Trinity College graduate Eimear Noone is an award-winning composer of film, television, and video games. Among her arranging/composing credits is a long list of Blizzard titles, including World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, and the upcoming Overwatch. In addition, she has toured worldwide with The Zelda Symphony and Tommy Tallarico’s Video Games Live, live concerts which perform video game music to audiences in the thousands. Now, with the help of fellow Trinity alumnus (and previous editor of this very section) Chris Rooke, she is directing the Dublin International Game Music Festival (iDIG). Spanning three days, and culminating in a performance from Video Games Live, this celebration of music in video games is the first of its kind in Ireland.

I met up with Eimear and Chris to chat about the festival, video game music, and the growing Irish video game scene. Growing up in Galway, Eimear took an early interest in music: “I’ve wanted to be a conductor since I was seven, literally. I started in the school orchestra when I was fifteen, and anywhere I could get a few musicians together I was doing it.” Eimear went on to attend Trinity and got involved in the orchestral ensembles that were going on in the college at that time. “I did DU Orchestra, and was auditor of the Music Society for a couple of years, and then I set up my own orchestra called Dublin City Concert Orchestra with a girl called Gillian Saunders who was in my class.

“After that we decided, ‘Hey, let’s go and book the National Concert Hall’. We were in Third Year and we were so ballsy about it, because we hadn’t a clue about what we were doing. We got a lot of support from the press, and as a result we sold out the concert hall two times in a row, performing film scores that hadn’t been performed in Ireland before then, like Braveheart and Batman. It’s very scary to go when you have no money and book the National Concert Hall. There were a lot of people who gave us a chance to screw up — and we didn’t screw up, thank God — but you need to be given that chance.”

Eimear’s entrance into game music came through a class she took under veteran film composer Steven Scott Smalley: “On the strength of my work in that class he hired me as his assistant and brought me to L.A. The first job we were to do together was ‘some video game’, or so I was told. It was World of Warcraft.” Eimear described the experience with nostalgic glee: “I’ll never forget being in the studio with Jason Hayes (World of Warcraft’s lead composer). I remember looking at the screen, at these cinematics, and I’m thinking that I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It was so beautiful, visually. We knew there was something special going on.” While this marked the beginning of an outstanding career in video game and film music, it also marked her departure from Ireland. Eimear clearly holds a deep attachment to her Irish roots. She was involved in arranging for the Irish choir Anúna to perform in the score of Diablo III, and described this with a deep sense of pride: “When the soundtrack came out, to see these Irish names all over it was such a kick.”

While video games have become a major international entertainment medium, and shows like Video Games Live have seen tremendous global success, Ireland’s festival scene is comparatively lacking. As Chris explained, “You have all this stuff in the UK and the US, there’s always a convention or an expo on, and none of that stuff has reached here yet, really.” This is not due to a lack of fans, according to Eimear: “I toured all over the world and it kind of broke my heart to go to all these cities in the world and meet all these Irish gamers. People kept asking me when I was going to do something at home.” In spite of this interest, no promoters were willing to take on Ireland: “It’s very expensive to mount a production like this. I approached a load of different people, but promoters see Dublin as small, and they see it as not enough audience, not enough potential profit, so I was fighting that.”

According to Eimear, the first spark towards iDIG occurred during a video game composers’ gathering at E3, the world’s largest video game expo. When she asked if they would be willing to take part in a Dublin concert, the response was unanimously positive. Eimear had a similar reaction when she asked fans on Twitter whether they would attend. From then on, Eimear says, the event was like a “tiny little snowball”, as more video game composers and gaming-based musical acts got in touch. Eimear made sure to emphasise that this project is not about making money: “It’s important to know that this started from within the industry. It wasn’t some promoter saying ‘Oh, game music is popular, let’s do this.’ We’re not promoters. We don’t care about a massive profit. That’s not why we’re doing this. If that’s what we wanted for this we’d do it in London or New York, but we want Dublin to become the centre of this musical universe.”

Eimear sees this as an opportunity to expose Ireland to both video games and orchestral music. “It’s really important to acknowledge now that people are listening to more orchestral music than ever before in history. Yes, in different media, but most particularly in video games. Because you don’t play a video game for two hours and say, ‘Oh, that was nice,’ and move on. You live with the game for however long it takes, and that time in your life becomes intrinsically linked with that music. This is about bringing something to Ireland that we’re passionate about and we love. We want it to be crazy, and colourful, and with a real Irish flavour to it.”

“The thing about games is that it’s almost entirely enthusiast-driven,” says Chris. “I’d say that’s what’s special about it, because everyone involved is really into it, and really wants to see interesting things happen in it. I just keep thinking that nothing like this has ever happened before.” “This is history making,” affirmed Eimear. Whether or not iDIG realigns the centre of the video game music universe above Dublin, it stands testament to the dedication of these creative artists and their fans.