When 2XKO first reached public eye, one of the first things noted was the phenomenal soundtrack, with every stage, character, and mode sporting its own theme.
Riot has always been known for stellar backing tracks for their characters, but 2XKO captures the breakneck energy of a fighting game so well that it left me wondering who exactly we had to thank. Luckily, we were given the opportunity to do exactly that.
Jesse Zuretti is a major force when it comes to 2XKO’s musical identity. A longtime indie musician, former metal band member, and current composer on 2XKO, every theme in the game goes through him. A grassroots trailblazer, Jesse offers incredible insight on Riot’s creator culture, the industry as a whole, and the differences between composing for film and games.
Starting Small
TGS: You take pride in the fact that you started with indie work. How different is it working with that freedom and working under a larger studio?
Jesse Zuretti: I come from independence with music across the board. I started a band 24 years ago, and we stayed independent as long as possible. Independence is something I connect with and relate to more than anything. As we started getting more recognition, we tried to stay independent, and that carried over to me ideologically I think into my art outside of the band world.
When I started composing for Marvel back in 2018 it was a shock to the system to have so much at stake over every little thing. I really wasn’t used to that. As much as big corporations and big brands are really cool to work for, I just have a huge admiration for the people who put all the weight of success on themselves. I’m not trying to fix anything outside of me, I want it to work within me, that sort of thing.
That’s why Riot is a really good example of a company that’s a little different, in that they feel independent ideologically. You need to speak with so many people about working on their projects; it’s a really cool hybrid of things.
TGS: It’s really clear you want to support indie works and enjoy sticking with the indie style, what was it like getting those first big offers?
Jesse Zuretti: I’ve always been terrible at being excited about things as they come because I just don’t believe it. All those years of not working out and the endless hustle of being in a band trains you to be skeptical, in a way.
When I first got asked to do some work for Marvel it didn’t hit me right away. It was also kind of peak Marvel you know?
TGS: Oh yeah!
Jesse Zuretti: 2018, It was Infinity War, that kind of a special time where Marvel was this ever-present thing. It still is, but maybe not for the diehard OGs. There was a new wave, and I was part of that wave. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I get to do work for the company that made Galactus?’ Who is, like, my favorite character of all time.
It was like a fever dream that became reality, getting to work for a company that had so much on the line and loved their IP so much. It’s the same thing with Riot, honestly. I wasn’t deeply familiar with Riot, I had some friends who worked for them as composers, and I was very impressed by them, obviously.
So it was a very big eye-opening experience that made me kind of like, it was almost like, hey, do you want to join Delta Force or like the Navy SEALs? And it’s like, I wasn’t planning on it, but sure, that sounds cool. When? And they’re like, now. Oh, all right, cool. And then you go to your first day of training and then you’re surrounded by these people who have just been crushing it for so long and it looks effortless. And you’re this person who’s like, I have no idea what I’m going to do here. I don’t belong here.
That’s kind of how I felt about Riot after I started doing some research. I’m like, wait, why am I making music for this company? Am I qualified for this? So I just kind of took it in stride. And very fortunately, Riot and Marvel have a lot in common in terms of their ideas of how to create characters and stories and stages and universes and all that kind of stuff. Marvel’s kind of the OG red and white logo, many character kind of company, right?
So some of the linear theme aspects of writing music for characters and thinking about how they accompany a bigger story is really interesting of how it applies to games specifically. So yeah, it’s really shocking. I still don’t believe it. I’ve been doing this for three years now for 2XKO and I’m still kind of like, how am I doing this? Like, what’s going on? Pinch me.
Games Vs Film
TGS: And that’s a perfect segue, with all that experience composing for film, how different is it composing for a game like 2XKO?
Jesse Zuretti: So I can give you like the academic response to that, which games tend to be more linear. So when you’re creating like procedural music, that is, it is written with constraints as to how it’s implemented, like for a video game specifically. It can create challenges that maybe aren’t present in film, where film has more space and you have to think differently about how you’re applying music to film because of the greater experience for the people who are watching it.
But it’s almost like the adverse can happen as well, where a person who’s used to having more space and time will struggle to understand how to write something incredibly effective in bursts of 10 and 30 and 60 second clips and how to make that work where people don’t get exhausted from it.
And in games, we do have cinematic moments. But when you’re talking about a 2v2 fighter, you’ve got to make that music work in a short amount of time. That’s actually a real challenge. People would think it’s easier to write quick music. It’s not. It’s harder. In my opinion, it can be a lot harder. You’ve got to grab people like instantly. And it can’t get annoying. That’s really hard to do in a film. It’s hard to be annoying with music unless you repeat things too much. And then often in film, there’s not a lot of repeat of the same cues. It’s a lot of motifs that might be carried over.
You’ve got to grab people instantly.
You know, like Star Wars, you know, it might come back in a different key and a different vibe and still be something new and fresh to you. Whereas in that short amount of time for games, you really have to make it click. And it’s got to really work. I don’t think anybody does it better than the Nintendo music team, specifically when it comes to games. I think they make repetitive music, something that you almost pray for when they put out a new game.
TGS: And with the years that you’ve had on 2XKO, do you have a preference when it comes to working on games or film?
Jesse Zuretti: Games 100%. I come from film. My grandfather was in film as a child actor and as a director later on in life. Like I love and I live and breathe film. I really have a deep connection to it since I was a kid. I’m 39 years old. So I’ve loved soundtracks since I was a little boy. And that’s where my deepest connection to soundtrack music comes from. However, with games, it comes down to the culture and the community that really connect with me.
