A Brutal Job Hunt For A Veteran Composer
Fifty resumes, one interview. That’s the hit rate Alexander Brandon says he’s seen over the last year, despite a career that includes composing the original Deus Ex soundtrack and early Unreal games. His credits span three decades and every corner of game audio—music, direction, even the odd voice gig—yet the inbox stays quiet.
If you’ve played on PC since the late ’90s, you’ve heard Brandon’s work. Beyond Deus Ex and Unreal, he’s contributed to Stormgate, served as audio director on Wasteland 3 and Neverwinter Nights 2, and racked up voice lines as eclectic as “Flayed Goat” in Pagan Online and “Additional Mudokon Voices” in Oddworld: Soulstorm. It’s the sort of resume that should get callbacks. Lately, it hasn’t.
“My take on things is: Full-time is far less likely, high-paying full-time is probably more competitive than it’s ever been,” Brandon told PC Gamer. “I’ve submitted 50 resumes and gotten one interview in the last year.”
Layoffs, Short-Term Gigs, And A Shrinking Lane
Brandon’s last full-time role was audio director at Frost Giant on Stormgate, a spiritual successor to StarCraft that struggled to attract a large player base. He was laid off in 2025, and credited CEO Tim Morten for holding on “till the bitter end in terms of keeping his people employed.”
He’s far from the only veteran on the market. Brandon says other “unbelievably senior and legendary-status people,” including Bungie’s former head of audio, have been piecing together contract work while full-time AAA roles dry up. The question he hears most often isn’t just whether someone can land a job—it’s how long that job will exist. “You have to weigh: ‘Yeah, I could get a full-time job, but how long is it going to last?’”