Darude on Sandstorm, the gaming community, and TwitchCon
ESL sure has a sense of humor, closing out the League of Legends stream at IEM San Jose on Sunday with Darude’s "Sandstorm"—and chat went crazy.
If you’re not already aware of the extremely popular meme and the song behind it, "Sandstorm" is a techno trance song released in 1999 by DJ and electronic dance music producer Darude (real name Ville Virtanen).
The song has been a meme in the gaming community for years, and while there are many theories about how it started and gained traction—from a Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare video uploaded by a YouTuber in 2007, to a highlights video from 2013 that shows Brian "TheOddOne" Wyllie (formerly of Team SoloMid) getting a quadra kill while listening to "Sandstorm"—it’s not entirely clear.
"Sandstorm" as a meme has since evolved into an entity of its own. For example, whenever the song is played on Twitch the chat consists almost entirely of people spamming "Dudududuudu"—a nod to the supposed song lyrics (seriously, look them up, it’s hilarious)—"Song name?" or "Darude - Sandstorm," with various Twitch emotes included.
Occasionally you will now see people ask "Song name?" to entirely different songs as a joke. Or, when someone legitimately asks what the name of a song is, people will reply with "Darude - Sandstorm."
The Daily Dot spoke with Virtanen at TwitchCon 2015, asking him about "Sandstorm," the gaming community, and his plans to get involved in gaming in the future.
What is your understanding of how “Sandstorm” became popular in the gaming community?
I’m not going to lie, I’m not 100 percent sure what’s the exact correct truth and timeline, as I’ve read several things and had several people in the know explain it to me—and it usually involves words like "kappa" and "dank" and "song name."
When did you first find out that it was a meme?
It must have been on my YouTube channel, on the "Sandstorm" video. I responded to somebody when they asked for the song name, and I’m like "Hey, it says it in the description," and the next one was like, "Song name?" and the next one, and I was like, "What is going on here? These guys are either really slow or there’s something funny going on."
I think that was maybe two or three years ago and it just took off from there. It took me a while to figure it out and understand it. If that’s funny to somebody and it makes their day I’m all for it, I don’t mind. It’s definitely given the song a new life and via that I’ve also gotten a promotion boost.
The only time it sometimes irritates me is if I try to say something actually significant on social media and then every other answer is "Darude – Sandstorm" or "What song?"
What do you think of video games?
I’m not really a gamer, but I like the amazing graphics and depth that video games these days have. It’s an interesting world. You have to know that world these days otherwise you’ll be the weirdo and be left out.
Over the years I’ve played a game here and there, more like driving games and stuff like that, so I haven’t been into the World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike, orDotas that much at all. But now that I’ve got this back-door in through music I’m also really interested in possibly creating music for games.
Why driving games?
Honestly, I’m not saying they’re easy, but they require the least amount of studying. I think a lot of role-playing based or first-person shooters, you need to study and play quite a lot.
Driving games you can just jump on an arcade game or Xbox—and I know there’s a lot of features—but if you want to you just sit there, and I know how to drive a car, it’s simple and easy.
The graphics are so freaking amazing these days, it’s unbelievable, but when it comes to games it’s the ease of, because I don’t have time.
What did you think of TwitchCon?
It was a very interesting experience, I learned a lot and had a lot of fun too. I’m going to have to save the date for next year, because I want to see what the second year is. If this is the first one these guys are doing it looks really good now, so I would think it should only grow from here.
I’ve been to DreamHack in Sweden and that was a way more male crowd and this seemed to be way more balanced.
The after party was of course more my usual thing, I usually play "Sandstorm" in some form. In my 15 to 16 years of playing I think I’ve missed it maybe five times. It was amazing to share the love of music with everybody and it was also cool to share the stage with Joel [Deadmau5], who’s such a colorful figure in the community.
If a big Twitch streamer asked you to come on stream and play games with them, would you do it?
Yeah! I would have to know the specs, but yeah of course. I’m into it. Options are always open for something like that.
What's next for you in terms of the gaming community and gaming events?
I’m busy looking for new opportunities to collaborate with the gaming community, and do more events as well. And you never know, I might already have a thing or two in the works in regards to music and games, keep an eye on my Facebook and Twitch.
Nic Doucet is a News Editor for theScore eSports. You can follow him on Twitter.
Home Page http://ouo.io/scAWed
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