Simon Viklund

Simon Viklund (born Simon Wiklund, December 1, 1979) is a Swedish video game composer, music producer, sound designer and game designer, who was first known for his work on the 2008 game Bionic Commando Rearmed, in which he was a creative director and composer. He is also known for his work on the Payday series as a composer and the voice of the character Bain.

In 2000, Viklund joined his friend Ulf Andersson's company, Grin, and worked on most of the company's games, which included Bionic Commando: Rearmed. Grin went bankrupt in 2009, leading Viklund, Ulf Andersson and his brother Bo to found Overkill Software. Viklund left Overkill in 2015 to become a freelancer. In 2016, he joined 10 Chambers Collective, another company founded by Ulf Andersson, while continuing his freelance projects.

Early life Simon Wiklund was born in Stockholm on December 1, 1979. He began learning music through the violin as a child, and later received classical piano lessons for about seven years. As a teenager he sang in the local church choir, and was briefly a singer in a band established by his friends in high school. None of his music was released at the time, because he was personally unsatisfied with his creations.

Career

2000–2009: Grin and early freelance work Wiklund joined Grin in 2000 and acted as a composer and sound designer on most of the company's projects, starting with its first game, Ballistics. He later changed his surname to Viklund as people abroad often mispronounced his name, as 'W' and 'V' have similar pronunciations in Swedish. Viklund was also involved in developing the PC version of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (2006) and its 2007 sequel, which were published by Ubisoft. He subsequently led the development of Bionic Commando Rearmed, a remake of the 1988 NES version commissioned by Capcom;

Viklund began work on Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 as its creative director in 2009, before Grin went bankrupt four months into its development. Development was transferred to Fatshark, and Viklund was hired as a creative advisor and composer.

2009–2015: Overkill Software Viklund, along with the Andersson brothers and other Grin employees, founded Overkill Software in 2009. At Overkill, he served as the creative director and sound designer for the company's first game, Payday: The Heist, and also composed its soundtrack, drawing inspiration from the 1995 crime film Heat.

2016–present: 10 Chambers Collective In 2016, Viklund co-founded a new company with Ulf Andersson, 10 Chambers Collective, while also continuing to work on his freelance projects. He also signed an exclusive songwriter agreement with BMG in the same year. Viklund composed the soundtrack to Robonauts in 2017, and worked as a game designer, narrative director, and composer for 10 Chambers' first project, GTFO.

Musical style and influences Viklund's compositions are primarily based on elements of electronic music genres such as techno, big beat, electro-funk, or dubstep, but some have been based on rock, industrial music and rap. In 2008, Viklund's music was labelled by Swedish magazine Nöjesguiden as "chip house" music, while Viklund considered his music to be from a variety of inspirations, ultimately becoming "8-bit-inspired dance music". Viklund has described the musical style of his tracks to be "a mix between the music I find suitable for the project in question, the music I enjoy, and the music I have the skills to produce."

Composition The music for his first two projects, Ballistics and Bandits: Phoenix Rising, were made with FastTracker 2, while the tracks for Bionic Commando series and Payday: The Heist, were made with Jeskola Buzz. In 2013, for Payday 2, he moved on to using Ableton Live, supplemented with a Native Instruments Komplete keyboard and the reFX Nexus 2 Synthesizer plug-in. 2009 Bionic Commando Grin senior sound designer, music consultant 2013 Payday 2 Overkill Software composer, chief engineer, sound designer, voiceover voice of Bain and Cloakers 2014 Gear Up Doctor Entertainment composer trailer music 2016 Dead by Daylight Behaviour Interactive composer trailer music 2016 Pan-Pan Spelkraft composer, sound designer 2017 Robonauts Qubic Games composer Albums

Singles