Alumni Spotlight: James Duncan ‘12

James created the sound effects for all the enemy weapons in “The Outer Worlds 2”, a game that was released at the end of October 2025. For other projects, he uses his skills to reinforce the ambience of the game. “If you’re walking through a snowy atmosphere with big cliffs on either side, maybe we’ll play something like ice or snow falling off a cliff. We don't need to show you that, but the sound really gets you immersed in the world,” says James.

James loves the fact that his work is creative and fun. “You get quite a lot of free rein to imagine what the world might be like, to bring it alive and to add in as many details as you like,” he says.

He grew up playing video games, but James wasn’t aware of career opportunities in the industry until he learned that one of his professors at Berklee College of Music in Boston worked in the field. Before he attained a Bachelor of Music, Electronic Production and Design from Berklee, James was honing his performance skills (he plays alto saxophone and flute) and learning music theory in The York School’s IB Music program. He says he appreciates the opportunities that York gave him to play pieces in a variety of genres and to learn music theory. 

At Berklee, James discovered that some classmates were incredible performers, but didn’t have the same foundation in theory and analysis that he gained at York. “I don’t know how common it is in a high school music program to study the ins and outs of how a concerto flows from movement to movement. It was pretty awesome to be able to analyze music in that way,” says James. 

The IB approaches to teaching and learning were assets when James had to collaborate with his Berklee classmates to figure out how to produce specific sounds using a giant synthesizer. “I remember in Math and other subjects we were given problems that we hadn’t been taught how to solve yet. We had to infer from what we’d learned so far how we might start to tackle the problem,” James says.