Beginning as EA Europe’s in-house composer in the mid-1990s, James Hannigan later moved into freelance work based at Pinewood Studios in West London. Among his early projects were Theme Park World (also known as Sim Theme Park) and Theme Park Inc. (Sim Coaster), with music and sound created in collaboration with his late friend and colleague Richard Joseph, and marking some of his first experiments with adaptive, interactive scoring. Created at a time when digital audio streaming was only just becoming practical in games, these EA/Bullfrog titles employed bespoke systems that continuously streamed and recombined recorded music rather than relying on earlier MIDI-based or purely triggered cues. The score responded to the activity level of the player’s park, scaling in intensity through the splicing of segments and the layering of parts – techniques now commonly described as horizontal and vertical scoring, though they pre-dated such terminology. Blurring the boundary between music and sound design, the interactive soundtrack for Theme Park World went on to receive a BAFTA award in 2000.

James Hannigan, Richard Joseph, and EA’s Nick Laviers