Jason Schreier

I think it's likely or at least possible that they're library music made by this Sony label called Extreme Music that is credited in the credits.

But it's not clear where they came from.

There's like a band called Wooden Sword and there's a musician called Curtis Dunn.

And Stacey introduces them in game.

She's like, this is Curtis Dunn doing Deep Space Scan, a song that we loved.

And in the context of the game, like when I was playing it and I know everyone I've talked to who's played it, they were just like, oh yeah, I assumed that was just some obscure synth artist from the 70s that I'd never heard of because like Stacey's so cool and she knows all these cool bands.

But he's not real.

Curtis Dunn does not exist.

He's not an artist.

And I think that's weird.

Like, I think it's kind of counter to the ethos of the game.

And so, you know, I wrote about this and some people shared the theory, the likelihood that, you know, they had a list of licensed songs they wanted to get, but licensed songs are very expensive and they couldn't get them all.

So they just had to use library music for some of them just as a cost thing.

And that seems possible.

Galvatron has said, at least in a Vice interview, that they got every single song they asked for

And even so, just like given the nature of the game, I think it's strange that they didn't explain where the music came from at any point or even in the credits.

Like, you know, say who wrote it beyond just crediting extreme music at the end of the credits, you know, given that they're attributing the songs to artists that don't actually exist in the game.

Yeah.

That kind of set me thinking about art and artifice and music and performance and the levels of the kind of truth and what the truth really is in this kind of artistic work.

And so that's what a lot of my thinking has been about the past few weeks.