Thursday 12th February

Keynote address: Striking a chord, collaborative solutions for innovative game audio

Steve Root

Steve will explore the broad range of disciplines that contribute to game audio, from teaching and R&D through audio middleware and programming to sound design and composition. Using examples, he'll explain how each discipline plays a critical part in making games sing. He will examine some techniques and ideas which he believes could revolutionise the way games sound, and argue that innovation can only truly succeed when the whole band is playing in harmony.

Stephen Root trained at Goldsmith's College, and earned his chops arranging and recording with artists including Mike Rutherford, BA Robertson, Burt Bacharach, and Dave Stewart. His composition work on BBC Sci-fi productions in the 1990's, and his admiration for the music of film composers like Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, lead to Steve writing the soundtracks for early PlayStation classics such as Fox Interactive's Alien Trilogy. As Head of Audio at Acclaim Entertainment, he also penned music for Die Hard Trilogy, Fantastic Four & Forsaken.

In 2000 Stephen joined Criterion Games, an EA Studio based in the UK. Over eight successful years as Senior Audio Director at EA he built up one of the most highly regarded audio teams in the industry, delivering multi award-winning and critically acclaimed soundtracks for AAA franchises Burnout and Black.

Stephen is currently Director for Audio at Codemasters Software Limited. He relishes the challenges of leading a multi-site, multi-discipline team striving to create innovative and exceptional audio for a wide variety of games on many different platforms.