, so they know what you’re after. Star rating is merciless but ah, so handy tool. Use it wisely.
Thanks for your time Ari! We hope to see a lot of successful Kuuasema indie game in the near future.
You can listen to the theme song of Supersonic by clicking play below.
Links:
Supersonic Theme Music Contest
Supersonic website
Artist Spotlight, Nebidaan