I don’t really find there to be a very open place for people to just hang out and be themselves and not feel like they’re being networked to death or anything like that, which can happen in other industries. And in the game world, you’re just hanging out with friends. Everybody’s a friend. It has nothing to do with who you work for and what you do. It’s just nerding out like, oh, dude, that’s such a cool Street Fighter shirt. Who do you main? And then you just start going down this rabbit hole. And then you leave with a friend. And it has nothing to do with like, who do you work for? Like, hey, any room for a composer on that? You know, it’s like, we’re just hanging out.
And the community cares so much. And I’m talking about the dev community. I just find the dev community to be, I say this not with super alternatives to try and make the point go home, but it’s truly how I feel. It’s a beautiful community to be a part of. The people are so inspiring and interesting, and brilliant. I’ve never met smarter people in my whole life than game devs. It’s some of the smartest people I’ve ever met. And the nerding out and the passion and the understanding of everything is so deep.
And I connected that because I come from the metal world. We’re very similar to that. So it’s a beautiful place. And I’m not going to limit myself, obviously, but if I just work on games for the rest of my life, I can die a happy man for sure.
On the Shoulders of Giants
TGS: Was it intimidating at all having to make a follow-up to characters with established themes like so many on the League of Legends cast?
Jesse Zuretti: Yep. The most intimidating experience I’ve had to date with music, to be honest with you. I keep going back to metal like I have to. I don’t want anybody just thinking like I’m just a metal guy. Like I have to write music for characters that have nothing to do with metal music at all. But it’s where I’m from, right? Metal is a very competitive music market in terms of the technical prowess of musicians and the passion and the quality is always going up. It’s never going down or staying straight.
It’s very empowering to be inspired by so many of the cool things that can be done with film. Riot’s League composers, the entire Riot composer team across the board, there’s not one single person there who isn’t one of the most elite people making music in games. It is a completely different beast. It’s very intimidating. It’s like the NBA. The worst person in the NBA is still better than the best person who just plays casually. It’s unbelievable.
And when you have that, I could name all of them off the top of my head at Riot because I’m very fortunate to call some of them friends at this point. Also, just from listening to their music and getting to know them through their music and being able to hang out at Riot, it’s so awe-inspiring. And the humility and how humble and genuine the staff is across the board. Sebastian, Mike Pitman, Rich Thompson, Bill, and everybody at Riot who make music are great human beings as well.
And I can tell you, being from the music world, it’s 50-50. That can get to people’s heads. Those composers over there are something else. But yeah, I kind of tortured myself a little bit when I wrote my themes for Riot. Inherently, I would ignore the previous themes, but I would listen to the other music references. So if they had references for a character that were not related to the game IP, it was like Lewis Cole or something like that, I would always listen to that and then start writing.
And as I’m getting through revisions and getting some ideas and stuff from the team, then I would go reference the original League theme if a champ theme did exist in the first place. And I would be really happy if I hit anywhere close. That’s all I was hoping for. But more importantly, it told me so much about Riot.
So Mike Pittman is Principal Composer for 2XKO in-house at Riot, and he’s based in Ireland. And then Eugene Kong is our Audio Director. He’s in LA. They made the best briefs for characters that I’ve seen to date in my entire life. Everything was spelled out, and they did such a good job of making it obvious what needed to be done that when I got to listening to the original League themes written by the composers at Riot, I would have such a good idea of where it was supposed to go because of how much these guys cared about the music and the briefing.
So it was pretty amazing. It was very intimidating. Still is. It hasn’t worn off. It’s been three years coming up, and I am still as intimidated as day one. I believe it. This is how much artistic care there is in every part of Riot.
The Soul of a Fighter
TGS: How does the genre of the game you’re composing for effect the process? Did 2XKO’s nature as a 2v2 fighter effect how the songs came to be at all?
Jesse Zuretti: Yeah, kind of. There were some things that we really wanted to keep in mind, such as the player experience. We wanted to make sure that something that is kind of entirely wrapped up in a short amount of time gets a lot done, and be able to think so fast in so many moments, you don’t want to stress people out while they’re doing something like that.
So I think that that was probably the most important thing that we discussed. One thing I can tell you is that we were very open to the player experience early on during the online betas and in-person alphas. All the way back to alpha back at Evo a couple of years ago. We got feedback from some of the players about certain things, ‘like this is too fast’, ‘it’s too slow’, ‘I wish this section was in this section of the song so I heard it sooner’, because you know sometimes you don’t get to the one-minute mark on rounds.
So we try to listen as much as possible and care about that experience. We really do try to make sure that a fighting game soundtrack feels fighting game-approved. You know, like it was really important to do that without following anybody else’s trends either. We were kind of making our own, doing things our way for sure, across the board.
TGS: Final question, moving back to you, Mr. Zuretti. Of all your projects, from your indie work to working with Marvel to working with Riot, what has been your favorite project to work on?
Jesse Zuretti: Oh, 2XKO, 100 percent. Super easy. 2XKO is it. It’s a match made in heaven for me as a creative. Especially just being able to have my own identity wrapped up in another character’s identity, like the fact that Riot gave that leeway for us to remain true to our artistry and the sounds that we relate to and the way that we want to convey our emotions for these characters, and putting ourselves in that position.
It’s been the best experience I’ve had with music in my entire life.
That’s a rare thing, I believe. On an artistic level alone, working with Riot has been incredible. I’m just hoping that along the way, I experience it again, basically. That’s my thing, going forward is like Riot has set a really they’ve set a really high standard for the quality of music, but also the experience for us who worked on the game. I’ve just had such a blast. It’s been the best experience I’ve had with music in my entire life. I can only hope that any projects and folks that I work with in the future will be willing to let us be experts at what we do with music and give us the freedom and trust that we were given with 2XKO.
