"Kim M. Jensen"
Originally Kim Morten Jensen
For those who are interested, here is a quick runthrough of what I've been up to during my last 13 years
in the game audio business:
It all started way back in the 80s with something that looked like a bread box, a color TV and a joystick.
Little did I know about the fact that the purchase of this excellent Commodore VIC-20 kit (and later the C64)
was going to be the start of my professional career. But… as interesting as my early years in music might
be, I think it's best we hit the FFW-button and travel all the way forth to 1993 which is the year when
I started making a living out of this time consuming hobby of mine.
At the time, there were rumours going about a small norwegian game developer called Funcom that was
about to break through internationally. I quickly realized that this was going to be the perfect oportunity for
me to take my interest of music creation to another level. After a couple of meetings with the producers and management, I was hired as Funcom's first musician and audio engineer in 1993. I jumped straight into the production of the Steven Spielberg-license "We're Back - A Dinosour's Tale" for the Sega Genesis console. From there on, I was involved in virtually all of Funcom's productions for the next couple of years. During this period I
got to work directly with some of the biggest publishers in the industry, and it was obviously here I first
got to learn and experience the ups and downs of the fast-paced games and entertainment industry.
Funcom kept on growing into a relatively large company through the years, and fortunately for me this
resulted in a wide variety of content creation. From JVC's action game "Deadly Skies" via the conversions
of combat classics "Samurai Shodown" and "Fatal Fury" to Disney's family game "Pocahontas", I was making
music and sound for a lot of radically different purposes. It was truly a great experience! However - the
explosive expansion of Funcom didn't bring only good times. Some of us were not so happy with how things
were turning out, and in 1996 that resulted in me and ten other colleagues resigning from Funcom and
starting our own company, DiMaga Studios AS.
After burning a couple of million NOK on a DiMaga-project that proved to be impossible to sell, we realized
that it was time to change course and grow stronger. In april 1997 things were starting to come together
and DiMaga Studios merged with former Funcom colleagues Innerloop Technologies soon after. We kept
the name Innerloop because it had already been somewhat established in the market and chucked on
"Studios" at the end for good measure. From here on things calmed down, and we ran a steady and
profitable business for more than half a decade.
After the merger, I went straight ahead and started building the Innerloop sound studio in the new offices
in central Oslo. Shortly after, I was hard at work cooking up ambient airy music for Innerloop's first
title "Joint Strike Fighter". The flight simulator was published in December '97 by Eidos Interactive and
recieved a lot of great reviews both on the product in general, but also directly on the music. During 1998,
1999 and 2000, I finished sound design and music for two more projects. The first ("Extreme Sports")
was created for Dreamcast and PC and published by SEGA and Infogrames.The second
("Project I.G.I. / I'm Going In") was published by Eidos Interactive. Project I.G.I. recieved overwhelmingly
good reviews on the sound and music, but don't take my word for it… head on over to the reviews-section
for quotes and comments from the industry press. After the success with Project I.G.I., it wasn't hard to
figure out where to go next. IGI 2 was signed, but this time with a different publisher; Codemasters. IGI 2 is
by far the most comprehensive title I've worked on in terms of music and sound design. A lot of time and
resources went into creating a suitable and credible aural environment for this title. It was a huge challenge
getting IGI 2 to sound impressive enough for the next generation of games being published in 2003, but
according to reviewers across the globe, it seems like we succeeded again. If you wish to have a listen
to the music that I created for the IGI-games, head on over to the download section at www.innerloop.com.
During spring 2003 and after almost seven years of fun & games, Innerloop was rightfully put to rest after concidering the consequences of continuing towards yet another project with a 2 year duration. Being a
medium sized company in Oslo competing against japanese and american enterprises with ludicrous
amounts of employees on each team, just wasn't going to be a lucurative mission anylonger.
So…. this brings us back to the reason why I'm sat here summarizing this period in the first place…
Audioplant! Obviously, one of the reasons why Audioplant was established in 2001 was because I started
to see where this journey was heading. The other main reason for the establishment was the fact that I for some time had been wanting to get into creating music and sound design for productions other than games. Nowdays, running Audioplant as an independent sound studio, I direct my sevices also towards TV, film, advertising and general multimedia. My latest game-work can be found on moderately sized, domestic game products like NRK's "Blåfjell", "Månetoppen" and "Skomakergata", Kaptein Sabeltann and Olsenbanden Jr. Also, take a look in the download section under sound to picture for some of my sounddesign and music for TV, advertisements and promos. If you still got more time to kill, heading over to the music section might be a good idea too. This is
where I have posted music in different genres in order to demonstrate what kind of quality you can expect
from me in a selection of diffrent styles. This section of the site will be frequently updated, so be sure to check back every once in a while in order to see where I'm heading.
Now - let's try to wrap this up in some kind of closure… I strongly belive that the environment I've been
working in and the way I have been creating my music and sound through the last 16 years, has made me
better equipped than the next studio down the road. I've had to educate myself in a lot of different musical styles and genres through the years, and because of this, I have gradually developed a unique ability to create suitable and credible music for a wide range of purposes. Oh well… enough of the self-glorification already. :)
Thanks for reading… have a good day!
<<By Kim M. Jensen>>
Nowadays Kim Jensen's project ''Audioplant'' is closed. I don't know how long www.audioplant.no will be able to work, may be till the host time will be inspired.
His work today can be signed in Toxic AS and also seen it's grows on www.toxic.no
Nice continue but I stiil miss his IGI's tracks and music style.
