The Death-Defying Audio Blog

Related link: http://www.thisspartanlife.com/

A friend sent me a link to This Spartan Life, saying, “This new blog concept is kinda funny. But the idea of interactivity (aside from gaming) in a virtual world is very neat.”

Not much to go on, so it took me a while to check out the link. What I found when I finally got there was amazing: a talk show filmed inside the Xbox game Halo. As the host and interviewee roam around the alien landscape in supercharged battle armor, making witty comments on the scenery, other players in the online world try to kill them! The host occasionally has to pause the (surprisingly deep) discussion to dispatch some clueless aggressor.

This is all accompanied by a proud soundtrack of 8-bit “chip tunes.” Wonderful stuff. And the next guest is Halo composer and sound designer Marty O’Donnell, whose insights are always entertaining. (I interviewed him for the game music chapter in my book, and thoroughly enjoyed it.) The only disappointment with the site is the metallic-sounding audio; the producers seem to have used all their bandwidth on the video.