Place yourself for a moment in the chair of a longtime “Diablo IV” gamer on the release day of the new “Lord of Hatred” expansion. You already have some idea of what to expect in terms of new campaign content, a new map region, and two new classes of character to play.
As you begin to explore the overworld and dungeons throughout the isles Skovos, you begin to realize the music that underscores your adventure exhibits extreme nuance tied not only to a change in your environments but also to your real-time performance, furthering your immersion in the game, play by play. This reactive music system — implemented by Activision Blizzard for the first time on this scale in a Diablo game — was achieved through the power of music design.
The music systems in “Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred” were designed by veteran music designer and composer Seth Wright. Seth also directed music systems for Meta’s “Iron Man VR” and The Game Awards’ Best VR Game of 2024, “Batman: Arkham Shadow.” Now, Seth leads Unlock Audio’s music design services as a collaborating member of our Augment & Amplify studio.
For developers who aspire to similarly transform their creative workflows, technical architecture and gameplay, Seth offers this introductory perspective into the value of music design and extends an invitation for a complimentary music design consultation through Unlock Audio.
What is Music Design
Music designers thrive at the nexus of composers, technical sound designers and audio directors. While this niche expertise often overlaps with these common collaborators, the role is far from redundant.
“Music designers are adept translators between production studios and composition teams,” explains Seth. “We’re advocates for ensuring both composers and developers feel honored in how their creative vision is met.”
The value of clearer direction between composers and technical sound designers can have a huge impact for the development of games of any scale or genre. For this reason, Unlock Audio houses our music design discipline within our Augment & Amplify studio, ready to independently plug and play into in-house audio departments or through collaboration across any of our six style-driven, specialty sound studios.
Why Hire a Music Designer
If a developer already has a composer, technical sound designers, and an audio director on board, why might they want to add a music designer into the mix? From Seth’s point of view, a primary reason to employ music design is to achieve more efficiency between music creation and implementation.
“Music design is a cost-saving measure,” Seth proclaims. “A good music designer dramatically decreases the need for rewrites and the need for large amounts of looped content. Producers are happy because projects ship on time and are managed well. And gamers are happy because the music they experience elevates the overall product we are making.”
With video games reaching new heights of player immersion, it no longer suffices to rely on limited audio loops to fill out a game’s soundscape. Current adaptability expectations in game music require a more systematic perspective around the many musical elements at play and how compositions shift shape or transition alongside real-time gameplay.
Tangible benefits of having a dedicated music designer on-board include money savings on asset volumes and revisions, overall stability for producers, stronger pursuit of on-time, on-budget completion, and an elevated end product. When a music designer has done their job to great effect, everybody comes out of it feeling like they are ahead.
No Musical Opportunities Missed
While a music designer’s leadership is best integrated from the onset of development, there’s still incredible value to be had by bringing them on for later enhancements or game expansions, as proven with “Lord of Hatred.”
While honoring a game with a massive foundation already in place, Seth helped uncover opportunities to raise the bar for devoted Diablo fans with the systematic implementation of hours upon hours of new, adaptive music in the massive expansion.
“We brought some things to the table that have not been done before on a Diablo game,” Seth shares. “We were able to back-end normalization, and we pre-levelled music throughout the DLC’s Skovos region so that we could more easily iterate during production and spend less time mixing content down the line. And, for the first time, Diablo has reactive music in dungeons.”
Players returning to “Diablo IV” for the new expansion will find dungeon and overworld soundtracks that morph and scale in real time with their personal performance or dungeon threat levels. Through music design, every evolving gameplay moment finds a musical movement to match.
“Throughout the entire aisle of Skovos there are no hard cuts or hard transitions,” says Seth. “Every single piece of music in every single possible scenario transitions seamlessly and naturally in real time. And I’m really proud of that.”
“There are also tons of wonderful Easter eggs in some boss battles,” he discloses. “In the battle with Inarius, every time Inarius uses his major attacks, a choir sings his name to telegraph timing. It’s a lot of work for a small moment, but that’s what you commit yourself to whenever you’re committed to making not just a game that gets out the door, but one that — like great art — stands alone.”
Adaptive Roles for More Artful Game Development
When questions arise around how to execute scalable music systems on an uncertain timeline, music designers offer the combined technical and production smarts for real, dependable answers. By consulting music designers from early development on, studios can establish strong music systems early that scale with production and steer the course for new creative merits.
“Video game music is the art music of our time,” declares Seth. “In 50 to 100 years, when people look back and study music from our era, I’m convinced the music that they study will be music for the screen. And, so, I think we have a responsibility to do the best that we can with that art form. There’s so much great stuff being done with nonlinearity and adaptivity in game music — changing the way that music functions as players make different choices and as stories or quests progress. That’s not just a gimmick. It’s legitimately contributing to elevating and making great art.”
As the games industry continues to face waves of change, Unlock Audio reshaped its service model around delivering flexible access to specialized audio experts like Seth. Whether developers need to fill select knowledge gaps or seek to stand up an entire audio department with proven and passionate genre vets, our style-driven studios pack real professional punch.
Unlike traditional outsourcing models, Unlock organizes around industry-recognized specialists rather than generalist resource pools. Through this curated, collaborative vision, Unlock Audio aims to be a timely wellspring of experience, leadership, and innovation with tailored, embedded audio teams — minus the admin overhead.
Curious to learn how adaptive music could elevate your game development? Connect with Unlock Audio for a complimentary Music Design Consultation with Seth Wright to discuss custom opportunities for adaptive music, implementation workflows, middleware architecture, or production planning. Whether you’re building your first adaptive score or refining an existing music system, we’re happy to share ideas and discuss approaches tailored to your project.