Every game soundtrack is a ‘try and fail’ journey for Payday’s Simon Viklund

polygon.com:

Whether you know Simon Viklund as the composer of the Payday franchise’s emblematic dubstep/EDM/techno soundtracks or as the voice of Bain in the same series, his name is always associated with heavy-hitter action games. He’s known for his work on Bandits: Phoenix Rising, Bionic Commando, Dead by Daylight, and of course, Payday: The Heist and Payday 2.

For Polygon FM — our weeklong look at the way music and gaming interweave with each other — Viklund discusses his early inspirations and why wonky rhythms make good video game music.

Polygon: Was there a game soundtrack or song that inspired you to pursue creating game music? Can you set the scene of what that felt like for you, and why the music was so effective?

Simon Viklund: I was somewhat obsessed with NES music when I was a kid, to the point where I recorded Megaman 1-3 music off the TV to cassette tape so that I could listen to it when I wasn’t playing. The music on the NES was extremely effective because the primitive sound chip forced the composers to arrange economically and rely on great harmonies and melodies. My hot take is that the music in the 16-bit era wasn’t as good because the tech sounded more like actual instruments but not quite — it was like the uncanny valley of sampled instruments — and composers started to over-rely on the tools.

Can you break down one of your own songs and its influences? Was it inspired by game soundtracks, other music, or something else?

I made a track called “Inject” that was written specifically for the name reveal trailer for Den of Wolves, a techno thriller heist co-op game we’re working on at 10 Chambers. We wanted the trailer to leave the viewer with a sense of “oh hell yeah, that’s bad-ass,” and I listened to half-tempo bass music for inspiration.

There’s this track called “Arbiter” by Draeden, which has what I would call a trap-inspired beat, and I’m not really into trap but I loved what Draeden did and drew heavily from that particular track. “Inject” is