Jesse Harlin on working in the gaming industry, moving from Philadelphia to Liverpool and writing music for Star Wars

Having spent nearly three decades scoring iconic video games, from Star Wars and LEGO titles to Valorant and BioShock 4, LIPA Performing Arts (Music) graduate Jesse Harlin (1999) has spent his career at the forefront of the video game composition industry. As part of our 30th anniversary celebrations, we spoke with Jesse to reflect on his journey from Liverpool to Lucasfilm, creating the basis of the now-cult Mandalorian language, and his advice for aspiring creative professionals.

Jesse’s path to Liverpool began in Philadelphia while studying music at Temple University. “I was sitting in the student lounge looking around at the other people,” Jesse recalls. “I realized everyone around me was an education major with their actual passion of music as a minor. Nobody expected to get out and do what they really wanted to do, they were expecting to become teachers and wait for members of the Philadelphia Orchestra to retire for a chance to audition. It seemed really bleak, and I wanted to find a school focused on teaching me how to be an actual working professional musician.”

Without the internet as we know it today, Jesse turned to college guidebooks. “At the very back there was a little blurb about LIPA, saying that Sir Paul McCartney was turning his old school into a performing arts school,” he explains. “I flew over to England to check it out, not realizing it wasn’t finished yet! The teachers were working out of a construction trailer on Mount Street, giving tours of an unfinished building. But I got so excited seeing the place and how they spoke about their plans, and thought, ‘This is what I want.’ It was a place where I could collaborate with other students and help steer my own education, so I applied the next year.”

Enrolling during LIPA’s second year in operation, Jesse originally planned to compose for film, but a realization mid-degree shifted his trajectory. “Every day after I finished my film scoring homework, I would start playing video games,” Jesse says. “I realized there was music in games, so maybe I should be writing for games instead. Using live music in video games was pretty new in 1996, so I asked all the teachers and guest lecturers how to break in to that industry. Nobody really had any idea yet, but I became ‘that guy’ who wanted to do game music.”

That singular focus and commitment paid off during his final year. “My main composition teacher, Ian Gardiner, randomly got a phone call from a local studio called Rage Software,” Jesse recalls. “They were making a PlayStation 1 game called Space Debris, and Sony had thrown out their EDM score because they wanted something orchestral. It was total luck that the call came in, but I’d spent a long time working hard to make sure people knew that I was the person who wanted to do this. My classmate Paul Stroud and I scored the game as our senior project. Having one game under our belts was all it took, after that, I was off and running.”

After freelancing, Jesse joined LucasArts as a staff composer and music supervisor, spending a decade working on flagship franchises like LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Indiana Jones, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. Jesse returned to freelancing, scoring projects including League of Legends, Counter-Strike, and Yoku’s Island Express, the latter earning a BAFTA nomination. “That was maybe my favourite game I’ve ever worked on, simply because it was my favourite to play and gave me tremendous creative freedom.” Today Jesse works for 2k games, having contributed to their Mafia series, and is currently working as the Music Supervisor for the upcoming Bioshock 4.

Among his vast body of work, Jesse points to 2005’s Star Wars Republic Commando as a standout highlight. “I wanted to do choral music, which meant deciding what the text would be,” he explains. “It was either going to be English or something made up, and I ended up creating the basis of what is now known as the Mandalorian language. The Star Wars fanbase really took to it, and I still get emails today from fans asking to use my Mandalorian music at their weddings!”

Reflecting on his career longevity, Jesse credits the power of relationships and industry networks. “The old adage that ‘it’s all who you know’ is very true in the game industry,” he notes. “Your career becomes a long chain of people coming to ask if you want to work on something else. But the unspoken part of that rule is that you’ve got to make sure you’re not a jerk to people. If you come in and are a pleasure to work with, people will keep rehiring you because they trust you to make their lives easier.”

Looking at the industry today, Jesse shares his concerns about where the industry is heading. “The video game industry is going through a tricky time with a lot of layoffs, and AI is taking up a lot of the entry-level opportunities like library music and mobile games,” Jesse admits. “The argument we use as composers is that things created entirely by AI cannot be copyrighted, so humans are still needed to create truly original work that means something to people. Building a strong network, making yourself indispensable to collaborators, and creating authentic work is still the best way forward for our industry.”