Most people remember the first serious musical performance they attended. In preparation for this post, we polled some of the Gala Games team to see which performances marked their initiation into the world of music. From the classic Pink Floyd concert attended by Eric Schiermeyer and a Stevie Ray Vaugn concert for Lucas, to Jason’s Avril Lavigne concert, Nina’s “The Bangles” concert, and, best of all, Michael McCarthy rapping along to a cassette recorder at the Armory before he ever saw a concert on his own. Suffice to say, the Gala Games team knows how important music is to everyday life for most humans.

Music is typically seen as a part of the gaming experience, with a great deal of effort going into creating musical accompaniment in-game. However, what this means is that game developers can often leave aside some of the subtle atmospheric effects needed to create a truly immersive game. This is why, for Mirandus, we are going in an entirely different direction. We want to enable the PLAYERS of Mirandus to create music in a way that deepens immersion, not breaks it. While there may be music for a load screen or intro, there will never be a dedicated in-game soundtrack.

“If there is music in Mirandus, it has to come from a bard or a performance. There won’t be music when you walk around. “ says Studio Director Michael McCarthy, in an internal discussion about music within the world of Mirandus. “Music will be composed by players. Those compositions will be NFTs. Music and entertainment should be real moments of wonder when you walk through a town to hear an amazing composition, on a masterclass instrument, by a master musician.”

This raises extremely interesting possibilities for the world of Mirandus. Imagine, an arena filled with spectators, each of which has come together to witness a specific musician performing inside the virtual world, with each participant carrying the song in their heart…and the NFT in their accounts, as they spread out across the world. If the COVID-19 situation has taught us anything, it is that we, as human beings, are able to adapt to endless variation in the ways in which we connect with one another. Online conferences, like this weekend’s GALACON, or the Metapurse “B20” event in January, flourish when all of us stay at home. There is no reason that music and performance cannot be similarly redefined, opening the door for amazing innovations in performance art.

This is why Gala Games is looking for skilled musicians, specifically those who are able to produce music which is thematically connected to the world of Mirandus. The taverns of Mirandus need to be filled with bard, music, laugher, and dance. The woodcutters must find fine-grained woods deep within the forests to produce lutes! The vintners must make the fine vintages to be carried across the land, because wine goes well with conversation and song. Someone even might need to to fill BitBender’s mead horn!

So, today, on Mirandus Monday, we will leave you where we started, with a glimpse from afar, of a Farmer’s Hamlet. Are you ready to explore?

The much rumored and mentioned GalaCon is confirmed and will be held on February 27th and 28th! These two days will be packed with fun, activities, and talks (along with a few AMAs!) for the Gala Games Community! Sign up to join us in the GamerJibe Event Space here!

MOST of the events will be live-streamed on our Theta.tv channel!

Some of the awesome things we will have over the course of the two days are:

Typically, we wouldn’t use an entire Mirandus Monday post to announce a new team addition, but we felt that given the pedigree of the new Senior 3d Artist for Mirandus, he probably warranted a post all on his own.

Have you, by any chance, played any of these games?

One unifying characteristic which unites all of these games, in addition to being TOTALLY AWESOME, is the fact that they all had rather intense involvement from the newest member of the Gala Games Family, Craig Matchett.

Craig has been working in game development for some time and specializes in 3d asset creation. When asked about video game creation, he says: “I find it rewarding to bring worlds to life that you can explore and interact with.”

The news of a hire of Craig’s caliber was mentioned in the Gala Gold Discord today, and it was the games that made all the difference. From those who spoke of an avid love of Tropico to those who love newer Bethesda titles like The Outer Worlds, there was a great deal of excitement from the community.

While the art style of Mirandus is quite different from some of his recent work, there is no doubt that his skills will be put to good use building out the world of Mirandus.

When asked to describe his work in one sentence, he told CreativePool that it is: The result of a natural sensibility of shape and color with an obsessive view towards research and discovery.

This ethos will fit in perfectly with Michael McCarthy’s research-heavy art creation process. It is the little details that make a design stand out in the mind of the player, and Craig’s 3d work is peerless.

He will also fit in perfectly with the rest of the Gala Games team as an avid gamer. While he says it would be misleading to just pick ONE favorite game, he has a soft spot for Metal Gear Solid.

We welcome Craig, and we can’t wait to see the mark he will leave on Mirandus as it grows!

Anyone who follows Gala Games knows we are growing rapidly and scaling as quickly as we can. To help the community get to know the team better, we are going to be releasing profiles on each team member we bring on board. We have a lot of these coming, but the first we would like to introduce to the community is Erik Sundberg, who is joining us as a Full Stack Engineer!

Erik is awesome, and he has everything that we would want in a developer. Like many of us here at Gala Games, his work is bigger than just games and goes deeply into finding positive ways to influence the world.

In his own words…

“I started programming when I was 10, making shockwave games for the web back when that was the cool thing to do. From there I’ve mainly worked in education technology, developing games and interactive experiences for K-12 students. At my last position I was the lead senior software engineer and spearheaded an initiative to gamify our content offerings for students. In 2019 I had the amazing opportunity to work in South Africa as an instructor teaching elementary and middle school students basic tech skills and programming. This may sound totally selfless, but I also chose to teach in South Africa because I got to surf every day after school.”