Eric Ryan Alexander, Creator of Soundscape — Interview Series

Groove Science Studios, a firm known for its recently released EDM-centric metaverse game, Soundscape, has just celebrated its recent collaboration with EDM icon deadmau5. To learn a bit more about this, we decided to reach out to the game’s creator, Eric Ryan Alexander.

Thanks for taking the time to speak with us. Could you please introduce yourself to our readers? Who are you, and what brought you to the world of gaming?

Eric: I am Eric Ryan Alexander, the creator of Soundscape. I’ve been gaming for over 30 years. Some of my favorite games of all-time are Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Magic: The Gathering, Halo, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, and DOTA.

Congratulations on the recent release of Soundscape! Could you tell us a bit more about it? What sort of game is it, and what can players expect to find embroidered in this music-centric metaverse?

Eric: Soundscape is a freeform reality powered by Unreal Engine 5 designed for the exploration of immersion in music and audiovisual arts. It’s an open-world VR and PC game that lets you enjoy music at home as if you were at a real-life concert. It’s a way to connect with friends and fans across the globe within a psychedelic environment similar to a music festival.

Tell us a bit more about the in-game scavenger hunt, The Vault of Satoshi. What’s the deal here? Are we right in thinking that there’ll be rewards for those who devote enough time to the search?

Eric: The Vault of Satoshi is a treasure hunt inside of Soundscape with a 1 Bitcoin prize for the person who can find, unlock, and penetrate the secret vault that is hidden somewhere within the worlds. Think Ready Player One but a real-life version of that!

Let’s talk tips and general pointers for those who’ve yet to take the plunge into Soundscape. Are there any dos or don’ts that we should know about before playing?

Eric: Soundscape is designed to maximize and get the most from your gaming hardware, so we recommend having a solid GPU, a high quality monitor or VR headset, and some good headphones/speakers for music. You can check out our curated selection of concerts available, or play any music from any streaming service so you can hear your favorite artists. Our Sonic AI technology brings the worlds to life based on the audio that is playing over your headphones or speakers. Soundscape is available exclusively through Steam, so if you’re a Quest user, you’ll need to connect your headset to Steam through Airlink or by tether.

Of course, we can’t forget about the recent collaboration with EDM icon, Deadmau5. What’s the story here? How exactly did this partnership come about?

Eric: deadmau5 is a legendary producer and we’re excited to be featuring his music within our newest experience “Soundscape Presents.” Back in 2011, deadmau5 was one of the very first exceptional shows I ever saw at a festival that got me into electronic music. So it’s exciting to have come full circle and get to collaborate with someone who is so forward thinking when it comes to technology.

Deadmau5 cast aside for a moment, do you have any plans to collaborate with any other musical artists over the coming weeks, months, or years?

Eric: We are already working on our next headlining performances to come after deadmau5. The next show we will be doing is with house music heavyweights FISHER and Chris Lake. And after that, the queen of bass music, CloZee. There’s many exciting innovations coming soon.

Soundscape Presents: deadmau5, a new hyper-immersive musical metaverse experience coming 5.17 Staggering in scale, detail, and freedom, this represents a new frontier in the exploration of immersion within music & visual arts. Available on Steam today: https://t.co/qmhL8UqjKw pic.twitter.com/m2Gc3SnjDt

— Soundscape (@soundscape_vr) May 10, 2024

So, what’s next for Soundscape? Are there any other updates or expansions in the pipeline? If so, could you kindly share a few more details on it/them?

Eric: In January of this year we launched the new Unreal Engine 5 version of Soundscape, so we are going to continue to explore the full power of UE5 to bring the most advanced graphics to our musical metaverse. Next month marks the 10-year anniversary of Soundscape, we are always putting out new free updates to expand our art as we have done over the history of the project. As we continue to roll out our next-generation concerts you can expect to see new beautiful digital spaces and stages, upgraded avatars and animations, new competitive gameplay modes like Soundtag, new camera controls for filming and remixing the experience, and the ability for anyone to host and perform their own concert to the globe from home.

And is there a way for fans to stay up to date with your upcoming projects, too? Are there any social channels, streams, or newsletters that we should be taking note of?

Eric: Be sure to check out our website soundscapeuniverse.com for details regarding new updates and announcement of shows, as well as links to follow our social media accounts to see the future of music. But Discord is where a lot of our fans and users congregate and it’s usually the first channel to feature extensive updates and news.

Any final words for our readers?

Eric: We hope you enjoy the old-school gaming values of Soundscape paired with the most advanced technologies, and stepping into Soundscape shows you that The Metaverse doesn’t have to be trash. Every day we encounter people in this space who have been pushed away by Mark Zuckerberg/Meta, and we’re doing things differently with no ads, no tracking, no data theft, no micro-transactions, no corporate BS. We come from an era where games were made out of passion, rather than churned out by corporations to milk people of their money. If you’re someone who has become bored of modern soulless gaming, we think Soundscape will be a breath of fresh air.

Thanks for your time, Eric!

For more information of Groove Science Studios’ Soundscape, be sure to check in with the team over on their official social handle here. Alternatively, you can visit the website for additional updates here.