The One Thing Homeworld 3 Really Needs
This story was concurrently published in video form, by Subpixel.
Homeworld is one of the classic videogame franchises, so eagle-ear’d fans of the series definitely noticed something was different in Gearbox’s 2015 remaster of the title — specifically, something that was missing. And what was missing, you might ask? Well, the answer was: Yes.
I’ve wanted to write a story for a while now about the use and history of pop music in games, and since I don’t have quite enough material to make a full piece about the compelling evidence I’ve found that DOOM composer Mick Gordon is a fan of Canadian prog-rock trio Rush, specifically their 2007 album Snakes and Arrows, this story about Homeworld and Yes will have to do.
Visual media has always been something of a gateway for helping people discover other more varied forms of entertainment. From The Rock reading Elizabeth Warren’s biography in HBO’s Ballers to Edgar Wright needle-dropping Dutch progressive-rock band Focus’ 1971 classic “Hocus Pocus” in the third act of Baby Driver, videogames too have joined in the fun of inserting licensed music (or other media) into their games to add that little extra something to the scene.
But there is something special about Homeworld. The Yes song they included in the game was not just some random piece of licensed music — it was kind of made for the game. Kind of. Let’s dive into some backstory.
For those unfamiliar with the name Yes, you may know them as the folks who wrote the much meme’d end credits music from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure; but I know them from the 90125 album my dad always had in his car when I was a kid. They’ve been active since 1968; have produced over 20 studio albums and an even more outrageous number of live albums; and in 1999, wrote a song for Relic Entertainment’s sci-fi masterpiece Homeworld.
And I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I discovered Yes had some of their music included in Homeworld. They’re inherently a very sci-fi band, if not in lyrical content than definitely in aesthetics. Famed British artist Roger Dean, creator of such famous Psygnosis videogame cover art as Shadow of the Beast and Obliterator made many of Yes’ early album covers, each evocative of other worlds beyond our own. Back when I had time to play EVE: Online I’d joked with my brother that I could name all of my spaceships just using the titles of Yes songs and albums: Starship Trooper, Astral Traveler, The Prophet, Everydays, Topographic Oceans, The Revealing Science of God, Soundchaser, The Gates of Delirium, A Venture — the list goes on and on (please leave a like and comment if you like that I named my Venture A Venture — that’s serendipity for you). But back to the actual subject of this story -
The track included in Homeworld’s final release was called “Homeworld (The Ladder)”, a somewhat obvious title given that it was written for Homeworld and appeared on Yes’ own 1999 studio album The Ladder. Yes lead singer Jon Anderson (and greatest rock and roll vocalist alive today — don’t @ me) said that the track was actually almost taken off the studio album because the band was having trouble deciding between a few different arrangements of the song — in which case it only would have existed in Homeworld and any soundtrack material Relic and then-publisher Sierra Games would have released. But it did indeed find its way onto the record, even after the band’s then-producer died of a heart attack in between two of the final mixing sessions.
But how exactly did Relic Entertainment convince legendary British rock band Yes to compose a tune for their game? Well, I did a little digging a few months back to see if I could track down more first hand info on how this collaboration came to be, and I was surprised by what I learned — and likely not for the reasons you’re expecting.
I started with an email to Relic’s Media inquiry address, just asking if there was anyone at Relic who could provide some info into the Yes collaboration for Homeworld. A few hours later I received word back from Relic’s then-Communications Manager, Ben Boudreau. Here’s what he said:
“Hey there, Jake! I don’t have a whole lot to go on but at least a small thread for you from one of our old-timers”.
He doesn’t mention who this old-timer is, but then went on to copy paste some communication they had with this person:
“[Yes] were in town making an album. Somehow got connected with Alex Garden. There was some relation between the art style of their early albums and [Homeworld]’s style. And I think there was something about one of Yes’ kids being into videogames”.
Ben then provided me with a suggestion:
“Based on that, I’d say your next step would be to reach out to Alex Garden.”
