The Flight on their work for the gaming industry

Christian Henson Music (Joe’s brother, also a composer) has just published an interesting interview with the duo of composers — Joe Henson and Alexis Smith, aka The Flight, who you may recognize from big and succesful games like Horizon Zero Dawn or AC: Odyssey.

Biggest difference between writing for games and anything else we’ve done was the time. […] We were very concerned when we got our first big game. “How can we go, we gonna disappear for a year or so!”. That seemed strange.

They talk about balancing personal life and work, which may be hard at times, and how they share their work, especially when tackling multiple projects at once. As it turns out, having a pal can be advantagious as they never feel left alone and can rely on each other. Stressing the importance of having relationships, they touch on subjects that concern all who create: refusing an interesting job, communicating, dealing with a few projects simultaneously.

Most importantly, they mention that composing for games takes way longer than for movies or TV, as they have to commit to one project for a year or two. Even with that timeframe and help from other people, that one year can be exhausting and demanding. The video makes that clear, but of course — the effort is more than worth it.