Keywords Studios and Reactional Music form a collaboration to explore faster development of music and sound in games
Dublin, Ireland | 20 May, 2024
Keywords Studios (“Keywords”), the international provider of creative and technology-enabled solutions to the video gaming and entertainment industries, and Reactional Music (“Reactional”), the rule-based music personalisation engine that connects the worlds of music and games for game developers, music artists, creators and gamers, are delighted to announce they are exploring a unique collaboration to support the implementation of Reactional’s technology as a service for customers including games developers and publishers.
Both companies bring their distinctive strengths to the collaboration, with Keywords being a global leader in providing large-scale game development services, including to 24 of the top 25 most prominent global games companies. Reactional is driving next-generation musical experiences in gaming and creator worlds, connecting music and games creatively, commercially and technically.
Reactional’s generative music engine allows music and audio to be generated live around the gamer. Generative music means there is no longer need for hard coding, resulting in faster and more efficient creation and trialing of music and audio in games. This complementary technology empowers human composers to experiment easily and iterate creatively.
Keywords, with its extensive global footprint and industry-leading engineering capabilities, is set to offer advisory and implementation services in the integration of Reactional into game development projects on behalf of clients. Keywords will continue to provide traditional audio services for games, as well as offering the selective integration of Reactional’s technology to provide additional opportunity and optionality for clients across game design, player immersion and the overall audio development workflow in their projects.
The Keywords and Reactional collaboration will empower game developers, composers and sound designers to harness the potential of adaptive and dynamic music experiences, to create differentiated gaming experiences.
Jamie Campbell, Global Head of Innovation at Keywords Studios, comments: ”Our partnership with Reactional Music demonstrates our desire to innovate and provide new solutions for our clients to test the boundaries of creativity. By combining our large-scale game development services with Reactional Music’s rule-based music engine, we aim to provide an invaluable service to those game publishers and developers who want to approach their audio landscape in a different way; the fact that reactive composition enhancement through music and audio can be done without coding makes this an effective tool for prototyping, in addition to use in certain production workflows to allow our music licensing and audio teams to focus on adding even more value for clients.”
Reactional Music is known for its pioneering work enabling closer technical integration of music and games industries. A partnership with Keywords is a key step for growth and scale utilising the scale of Keywords’ global implementation teams. Reactional will work with Keywords to deliver its technology into games and interactive applications and to also extend its innovative solution beyond the core gaming space.
David Knox, President of Reactional Music, said: “Keywords Studios is a global leader in games and development services. Collaborating with its teams and studios provides an incredible opportunity to scale Reactional. We believe that Keywords’ implementation teams can also enable Reactional to extend its generative music and creator tools in innovative ways beyond the core gaming space.
“As music consumption habits change, Reactional is working with partners to create and enable new music and audio experiences beyond gaming and into emerging technology and product areas such as VR, AR and XR, creating new types of creator and fan experiences around music.”
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About Keywords Studios
Keywords Studios partners to deliver creative and technology-enabled solutions to the global video games and entertainment industries. Established in 1998, and now with over 70 facilities in 26 countries strategically located in Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Europe, it provides services across the entire content development life cycle through its Create, Globalize and Engage service lines to a large blue-chip client base across the globe.
Keywords Studios has a strong market position, providing services to 24 of the top 25 most prominent games companies and contributing to over 70% of the 2023 Game Awards winners.
Across the games and entertainment industry, clients include Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Konami, Microsoft, Netflix, Riot Games, Square Enix, Supercell, TakeTwo, Tencent and Ubisoft. Recent titles worked on include Starfield, Baldur’s Gate 3, Hogwarts Legacy, Elden Ring, Fortnite, Valorant, League of Legends and Clash Royale. Keywords Studios’ wide range of services likewise supports media and entertainment companies such as top tier streaming platforms, broadcasters, content producers and distributors. Keywords Studios is listed on AIM, the London Stock Exchange regulated market (KWS.L).
About Reactional Music
Reactional Music is changing the way we can experience, interact with, create, share and enjoy music in games and creator worlds. As the world’s first rule-based music engine, Reactional allows any music to be brought into a game and for the entire game’s visuals and sound to react live to that music – something never before possible at scale. By providing a new commercial, technical and creative framework for next-generation music experiences in games, this opens up opportunities for music personalisation and in-game purchase, unlocking value for games developers, publishers, creators and rights holders, as well as the world’s three billion gamers.
For gamers, your favourite music can now be a part of gameplay, reacting to your actions and movements, creating new levels of personalisation and self expression. For developers, this opens up a faster and more efficient method to create and prototype soundtracks, through generative composable music that can be modulated and procedurally created note by note in real time. Reactional also offers a global music delivery platform that is device, service and system agnostic, enabling scalable platforms and services for B2B and B2C markets.
Reactional was founded by a team from music and games including renown modern classic composter Jesper Nordin and Kelly Sumner, the former Chairman of Mediatonic (Fall Guys; acquired by Epic Games), CEO of Red Octane (Guitar Hero; acquired by Activision) CEO of Take 2 Interactive (Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption; NASDAQ TakeTwo).
