Ryan Thompson

@bardicknowledge.bsky.social

3478 Followers 1137 Following

Game audio professor and radio host (Monday 7:00 PM, wkar.org) at Michigan State. Musicology via game studies. Go green! Thompson.RyanC@gmail.com Watch me and my best friends stream Thursday evenings 9-11 PM Eastern at Twitch.tv/BardicKnowledge

Image of sunset in Grand Haven, Michigan before the musical fountain show began.
Grand Haven Musical fountain light show, 2025
RAYGUN shirt website selling a plain sky-blue shirt with pink lettering saying "BUT IT'S A WET HEAT."
Kefka Palazzo appearing to poison the Washington D.C. reflecting pool.
Picture of my wife Addie and myself on a boat between Lakes Huron and Michigan as we sail underneath the Mackinac Bridge.
Handwritten note for Victoria that reads: Hi, Victoria! We’re streaming Mina The Hollower tonight. Fun community prompt I’ll use with my students this fall. Thanks! :)
Myself with Dana and Sarah at the bottom of Niagara Falls’ tunnel
Picture of my cat sprawled out sleeping
Image of copy protection micro-stage in Prince of Persia 1.3 -- the correct letter to drink is "K" for this example and presumably it is on the screen to the right.
Your assignment is to import those recordings into Wwise, edit them so as to separate the long files into smaller, more meaningful units, and create roughly 20-30 different audio assets for use in a game. Then, using those assets, you are to create one event: "Forest_Ambience" that when triggered, will cause various intensities of bird sound to play. You'll use an RTPC tied to Voice Volume to drive which sounds play at which intensity levels -- I highly recommend setting the minimum value of the RTPC to 0 and the maximum value to 6.0, leaving you with five useful values after accounting for an “off” value of zero, which should be ordered from “least amount of bird sound” to “comical cacophony of avian animals.” Your event should have five different intensities / densities of bird canopy sounds, each of which can be stepped to in real-time, governed by the RTPC value. You do not have to define exactly how a fictional video game would shift this RTPC value around. For some examples, Genshin Impact does this by counting the number of trees around the player avatar, and Ghost of Tsushima (as you saw briefly, earlier in the term) does it by determining distance from the end of the type of area you're currently in (plains, forest, etc.) The point is that each of them uses an RTPC to drive the soundscape, and that's what you'll do here. When the event is triggered, there should be a continuous, looping flow of sound (not unlike the heartbeat sound from earlier in the term). The only parameter you should have to change to adjust anything within your bird canopy is the RTPC value determining how far into your forest you are. Please note that the RTPC curve should be shaped like stairsteps and not be a smooth curve; in other words, setting the value to 3.5 should be meaningless (or simply mean “between 3 and 4.”) You will be graded on each of your five intensity levels of canopy, and show Dr. Thompson each one in ascending order before you leave class for the day.
Image of the Genki Covert Dock 3 and the Genki Shadowcast 3 Pro, both of which I just received in the mail.
Full text of the image as follows: I am going to voice an uncomfortable thing here, and be advised I will moderate commentary on this relatively heavily. *Lots of training data for what computers think women should look like come from spaces where female body representation is something directly curated for straight men. Think Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, Maxim / Playboy magazine from the 20th century, and even less savory sources from the 21st.* This filter is revealing and reinforcing these biases. Like many others here, I am of the opinion that the original image on the left looks much better than the filtered one as a result.
Picture of Addie Thompson with her early career award, given to her during a recent trip to Germany.
Ryan with fellow musician Jillian Aversa, watching the GDC concert together
Photo of Ryan wearing an MSU Spartan quarter-zip pullover with a VGMTogether shirt underneath, overlooking the Moscone Center carosel barely visible in the distance.
Image of a post by NBC discussing the AI / fake actress persona "Tilly Norwood," a character that does not exist and is being positioned as a replacement for working actors. The link is not clickable because I do not want to encourage visitors to the site and purposely captured the screen rather than a more traditional quote affords.
