Hi, my name is Stian and I'm german-born musician currently residing in Finland. I play a lot of music, I play a lot of games, and a long time ago these two things combined into making a lot of game music. All that has now turned into something resembling a profession for me.

If you're working on a game project and feel like you really want to nail the audio side with something different, something that melds into your game world and makes it stand out, let me know! My contact info lies further down the page.

I have a fairly critical view of todays game music landscape and would like to see gamers and developers demand and expect more creative, quality audio from their games. This is reflected in my own material that I strive to bring beyond the 'good enough' standards we are used to. The playable tracks on the right allow you to be the judge of how well I've succeeded!

Game music today, from a purely technological perspective is very bleeding edge. There's complex real-time engines delivering dynamic surround soundtracks at high bitrates and whatnot. But at the same time not a lot of attention is paid to the music, the actual notes being played. Even less care is given to the musical performance of the material: most game soundtracks' notes are played by a computer, not a musician.

As a result a lot of game music tends to consist of the biggest, most epic sounding orchestral samples and synths playing in absolute perfect timing an entirely meaningless bunch of notes. Notes someone came up with in a few minutes whilst twiddling with the multitude of software programs and plugins we use for audio production. And it's mostly those damn tools that lure us away from what's important! Just like in many other arts it's all too easy to get lost in bit depths, megapixels and processor speeds when you really should be picking up that guitar or camera or paint brush, and do something creative!

Here at my game audio forge I write all of my music without a computer, mainly because, as a tool for composing tonal music, it is entirely useless to me. I use real instruments for both making and performing my material and boot up my PC or Mac only when it's time to capture those ideas into 1's and 0's. Shying away from the computer doesn't mean that I don't have the knowledge and the latest tools to get a killer sound, it just means that I don't use those tools until I actually have a song with some substance to use them on. And when I do, I'd rather have a real musician perform the material instead of programming a computer synthesizer to parse through the notes.

My favourite games are Alpha Centauri, Steel Panthers, XCOM (you know which ones), Master of Magic, Master of Orion, Men Of War: Assault Squad, Dominions 3, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Planescape: Torment, Solium Infernum and Dwarf Fortress to name a few.

My favourite game musicians are Mark Morgan (Fallout series), Matt Uelmen (Diablo 1+2) and of course Koji Kondo. If there's one game composer who pays attention to every single note, it's the big K.

I'm always interested in new game projects. If you're in need of a passionate and proficient audio man, let me know! Here is my email address.

Here's a short loop that greets you at the main menu of Six Gun Saga, another brilliant strategy game from Cryptic Comet designer Vic Davis. Set in the Old West, players assume roles of bosses (with posses) who are vying for control of a town. It's turn-based, has stunning artwork, poker mechanics and lots of sixshooters! Check it out!

Terry Cavanagh created At a distance for the No Quarter exhibition at NYU. It's a totally unique two player game around the theme of solitude in shared spaces, and words aren't really enough to describe it. The above track from the game is a really slow piece about returning to something and finding that what you thought was there, is gone.

Cubz is a fascinating 3D sliding puzzler by swiss company Rudicubes. I provided the background music that builds around a hybrid bass guitar/acoustic bass instrument that in a weird, warm and fuzzy way reminds me of mathematics.

In Chromixa your goal is to solve puzzles by arranging shapes of differently coloured light into other shapes. The background music is something that just started playing in my head while I was hypnotized by the beautiful, revolving lights.

Solium Infernum is hard strategy in hell. It's one of the best strategy games I've ever played and I'm honored to have my music in it. If you don't mind a little learning curve, you should really check it out.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is a physics puzzler too hard to describe with just words. So go check out the webpage! I made a really calm, ethereal track for it. It reminds me of a fall and winter forest.

This is the unofficial trailer for a browser-based strategy game called Hours Of War. There's some very beautiful painted artwork in it. I created all the sound effects and music.