The Shanty Man: Crafting Songs for the Silicon Seas - Seán Dagher | grokludo 29
Seán Dagher is one of the main singers of sea shanties in games like Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, the indie hit Windrose, and more – and is partly responsible for the wider modern resurgence in sea shanties.
After curating and recording classic songs in some of the biggest pirate games, he was asked to compose original material for Black Flag Resynced. He also started touring internationally, leading crowds in North America and Europe who find a sense of community in these generations-old work songs.
Escapism, irreverence towards authority, seeking community... These are things that the gaming community and sea shanty lovers already had in common. But once games with sailing like Assassin's Creed: Black Flag or Windrose started including shanties, developers discovered a great way to fill the time sailing from point A to point B – and many gamers found themselves looking forward to the downtime in their action game, and loading up the music in the real world.
In this episode, Seán talks about the life of a Shanty Man, singing in pubs to welcoming and not-so-welcoming crowds, and how teaming up with the Assassin's Creed franchise made gaming the most effective discovery vector for sea shanties.
Having not played Black Flag, I first heard Seán's work in Windrose, a pirate game which allows the player to press a button to start the crew singing. It's fantastic for pacing – after a period of questing, there's some downtime to just enjoy the music.
Sea of Thieves had its own solution to this - let the players play instruments together - but Windrose often demands that you pay careful attention at the helm, threading a delicate path through the vision ranges of high level enemy ships. In Windrose, it's best to just let Seán handle the music.
A circle of friends I play with had made a makeshift version of this in Valheim, a Viking-themed precursor to Windrose. Crucially, Valheim doesn't allow you to use portals while carrying valuable metals – one of many aspects that makes it more brutal than similar games. When you venture out for iron, you load it up on your ship and sail it back, hoping a sea monster doesn't ruin your day. We'd load some Youtube sea shanties in Discord and listen together. Perhaps I had heard Seán Dagher's music earlier than I thought?
Songs in this episode are used with Seán Dagher's permission. Enjoy!