Picture of two pages from Mike Drucker’s excellent “Good Game, No Rematch: A Life Made of Video Games” where Mike describes doing an elementary school presentation on the career of game designer Roberta Williams (one of gaming’s most influential designers) and having the project dismissed as not being focused on someone important. Mike went on to very recently interview Williams for Game Informer magazine shortly after this book was published: https://gameinformer.com/feature/2026/01/01/roberta-quest
Ryan's cat Link lounging on a red blanket atop a blue couch, with lit fireplace in background.
Picture of hand, holding two mocked-up tickets for the imagined show “Stay Home and Do Nothing and Go To Bed Early”
List of albums I bought this year (photo 1): Stress Fracture (DiscoCactus single), Hades II, Timespinner, Eternal Strands, Blue Prince, Gathering Sky, Ori and the Blind Forest, Dust: An Elysian Tale, Yooka-Laylee
Image of Trader Joe’s dried mango being described as “soft and juicy,” neither of which is particularly true of any dried fruit
Picture of the Dragonlord from Dragon Quest offering to share his rule of Alefgard alongside the Scion of Erdrick with a yes/no prompt. (It, like allyship with Trump, is a false, illusory choice.)
Picture of Dragon Quest II's Prince of Midenhall (given the name Ryan, as I am playing the game) looking into a mirror, "delighted to see he's handsome as ever."
Snow-capped autumn trees with a combination of orange and yellow leaves mixed in alongside evergreens in a muted color combination, as taken from Interstate 94 near Lake Michigan.
Image advertising a D&D adventure on Sunday November 9th from 10:00 AM — 2:00 PM at 416 Cedar Avenue South, in Minneapolis
List of people cursing about the World Series game.
Image of Ryan sitting at a comfy table in the Denver airport
Image of stir fry with meat, broccoli, red peppers
Image of new siding on our home.
In progress picture of house being re-sided.
Short video of flooding in my basement due to a contractor ripping a water line. :(
Brown t-shirt with lute and message: You have died because you talked over The Bard’s super helpful song!
List of stats for my playthrough. Score: 82.
Short Excel chart listing what ChatGPT 5.0 thought was the correct order of Robot Masters for each Mega Man title. Six of sixteen (or thirty-five point five percent) of its suggestions are correct. Mega Man 2 is the worst entry: Air Man is completely immune to the Metal Blades (not that we need to get into the weeds here).
Victoria Tran’s book, “Mastering Community Mamagement: Chaos, Compassion, and Connections in Games.” Teal cover with Twitch logo, @ symbol, heart, and devil emojis.
Email from me to former editor Matt Miller, thanking him for helping launch my own career during graduate school (I was featured in an interview on the Game Informer website many years ago).
Issue of The Iowan from many years ago with image of harvest-time corn. Title: “In Praise of Corn”
Screenshot of the final boss of Final Fantasy V - Neo Exdeath - dying, which signals my victory with a team of Knight, Beastmaster, Summoner, Blue Mage (among the best possible team rolls for the 2025 Fiesta; this year was easy).
Image of Ryan with a day-one Switch 2 hidden in his bathroom cabinet (where child presents live).
Image shows a post from IGN advertising that Vivi-shaped coffee mugs (adorable, ahhhh!) are available for pre-order everywhere except for the United States.
Slide from Nolan's talk asking how players can so readily listen to the same four-minute piece of music thousands of times.
Collection of Easter candy; highlights include a very large Ferrero Rocher ball and a full size Hershey Symphony bar.
Rehearsal for VGMCon opera, “Aria Kart.” Thomas Kresge (of The Game Brass) conducting.
The new Mario Kart World logo with added text "Except the United States" in stylized, curved font appropriately rotating around the globe
French toast with homemade strawberry whipped cream (made from liquid heavy whipping cream and stirring in strawberries), topped with blueberries and maple syrup. Appearing as a special guest in the corner of the photo is my own personal coffee-penguin mug Pengy, who in Ryan's headcanon is the now-retired penguin from the old Konami game Arctic Adventure. He is full of coffee and happy, as is Ryan by the time you see this.
