News Story

Game design senior Ben Cantrell collaborated with IU’s Jacobs School of Music to record his original compositions for a student-produced video game.  

Cantrell is a game design student with a focus in sound at The Media School. He is also working toward a minor in music scoring for visual media. Cantrell is one member of a 10-person team developing a video game for their final project.  

The game design program requires all students to complete a final project called the Workshop Cycle in order to graduate. Students take three courses – Game Workshop I: Prototype, Game Workshop II: Development, and Game Workshop III: Publish – over three semesters to complete their project.  

“It’s meant to give the students in the program some semblance of experience in how the industry works,” Cantrell said.  

Cantrell and the nine other students on his team developed and produced a short video game called “Shepherd.” In his role, Cantrell composed his own original music for the video game and worked as a sound designer and producer.  

“The concept is that the player is a shepherd with a small herd of seven sheep and is traveling through the desert to a distant city,” Cantrell said. “You’re walking and trying to care for these sheep and stop them from making silly decisions because they’re prone to wander off and get into trouble.”  

When developing the game, Cantrell said a professor suggested that his compositions for the game should be recorded with live instruments by Jacobs School of Music students. Until this suggestion was made, he had been using samples, or pre-recorded instruments, to make his compositions come to life.  

“It didn’t have the nuance of live performers playing it and would sometimes sound too exact,” Cantrell said. “When I’d learned the collaboration with Jacobs was possible, I said, ‘Okay this is something I need to do.’” 

Cantrell’s professor got in touch with the faculty at the Jacobs School, and the faculty put Cantrell in touch with Alec Lubin, an audio engineering student. From then on, Cantrell and Lubin organized the recordings.  

After much planning, Cantrell’s music was recorded two separate times. One recording session happened last semester on November 4 in the Georgina Joshi Recording Studio and another happened this semester on February 20. Over the course of the two sessions, musicians recorded three songs.  

In the first recording session, a cello, euphonium, and an Arabic oud were used to play Cantrell’s compositions. 

“The oud is not something that’s offered by the Jacobs School, so I actually had to find someone local,” Cantrell said. “I reached out to the ethnomusicology department to see if they knew anyone who played it.” 

The first session recorded all three songs for the project, so the second session was dedicated to getting the same songs recorded with different instruments.  

“I had a violin and a viola for the second session,” Cantrell said. “It was very surreal actually hearing my music being played in person for the first time. As they started playing the songs, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really happening.’” 

All of Cantrell’s music is now implemented into the current version of the game. 

Ricardo Aguilar, a game design student with a focus in art, also worked on “Shepherd” with Cantrell as the lead artist and 3D modeler on the project.  

“Along with being the artist, I’ve also helped Ben with managing the team,” Aguilar said. “My work as an artist, though, is very independent. I collaborate and discuss design with the team to know what direction we want to head in while I do my work on the side.”   

In considering the game’s collaboration with the Jacobs School of Music, Aguilar said music is one of the most important things to add to a game besides art.  

“It definitely helps set a tone or a mood,” he said. “It’ll evoke feelings within a player or help push a player to feel a certain way. That’s very important in a game.”  

“In the world of music scoring for games and narrative media, some work is completed ‘in the box’ (virtual instruments and computer only) and others are done in the studio,” said Norbert Herber, senior lecturer and director of the Media Arts and Production unit.

“It’s a function of time, budget, and other constraints specific to the production. The process that Ben went through to produce the music of ‘Shepherd’ mirrors that of a contemporary, professional game composer. Background and ambient elements were finished on his PC, while the parts that needed a human element were done in the studio. The sound of an acoustic instrument and all the nuances of performance are best captured in a live recording. Through his collaboration with Alec, Ben was able to work within practical limitations while also using an incredible resource here on campus to achieve the best possible sound for his music.”

As the team continues to work on updating the game, the public can access the current version of “Shepherd” now on Steam marketplace. It was released for early access on March 17 and costs $4.99 in its current state. Cantrell said the group plans to keep updating the game until they feel it’s ready for a full release, and that they expect to keep working on it after graduation.