[Here is the first in a series of profile interviews conducted with several industry folk I befriended at this year's E3 Expo. Leading off, a chat with Lorenzo Scagnolari and Marco Pivato, who the DIYGamer team met at an off-site indie/mobile meet-up hosted by Headcase Games. The two make up 93 Steps, an audio studio based in Italy that has found a niche collaborating with indie and iOS developers to make beautiful sounds for said devs' games.]

Names and Job Titles: Lorenzo Scagnolari (Creative Director, Lead Composer) and Marco Pivato (Producer, PR)

Location: Venice and Padua Area, Italy

Industry Education/Credentials: Lorenzo Scagnolari — Graduated in Electric Guitar at “Accademia del Suono” in Milan (2008) with Donato Begotti, one of the best Rock Guitar players and teachers in Italy; Complementary Piano Degree at “A.Steffani Conservatory” (2000).

Marco Pivato — Graduated in Drums at “Accademia del Suono” in Milan (2009) with Maxx Furian, one of the best Jazz and Pop Drummers in Italy; Graduated in Drums at “Centro Professione Musica CPM” in Milan (2009) with Roberto Gualdi, one of the best Rock Drummers in Italy.

Portfolio: Original Soundtrack for Guardians: The Last Day of the Citadel (iOS, 2011; Arsen’s coverage)

Original Soundtrack for Monster Trouble (iOS, 2011)

Original Soundtrack for A Puppet’s Story (iOS, 2011)

Sound Effects for The Undergrounder (PC/Mac/Linux, in development)

Inspirations: As musicians and lovers of every genre as artistic categories, our main inspirations come from (starting from Rock and Alternative to Electro): Incubus, Foo Fighters, Audiovent, Ben Kenney, Arcade Fire, Queens Of The Stone Age, Rage Against The Machine, Skunk Anansie,The Police, Jamiroquai, James Brown, Gruvis Malt, Radiohead, Madonna, Bonobo, Gotan Project, Massive Attack, Portished, Tomas Dvorak, Prefuse 73, Album Leaf, Télépopmusik.

Of course we can’t forget our precious inspirations for the orchestral compositions, from the modern ones to the classical ones: Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Alan Silvestri, Michael Giacchino, Howard Shore, Klaus Badelt, Brian Tyler, Petri Alanko; Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Ravel, Debussy, Wagner and all the other kings of the Classical Era.

What brought you to E3 this year?

Mmmm let me see…for sure an Iberia flight from Madrid to Los Angeles at a super low price. Damn though! Next time I’d suggest they change the crew, the steward and hostess seemed a little bit too “vintage.” Ok, stop kidding!

The main thing that brought us to the other side of the world was mainly the need to show to as many people as possible that we exist and give ourselves the possibility to find a place and succeed in this beautiful industry.

And as video gamers (we admit it, complete nerds inside!), to have the chance to go to the most important games Expo in the world was like a dream come true!

Tell us about your company 93 Steps. How did it start, and how did you come up with your company name?

“It was a dark and stormy night…” hmm, no! Not true at all, but for sure something happened in late 2008.

In fact in that year we were still studying music in the same school in Milan (we’ve both graduated there too, me in Guitar and Marco in Drums), and after seeing that being a studio musician or a member of a band here in Italy would be probably the most useless waste of time, we decided to put all the knowledge and skills learned during our school years in a project capable of completely expressing ourselves.

But this project wasn’t yet the one that exists now, lets say it was like 60% of 93 Steps as they are today.

Everything however started like a dark and stormy night in Marco’s apartment in Milan, well…without darkness and without storms…but for sure with a lot of steps walking to reach the apt. at the last floor of the building!

This is why, during one of our foolish and crazy climbs toward the unreachable apartment, we decided to tally up the steps until the doorstep…and voilà! We discovered the number 93, which became the mark of our name and the cause that made everything start.

And of course: there are still 93 steps to walk up to all areas of that building, an elevator there is still a prohibited dream!

Pretend I’m a game developer and you’re pitching your services, what can you do for me?

C’mon, we were expecting a question like that! But ok, this is easy!

We can do everything concerning the audio aspect of the game. Imagine anything, and we can do that!

In addition to being able to do every genre and everything the game developer asks, we had a cool idea not so long ago and we are offering one more service:

Our latest offer includes the outsourcing of the Audio Manager position and the complete Audio Department. So we will take care of all the relationships between you (your project manager, you creative director, etc… ), us as 93 Steps (Audio Managers, Producers, Composers, etc.) and all the other composers and sound designers that the project may need (and we take care of them, not you). In short, you decide the budget and what you need, and then we think about everything, so you, the game developer, can concentrate all of your energy on the other aspects of the game (like programming, graphics, etc.), and can relax about all the audio department stuff.

You won’t be a “Do It Yourself Developer” (sorry for the little change!) anymore!

Can we listen to some examples of your work?

Of course! We are glad to everyone who stops by our Website or SoundCloud page to have a listen to our music, or take a look at what we have done.

Please leave us as many comments as you can, we need feedback from early in the morning to late at night!

What current/upcoming projects are you guys working on?

So one of our latest projects was “Guardians: the Last Day of the Citadel”, a great opportunity to do something different and to challenge ourselves.

Something is in motion now, but sadly we cannot talk about those new projects yet. We feel like a super-nerd version of spies! But one of them is done by the developers of the iOS “Game of the Week” Monster Trouble HD (and we did Monster Trouble soundtracks too).

We will be at Gamescom 2011 to meet and connect with more and more people. So if anyone will be there, it will be a pleasure to meet and have a beer in Cologne!

Anything else you’d like to add fellas?

Visit our Website, listen to our SoundCloud, add us to Skype (Lorenzo: capotamientos & Marco: marco.drum), follow us and write us.

We would love to meet new people and make more and more friends that share, like us, the passion for the marvelous world of video-games!

And of course thanks a lot to DIYGamer and all its staff to give us the possibility of this interview and to become part of a community filled with plenty of great and creative minds!

Thank you guys, you definitely rock!

Follow 93 Steps on Twitter and Facebook.