Homemade pork tenderloin, no lettuce or covering
Picture of a Stardew Valley-themed coffee mug and a kitchen cabinet with a knitted Junimo hiding inside
Hi-res image of Light World map from Zelda: A Link to the Past
Dear friend of WKAR, You may have seen national news stories recently about efforts to eliminate federal funding for PBS and NPR. During the past few weeks, some members of congress have called for hearings to address alleged "systemically biased content," while others have introduced bills to immediately eliminate federal support for public media. Unfounded claims of violations of FCC rules and pressure to shut down parts of public media organizations to comply with Executive Orders from the President have many in the community we serve concerned. Public media is for everyone. The mission of WKAR Public Media is to inform, educate, and inspire our community by connecting people through thought-provoking content, ideas, and perspectives. We serve that mission through sharing exceptional original content, connecting with community, fostering learning, and so much more. WKAR is for you. WKAR remains an independent, community-supported and locally operated media organization. We make our own decisions reflective of the unique needs of those living in our capital region and the state of Michigan. We serve free of undue influence and remain committed to objectivity and fairness in the choice and presentation of content. We recognize the different cultures and people that make up our community and we are committed to engaging, understanding, promoting, and fostering a variety of perspectives. Thousands of people engage with WKAR Public Media each day through five WKAR TV channels, 90.5 FM, WKAR NewsTalk, Radio Reading Service, at wkar.org and through social and streaming platforms. Tens of thousands are in a direct relationship with us, attending in-person events, volunteering, donating, subscribing to our newsletters, engaging on social media and more. We are here for all, because you and so many across our community value and support the trusted, essential service that WKAR provides for mid-Michigan and beyond. ... To learn more, visit wkar.org/value.
Image of the 4 Fingers Joker from Balatro next to the four-fingered hand of the dude from “Loss.” Caption for the whole thing: Is The 4 Fingers hand a reference to Loss?
Recipe for kringla, Norwegian pastry (to be served with butter or dipped in coffee). 1 cup sugar 2.5 tsp baking powder 1/2 cup butter 3 cups flour 1 egg 1/4 tsp salt 1 cup buttermilk 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp baking soda Mix it all, let dough rest overnight. Roll into pencil-thin strips, shape into figure 8’s or pretzels, bake at 400 degrees* for 5-8 minutes only until a hint of golden brown. Cover with damp towel to keep moist while the rest bake; serve with butter or dipped in coffee. Keep the dough chilled; don’t overhandle. *Ryan puts 385 on his oven; your over may vary.
Large multimedia production classroom at Michigan State with RGB trellised lighting. Through two glass windows on the far end is a fully-equipped journalism production classroom specifically for student use.
Picture is plain-text (to get around length limits)reading as follows: Ryan Thompson is an epic spender of time. He spends most of his time playing video games as a means to escape writing his dissertation for the University of Minnesota, which he hopes to finish before his children grow old enough to pester him about why he hasn't yet graduated. Ryan does a lot of presentations to the public, because he's determined to connect this mostly academic pursuit with real people who live outside academia -- and on rare occasion, he has some success, having spoken at the Game Developer's Conference and been featured on Minnesota Public Radio. When he finds time away from writing and from watching his two children, he manages the History & Study of Video Game Music forum for OverClocked ReMix, and you can find him on the web and Twitter as BardicKnowledge. Tonight, Ryan is presenting "An Argument Against the Development of Ludomusicological Cannons."
Princeton chapel, looking towards rear of building
Frog and Toad: The List where Toad loses his list and scrawls out “Go to sleep” in the sand to retain the satisfaction of crossing it off.
Picture of a Stardew Valley coffee mug
Link the cat covering his face with a paw as he naps to avoid all interaction with his humans.
Steam year in review; 93 games played, 304 achievements earned, 68% of the time with a controller, most played games are Rabbit and Steel + Hades II (special mention to FFIX, which is played by Oliver).