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Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka partners with Wargaming on new World of Tanks project

Wargaming today announced a new partnership with acclaimed Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka and heavy metal band Sabaton to produce content for World of Tanks.

As part of an effort dubbed Music 2.0 by Wargaming, the partnerships will produce an original soundtrack and sound effects for each World of Tanks map.

Wargaming will release a World of Tanks drive-style music video created in cooperation with Sabaton, shown below. It’s directed by famous German music video and commercial director Zoran Bihac and features the famous Sabaton song “Primo Victoria”.

Additionally, World of Tanks‘ first ever music-inspired tank, the Strv 81 Primo Victoria, will be available in-game from 17 August.

On a recent trip to Wargaming’s headquarters in Belarus, Stevivor was able to chat with Yamaoka about the partnership.

“This project wasn’t just a request to write a soundtrack or the main theme for the project or one piece of music,” Yamaoka said, excitedly. “It was a suggestion to cooperate in all kind of areas around the game, being a player myself and having all kinds of experiences in the industry. I’m trying to get as involved in the game as possible — not only the music but in other areas as well — so I’ll start from the audio team and then I’ll go on from there.”

The partnership has been in progress since the beginning of the year, and both Wargaming and Yamaoka plan for the partnership to extend until the end of 2017.

Yamaoka is an industry veteran, with work dating back to the 1990s. According to the composer, the landscape is quite different now, compared to then.

“The technology is growing so rapidly that some people can’t even catch up, but I like it,” Yamaoka said with a laugh. “Making music now days is getting easier. You don’t play the piano anymore you just use a computer to create music. I love it and I plan to utilise this technology every step I take.

“I think the biggest change to the industry is the inclusion of the smartphone. There were times when I used to play and it was only consoles and PCs and now there another device you can use to play games that’s a totally different thing.”

Yamaoka then explained his approach to creating new music without retreading old ground.

“My approach isn’t that there is something that I’d like to deliver from my own side,” he said. “It’s more of a communication with people the around me working on the project and getting some feeling from those talks and trying to express what impact it had on me or what impressed me during my communication. I really try to reflect that in the music and make sure the people playing are happy.

“When working on a video game I take it and I play it and see how it makes me feel, so in [World of Tanks] I’ll look at a scene like when I spot out the enemy and see what it makes me feel,” he continued. “Maybe I’m surprised or I want to do something about it so I’ll try and match the sound and the music to this real situation to how it makes me feel. The goal is to make this game even more interesting and more exciting.”

Both Yamaoka and Sabaton will feature at Wargaming’s booth over Gamescom 2017 in Cologne, Germany.

World of Tanks is available now on Windows PC, Xbox One and PS4.


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About the author

Shane Wall

I'm just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe. A game geek turned audio engineer/musician. Shane's life is a delicate balance of video games, music and science fiction.