Paul Lipson adores all things audio. It’s crazy, really; he’s worked on every aspect of audio in games you can imagine, from composing to choosing composers, managing voice over production, working with sound design, and anything else that might cross your mind. During his time at Microsoft, he worked on several projects, including the Halo franchise.

Paul recently moved from Seattle to LA to work with Formosa Interactive, a sound studio that brings audio to games in all of those ways, from voice over production to sound effects in gameplay and cinematics. In fact, Formosa created all the sound you hear in the cinematics in Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. (Have you been playing this game?? It’s amazing!)

And yes, Paul is a composer too. The music you’ll hear during his segment is music he wrote for games like Iron Man 2, Kinect Disneyland Adventures and the Halo franchise, including the motion comic, Halo: Headhunters (music comes from Episode 2). I tossed in a Halo: Spartan Strike track by Tom Salta, and you’ll hear that when Tom comes up in the conversation.

Our Patron of the Week is Rosie Samter. Rosie is the violist and founder of the Videri String Quartet. I adore this quartet – the four players are insanely talented, all conservatory-trained machines of music. In any event, here is Rosie’s list of favorite game music, and we spoke about the first two:

1. “Lacrimosa” from Dead Space 2 by Jason Graves

2. “Elizabeth’s Theme” from BioShock Infinite by Garry Schyman

3. “All Gone” from The Last of Us by Gustavo Santaolalla

4. “Apotheosis” from Journey by Austin Wintory

5. “The Sacrifice” from Ori and the Blind Forest by Gareth Coker