The Rising Star Patronage Project

27 Mar

This year, Rising Star was able to partner with GDC to provide passes to four exceptional artists, allowing them to attend the festival for the entire week!

And now for our final cohort member... Darius Gourdine! @otortoisesound.bsky.social Darius Gourdine is a Technical Sound Designer specializing in interactive game audio, sound design, and audio implementation.

store.steampowered.comLocke(d) on SteamAn algorithm decided to show you this. What now?

In addition to contributing to atmospheric visual novel Locke(d), Darius has lended their talents to sound design production at Table Knight Games and technical sound design at Smile Break Games.

We're excited to support Darius and the rest of our scholars at GameSoundCon this week - can't wait to see you there!

They studied Commercial Music and Audio Production at Western Carolina University, where they developed a foundation in recording, composition, MIDI sequencing, synthesis, and music technology.

Darius's technical skills include proficiency with Unity, Unreal, FMOD, Wwise, C#, Blueprints, and MetaSounds. Their work focuses on collaborations with development teams to design interactive audio systems to support gameplay experiences.

And now for the fourth member of our GameSoundCon cohort... Ling Chen! @lingmuzic.bsky.social Ling Chen is a Taiwanese game composer and technical sound designer based in Los Angeles.

Through her work, she aims to bridge creative and technical disciplines while fostering stronger connections between Taiwan’s game development community and the international industry.

We're so happy to support Ling as a member of our cohort! We have one more exceptional audio professional to introduce, so stay tuned!!

And now for the fourth member of our GameSoundCon cohort... Ling Chen! @lingmuzic.bsky.social Ling Chen is a Taiwanese game composer and technical sound designer based in Los Angeles.

youtube.comDon't Eat Food Off the Ground - Solo ProjectYouTube video by Ling Chen

She's also independently developing 3D platforming adventure, Don't Eat food Off the Ground (good advice if I've ever heard it!!)

Beyond her creative and technical work, Ling is developing the Taiwan Indie Showcase, an initiative dedicated to increasing the international visibility of Taiwanese independent games and developers.

And now for the fourth member of our GameSoundCon cohort... Ling Chen! @lingmuzic.bsky.social Ling Chen is a Taiwanese game composer and technical sound designer based in Los Angeles.

She holds a Master’s degree in Music Scoring for Visual Media from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she developed a strong foundation in composition and music production for visual media.

store.steampowered.comBling Bling Goblin on SteamBling Bling Goblin is a fast-paced roguelite tactics game. As the dungeon’s janitor, you must rescue its reputation by quietly pleasing harsh adventurers. You can’t give direct orders—instead, influen...

Her work has included composition, sound design, and audio implementation across indie titles such as irreverent roguelite tactics game, Bling Bling Goblin or the charming 1v1 cat-themed sports-game, PawlleyBall 🏐😸

Introducing the third member of our cohort... D'Anthoni Wooten! D'Anthoni (@danthoni-wooten.bsky.social) is a video game composer, pianist, and vocalist based out of Los Angeles, California.

He's also performed as a lead singer for Pacific Drive (talk about talent!) alongside scoring Japanese commercials, indie films, and a variety of other game projects. In 2023 he was a nominee for the ASCAP Screen Scoring Awards for his work on Dave the Diver.

We've featured D'Anthoni before during our Black Composer Spotlight and are thrilled to have him join us at GameSoundCon this year! Cannot wait to see you all there ✨

Introducing the third member of our cohort... D'Anthoni Wooten! D'Anthoni (@danthoni-wooten.bsky.social) is a video game composer, pianist, and vocalist based out of Los Angeles, California.

After graduating with degrees in Film Scoring & Electronic Production and Design, he interned at the Japanese Game Company, G-Angle in Tokyo and moved to LA shortly afterward. His journey has since led him to write music for the indie hit, Dave the Diver -

begin writing music for CaraVanguard, a roguelite RPG planned for release in 2026; and start developing his own musically driven indie game, Duet of Sonance.

Introducing the third member of our cohort... D'Anthoni Wooten! D'Anthoni (@danthoni-wooten.bsky.social) is a video game composer, pianist, and vocalist based out of Los Angeles, California.

Hailing from the Kansas City area, he began his musical studies as a pianist, composer, and ensemble member in youth jazz bands before eventually moving on to study at the prestigious Berklee College of Music.

Introducing the next member of our GameSoundCon cohort.. Chloe Liuyan Liu! Chloe is a Chinese composer and sound artist based in New Jersey and New York. Her work includes concert music; interactive electronic experiments; and storytelling for film, animation, games, and theater.

She is also recipient of the 2026 Composers Guild of New Jersey Commissioning Grant and has received awards from the American Prize, International Electronic Music Competition, Ise-Shima International Composition Competition, and Global Music Awards.

We're very pleased to join Chloe's prestigious list of supporters and cannot wait to share the rest of our cohort with you. Stay tuned!

