Life and career

Rippy grew up in the Spring

Spring, Texas

Spring, Texas is a census-designated place within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of Houston in Harris County, Texas, United States, north of Downtown Houston. The population was 54,298 at the 2010 census...

 area of Harris County, Texas

Harris County, Texas

As of the 2010 Census, the population of the county was 4,092,459, White Americans made up 56.6% of Harris County's population; non-Hispanic whites represented 33.0% of the population. Black Americans made up 18.9% of the population. Native Americans made up 0.7% of Harris County's population...

 and now resides in Plano, Texas

Plano, Texas

Plano is a city in the state of Texas, located mostly within Collin County. The city's population was 259,841 at the 2010 census, making it the ninth-largest city in Texas and the 71st most populous city in the United States. Plano is located within the metropolitan area commonly referred to as...

, near Dallas. Making video game music was not Rippy's original career goal. He attended the University of Texas in the early 1990s to study visual art, and only took a few music courses.

Rippy worked for Ensemble Studios

Ensemble Studios

Ensemble Studios was a video game developer initially established in 1995 as an independent company, but was owned by Microsoft from 2001 to 2009, when it was officially disbanded. Ensemble developed many real-time strategy games, including the Age of Empires game series, Age of Mythology, and Halo...

 as the head of the Audio department with friend and collaborator Kevin McMullan. He is best known for his sound design and scores on the Age of Empires series, its spin-off Age of Mythology

Age of Mythology

Age of Mythology , is a mythology-based, real-time strategy computer game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios...

, and the Xbox 360

Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...

 strategy game Halo Wars

Halo Wars

Halo Wars is a real-time strategy video game developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360 video game console. It was released in Japan and Australia on February 26, 2009, in PAL territories on February 27, and in North America on March 3...

.

Ensemble was closed down shortly after the release of Halo Wars. Rippy joined Bonfire Studios

Bonfire Studios

Zynga Dallas is a video game development company based in Dallas, Texas. After Ensemble Studios was shut down by Microsoft, four different studios were created by members of Ensemble. Bonfire Studios was one of them. In late July 2010 the team released We Farm for Apple iOS. On October 5, 2010...

, a development studio formed from ex-Ensemble employees and led by Rippy's brother David.

External links

• Interview with Rippy, Music4Games
  Music4Games
  Music4Games was a video game music information site originally launched in 1999. It focused on the video game soundtrack industry and claimed to target dedicated gamers, game music fans, audiophiles, students, composers, developers, publishers, producers, audio directors and music executives as a...
  
  
• Article on Age of Empires music, Film Score Monthly
  Film Score Monthly
  Film Score Monthly is an online magazine founded by editor-in-chief and executive producer Lukas Kendall in June 1990 as The Soundtrack Correspondence List...
  
  
• Scoring Age of Mythology, IGN
  IGN
  IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
  
  
• Official Site