Matt Uelmen

"One guy we should definitely mention too, that Max still works with to this day, is Matt Uelmen. He did all our sound effects and stuff back in the day, too. He came on early, maybe our fifth or sixth hire, even though we weren't sure we even needed a sound or music guy. But he kind of hassled us so much that we finally hired him, and he's just a great guy to work with, and we still work with him to this day, at least at Runic. Just a brilliant musician. Usually the smartest guy in the office on a lot of topics. But just also the classic music guy. He has a lot of eccentricities and personality quirks. He was also an incredibly good tester. He could figure out how to exploit or break your game better than anybody."

- Erich Schaefer

Matt Uelmen is a composer who worked with Blizzard Entertainment.

Biography
In his childhood, Uelmen played classical piano, before moving on to other instruments and genres. In 1993, he sent demos of his work "to every developer who was working on 16-bit games in the San Francisco Bay Area." He created the music using the technical specs of the Sega Genesis.

His works include the Tristram theme from the original Diablo, and worked on the music for Diablo II and its expansion. He also worked on the original StarCraft and performed a track for The Burning Crusade. He worked on the music of Blizzard North's version of Diablo III as well. Russel Brower has commented that Uelmen's style in this time was more "Wagnerian" (a comparison to Richard Wagner); the music being "big and powerful," whereas previously, Uelmen's scores had been more eclectic, using a lot of found sound. Reportedly, Uelmen's music style influenced the direction of the game's early development.

He left Blizzard in 2007, and joined Runic Games in 2009, where he provided the composition for Torchlight.