A highly prolific creator, Chloe's collaborators have included game developers, filmmakers, animators, dancers, and a variety of artists across disciplines.

chloeliuyan.comChloe Liuyan

As an independent artist, she produces the ongoing interactive electronic series Culture is the Body, where she uses motion sensors and data-driven instruments to transform physical movement into sound. chloeliuyan.com#culture-is-t...

chloeliuyan.comChloe Liuyan

Her practice often combines traditional music composition with modular synthesizers and sound design. For Chloe, composing is a way of capturing feelings that are too subtle, strange, or complex to be otherwise expressed. chloeliuyan.com

We're very pleased to announce the first member of our GameSoundCon cohort... Heidi Worley!

Heidi's inspirations are countless: from the X-Files to RuPaul’s Drag Race, The Met to Meow Wolf, Kondo to Korb, Chopin to Claypool. When she’s not obsessing about game music, you can find her pretending to understand astrology (she's a Gemini), drinking beer at her local bottle shop 🍻

or binge watching true crime documentaries with her cats. We're extremely proud to support Heidi's work and cannot wait to see you all at GameSoundCon! We'll be introducing the rest of our cohort soon - stay tuned!

We're very pleased to announce the first member of our GameSoundCon cohort... Heidi Worley!

Comfortable yapping endlessly about her passions, it was an easy transition for Heidi to teach video game composition and sound design courses at Portland Community College starting in 2021.

open.spotify.comThe Oracle (Original Podcast Soundtrack) - Album by heidiheidersonmusic | Spotifyheidiheidersonmusic · album · 2026 · 24 songs

She's also composer for The Oracle, an audio drama that chronicles the fictional gaming YouTuber "RetroJeff" as he explores the equally fictional title, "Oracle of Acheron." The full podcast and soundtrack and streaming wherever you get your music (and podcasts).

We're very pleased to announce the first member of our GameSoundCon cohort... Heidi Worley!

She set out on her new path the next day with her first illegal (shhh) download: the piano sheet music for Aerith’s Theme.

Her sonic adventures eventually led to a more legally harmonious outcome: receiving her Associates in Music Science and a Creative Coding Certificate in 2021. Her studies focused on composition for video games, music technology, and immersive digital art.

We're very pleased to announce the first member of our GameSoundCon cohort... Heidi Worley!

Heidi Worley (aka (at)heidiheidersonmusic on Instagram) is a Portland-based electronic artist who has always marched to the beat of her own drum (machine 😉). www.instagram.com/heidiheiders...

A classically trained pianist and self-taught song-writer, she began playing rock shows in her hometown's bars at age 16 (!) She discovered she wanted to write music for games after experiencing the (spoiler alert) emotionally devastating Aerith death scene in FFVII.

Hello from Rising Star! We are very pleased to announce that we're partnering with GameSoundCon this year to provide passes to wonderful cohort of audio professionals!

We'll be introducing 4 talented composers (and 1 sound designer 👀) over the next few weeks, so please tune in to meet our crew! As always, thank you for your time and support ✨ - The Rising Star Team

Friends, fans, and followers - with roughly a month passed since our initial launch of the raise for Volume 2, now is an appropriate moment to begin making our plan for the year.

Instead, our immediate focus will be on building and maintaining relationships with existing organizations (much like the work we did with the Game Developers Conference last year) and investing more in strengthening our community of marginalized audio professionals.

A small portion of our energy will be set aside for continued fundraising and partnership seeking, and a small percentage of our current funds will be set aside for charitable giving. As always, thank you for your time and attention. - 💫

Friends, fans, and followers - with roughly a month passed since our initial launch of the raise for Volume 2, now is an appropriate moment to begin making our plan for the year.

In 30 days, we were able to raise just over $2500 from a small set of incredibly generous patrons. Your donations are absolutely critical to our operations - without this funding, we would be closing our doors, unable to continue our work. We exist because of you. Thank you, very much.

Because of the gap between our raise thus far and our goal, we unfortunately won't be able to pursue some of our loftier goals this year. We won't be incorporating as a non-profit, producing an album, or making meaningfully large donations to individual community members.

chuffed.orgVideo Game Music for a Cause - The Rising Star Patronage ProjectIf the last few years are any indication, the capitalist structures holding our world together have reached, arguably, a point of no return. If we're going to change things, we'll have to do it togeth...

7 July

Please have a look at this thread - and then have a look at our stuff! We're seeking funds for a potential Rising Star Vol. 2 - and this thread talks a bit about why. Hope to hear from ya ✨ chuffed.org/project/1774...

Star Victoria Power | Slide20XX@slide20xx.com

When I presented "The Solution is Money: A Practical Approach to Diversity in Game Audio," at @oursoniclandscape.bsky.social earlier this summer, I wanted to make myself absolutely clear - there's no problem with being privileged.

7 July

Star Victoria Power | Slide20XX@slide20xx.com

The Rising Star Patronage Project reposted