TGN: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?
SR: I was born in Greenville, South Carolina but grew up in Spring, Texas, which is a suburb outside of Houston.
TGN: At what age did you first become interested in music?
SR: The earliest music I can remember would probably be the band Kiss (thanks to my older brother) and John Williams’ score for Star Wars (thanks to a major obsession with that movie.) At some point I had the Meco disco version of Star Wars, which I would have played on a little portable Spider Man turntable. And now you have a sense of how old I am!
TGN: Did you play any games in your youth? (Either video games, board games, card games, etc.)
SR: I grew up in the age of the Atari 2600 and, a little later, the Commodore 64. Both of these were huge sources of inspiration, joy, and grief in our household – and both probably led directly to my brothers and me having careers in the game industry.
TGN: Do you enjoy any games today?
SR: I actually don’t play a ton of games these days unless it’s something I’m working on. If I do, it’s usually something casual with my kids.
TGN: How and when did you get hired at Ensemble Studios?
SR: Ensemble started out as a consulting company, but the CEO really wanted to be making games. My older brother David was working there at the time and, in his spare moments, started to write music for the little side project that eventually turned into Age of Empires. I was attending college in a different city, but everyone was nice enough to let me jump in with some tracks of my own. By the end of it, David and I had split the work on the score pretty much evenly and Age turned out to be a big hit. I was able to go straight from graduation to working full time at Ensemble, where I stayed until the studio was closed down.
TGN: What was your favorite part of making the soundtrack for Age of Empires?
SR: For the first Age of Empires game, my fondest memory is just the sense of totally winging it. We really and truly had no idea what we were doing, but we had a lot of enthusiasm and that fortunately carried us over the finish line.
TGN: Which track for Age of Empires, is your favorite?
SR: Of the tracks that I wrote, I have a soft spot for the main menu music. It’s a different piece from what ended up being thought of as the “Age of Empires theme,” but it just really reminds me of that time and place.
TGN: What have you worked on after Ensemble Studios, and are you currently working on any music projects?
SR: When ES folded, I went on to work on CastleVille for Zynga and a whole bunch of mobile games, the best-known of which is probably Dungeon Boss. Last year I scored Squid Game: Unleashed for Netflix Games, which was a ton of fun. As for what’s next…well, there’s always something coming. Watch this space!
TGN: Thanks so much Stephen, Really enjoyed this interview, I have enjoyed your music for many years. Please head to my ‘Links’ section, to view his website and keep up with current projects.
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