On April 23rd we got the sad news that our dear friend and best “sound guy”, Jory Prum, had passed away after a motorcycle accident a few weeks before. He had been slowly recovering and we were hopeful that he would soon be with us again complaining about a tiresome recovery period. It was therefore a painful shock to many of us and I, for one, have been crying in many public spaces since then.

Jory had an enormous influence on the Norwegian game development community.  Not only did he work on the sound for many of the games but he was also an essential team player of our sales force. We don’t actually have an official Norwegian game sales force, if we did, Jory probably would have led it. Jory understood the importance of networking and communication. He has played a vital role in placing Norwegian game developers on the map in several ways: by introductions to his vast and rock star network, by carrying around and distributing pamphlets on Norwegian games at GDC, by making sure to invite his amazing network to our conferences and events, by giving talks at our schools, by giving talks at Norwegian gamedev events, by giving talks at events that have nothing to do with game development, by naturally taking on the mentorship role for both students and first-time game developers and by constantly rolling his eyes and shaking his head at the Norwegian reluctance for selling ourselves.

But without a doubt he was a champion of sound and he was brilliant at reminding us how essential good sound is in game development. He fought for sound to be taken seriously in both budgets and planning and it infuriated him when it was suggested that students could do sound for games for free, that there was no need to pay professionals to do it.  Jory was a champion for real professionalism and can take a good deal of the credit that so many of our game studios are running successful companies and churning out top quality games.

Here are some of the Norwegian games that Jory worked on:

• Shadow Puppeteer
• Among The Sleep
• UHR: Warlords
• Teddy Is Missing
• Shiftlings
• Pode
• Manual Samuel
• The Astonishing
• Moons of Madness
• Captain Sabertooth
• De Tre Bukkene Bruse
• Stikkmenn and Stikkmenn Shake
• REDUX
• Norse Noir: Loki’s Exile
• G.I. JOE: Special Ops
• Through The Woods

For me, personally, he seems to have been a larger part of my life than I thought. He was with me when I bought the computer that I’m typing this on (and warned me that I would regret not getting more memory – which I, of course, do), he graced Konsoll with his presence twice, he had faith in the work I’ve been doing and I was privileged to know a good deal about the project he was working on .

It’s unbelievable that he is gone and left this deep void.