In the email the name Alex Garden also helpfully contained a hyperlink to Garden’s LinkedIn profile. And what I learned there surprised me. Alex Garden was no longer in the videogame industry. He was the CEO of a robot pizza company. In 1997 Garden founded Relic Entertainment, then serving as its CEO until 2004 when he sold Relic to THQ. But now, at the time I wanted to talk to him about a 20 year old game and its use of a song by a 51 year old band — he was behind the PR wall of San Francisco-based Zume Pizza.
So I reached out to Zume’s media line, acknowledging to whatever Zume employee would read my message that it had nothing to do with pizza, and more with getting in touch with Alex about his time at Relic. I was unsure I’d hear back from anyone, given that the email I sent off was very open about not being interested in Alex’ pizza company experience; but I did get a reply two days later from one of Zume’s PR consultants, essentially just seeking more info about this project I was working on (the one you’re watching right now) and what my timeline might be because Alex was doing a lot of traveling in the coming months.
I responded that day with what info I could give them at the time, and waited to hear back about a potential interview with the man himself — Alex Garden.
But ten days later and I still hadn’t heard anything. I dropped the PR folks another email, trying to touch base and even offering to just send Alex a list of written questions that he could respond to at his leisure if sitting down for a Skype interview would be too difficult to arrange with his schedule — but the radio stayed silent. The robot pizza doors had closed to me.
But! As fate would have it, on August 29, 2019, not one day before Gearbox’s announcement of a third Homeworld game — a very brief interview with Yes and Alex Garden found its way to YouTube — with a comment from the uploader “Little bit of Fun before tomorrow’s [Black Bird Interactive] Announcement at PAX WEST”. I wanted to do a little more digging since it seemed like the person who uploaded the video knew more about Homeworld than they were letting on, and maybe had access to more interview materials from Alex and the band — since the video they did upload was very obviously edited down from whatever source material had been available.
The uploader claimed the video came from a backup of relicnews.com, which now just redirects to the main Relic webpage. Through some further digging I discovered that the interview seemed to be additional content from a short documentary on the making of Yes’ “The Ladder”. In the longer documentary, Yes lead singer Jon Anderson talks about how before the band began writing “The Ladder” Jon had toyed with the idea of writing an album based on a videogame.
Now once this album began to take shape Yes chose to record at Armoury Studios in Vancouver, and serendipitously ended up situated just across the river from Homeworld’s own Relic Entertainment.
How Yes learned about the development of Homeworld is still something of a mystery to me, but once the band learned that there was a chance one of their songs could be included in the game, Jon Anderson personally called Alex Garden to discuss the details. Alex had this to say about the collaboration:
“It worked out really well. I didn’t know Jon and I hadn’t really considered doing anything like this with the game but the more we looked at it the better it sounded. Jon liked the story and we like the music, and it all came together.”
Now, after finding this interview, I was even more interested in learning more about the process of Yes becoming involved in Homeworld. Jon and Alex’ answers in this tiny interview were just vague enough that I really wanted to dive in deeper and see what I could find. So, I did what anyone would do — I went to Jon Anderson’s website, found an email address for a PR film, emailed that PR firm to see about getting an interview with Jon, and awaited a reply.
And I did! The next day I was informed by Jon’s PR folks that they would forward the request to his management and get back to me soon. But in the words of Kevin Malone, “‘Soon’ could mean anything. ‘Soon’ could be three weeks”. I dropped them a line a week later to check in on any progress that had been made in reaching Jon’s team, but once again, I was met with radio silence.
So for now I guess this will remain not quite a mystery in the history of videogame development, but certainly something that has been overlooked for too long. But I guess all we really need to know is that, through means yet unexplained, Yes and Relic Entertainment came together some time in 1999 to bring some of the best music of all time to one of the greatest games of all time. And I hope that, even with Homeworld having long since left the hands of the team at Relic, we can once again get Yes involved in the development of a Homeworld game. Jon Anderson hasn’t been a formal part of Yes for several years now, though he had toured with several former Yes bandmembers under the Yes name after the passing of co-founder and longtime bassist Chris Squire in 2015. Billy Sherwood, a guitarist on “The Ladder” and longtime Yes collaborator replaced Squire as bassist for the slightly more official version of Yes — but the development of Homeworld 3 provides a unique opportunity to, as the saying goes, “get the band back together”.
