High Score, the Australian game audio conference run by industry organisation APRA AMCOS, has announced its keynote speakers for its 2023 conference: Yoko Shimomura, best known for her score on the Kingdom Hearts series, and Christopher Larkin, the composer of Hollow Knight.
High Score 2023 will run from 30 September – 1 October 2023 as part of Melbourne International Games Week.
The legendary Yoko Shimomura has a long history of composing memorable scores for several Japanese blockbuster games. Her career began in the late 1980s at Capcom, composing music for games like Final Fight, Street Fighter II, and Breath of Fire. She would later move to Squaresoft (now Square Enix), where she composed for seminal titles like Live A Live, Super Mario RPG, Parasite Eve, Legend of Mana, and virtually every Kingdom Hearts game.
Read: The High Score conference is building game audio from the ground up
High Score remarks that Shimomura will be using her keynote to speak about ‘creativity, tenacity, and the changing tools she has used’.
The work of South Australian composer Christopher Larkin is also incredibly well known across the globe, having composed the score to the critically acclaimed and beloved game, Hollow Knight.
Larkin’s keynote will touch on ‘the importance of production quality and honing your own sound and skills,’ according to High Score.
Though geared towards professional audio and music creatives, High Score is open to anyone who wants to dive deeper into game audio creation and technical production. It will be run as both a physical and live-streamed event for ticket holders only.
Tickets are available on the High Score website.
