Next play in the Jukebox Heroes 2024 fundraiser for MIND, Sobell House Hospice, Nordoff Robbins & Music Venues Trust.
Cloudjumper – Defenders Of The Earth soundtrack
I grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in the 1980’s but never got into gaming (bar Football Manager in the 90s!), so the gaming world and the music that accompanies it is a mystery to me. Thankfully, Gerri G nominated Cloudjumper – Defenders Of The Earth soundtrack after kindly donating to MIND, so I can have a dip into the world of gaming music.
I will hand over to Gerri for a bit of background to their choice…
This is a little different and a track close to my heart. As a gamer, in World of Warcraft (WoW) mostly, I spent a lot of time at the start of the Dragonflight expansion doing an area of specific content, raiding. Raiding is very intense and absolutely not for everyone; it takes 20 or more players all coordinating together to kill some of the hardest bosses in any expansion pack season, each with many multiple tries until the boss is finally down – some taking several weeks to finally get down. It takes a lot of preparation and organisation, it sounds quite alien to most non gamers, but it takes a lot of skills – from signing people up, making sure they are there on time (and if not why not!), balancing how much damage output each person is doing, balancing how much healing output the healing classes are doing, and keeping everyone happy but with discussions around their performance and how to improve. Organising when each person should be using certain skills and on top of that, doing the basic mechanics of the fight (not standing in something that will kill your character etc). Some guilds are run like a company, and some guilds – some of the best in the world – actually are companies of professional gamers – Echo and Liquid, two “famous” guilds, work with Blizzard entertainment to broadcast a race to world first every season, showcasing the content in the raids.
In Season 1 of the Dragonflight expansion, the raid was The Vault of The Incarnates. Each raid takes a lot of work with skillsets that cross over in to the “real” world – HR for example, ensuring everyone is happy and no arguments, leading diplomatic and careful discussions with performance reviews and kicking any toxicity to touch before it blows up. Leadership – the raid leader is the be all and end all, with his or her support team, they study the fights second by second, they study all the classes in the game to see what they bring and how they can utilise them in the best possible way to get not only the best out of the class but the best out of the player who is behind the screen driving that class. More leadership in the guise of the guild leader, who recruits people and ensures the raid team have what they need, along with keeping the casual gamers who pop in when they can happy and motivated to play with others in the guild.
I’ve been heavily involved in raiding for a few years now. There are three tiers of raiding – normal (hard), Heroic (much harder) and Mythic (extremely hard!). Last year, after much drama and the breakdown of the guild I was in, we rose from the ashes of that guild and, for an extended glorious moment in time (about 6 months), we worked together to achieve killing the heroic level boss of the raid called Vault of The Incarnates. It was exciting, and fun – 20+ people from around the world coming together of an evening to kick some boss’s butts. One of my closest friends, a father and gamer from Sweden, made a video compilation of many clips he filmed, during hundreds of encounters in the raid over several months. I’m linking that below too because he used this track to accompany his fantastic video. He shows the highs, and the lows (we all died multiple times and you can see at one point all of our characters lying on the floor while we, in silence, considered how each of us could contribute more and be better for the sake of the team) and when you see the credits roll you’ll see just how many people were involved overall, some only came with us once, some every week and others in and out when real life permitted it.
I know to a non-gamer this all sounds completely silly and in a lot of ways it really is. However, the relationships, friendships borne of those encounters and the absolute hilarious banter between people who, overall, have never met is quite something. Some of us have met, the banter continues even though the anonymity of the screens aren’t there separating us. Its quite unique.
I chose Mind to donate to because, one of the other things gaming like this brings is human contact with people who otherwise might be completely isolated. During lockdown, WoW kept me going – I live alone and everyone I knew had bunkered down with their families, I saw no other human that I know for the entire duration – I had the most human interaction with the security guard in my local co-op. I don’t have family left anymore so after almost a 10-year break, I returned to WoW to play with old friends and make new ones.
There is a group involved with gaming, that started in WoW called ‘Rise Against the Disorder’ Rise Above The Disorder (youarerad.org) This group have helped countless, isolated gamers who have been mentally unwell with depression etc to get help, since they started in 2012. They have paid for help for people who could not afford it, and they have helped some of my friends to finally have therapy and medical assistance to help with depression and prevent suicide. They are a fantastic organisation, borne out of friendships like those you see in the video by my friend Nandnandu, RAD were friends who clubbed together to help a friend in need. From there they rose to help many more. For some people, who are chronically ill, who develop mental health problems because of that, the only outlet, and the only place they have a social life is via games like WoW, and the discord servers that they speak to other players on.”
After reading that my respect and understanding of gamers has increased tenfold. Just shows that something from the outside looking in could seem like a waste of time, when in fact it utilising personal skills and building teamwork, plus connecting people, a vital part of our daily lives which music (and gaming!) help with.
Onto the music…it was created by Cloud, who creates arrangements of anime and video game songs. ‘Defenders of the Earth’ itself is a piece of musical bombastic joy! Who knew that mixing strings, rhythmic percussion and dubstep could work so well? Building slowly to a pomptastic climax nearly midway through, then it slows bringing in piano and soaring strings. Just as the listener is relaxing back comes the percussion and strings at full pelt.
If like me you love a bit of stirring classical music or symphonic metal from the likes of Kamelot or Epica, you will love this. Yet again, I have been introduced to another genre of music and am loving it 🙂
The Rockin' Chair 