Lena Raine says Pigstep changed how Minecraft thinks about its music

Lena Raine says Minecraft’s Pigstep changed the way Mojang approaches music for the game. In an interview, the composer and designer said the disc’s popularity altered the prompt she hears now: people want more tracks that hit as hard as Pigstep did. Raine said that reaction followed earlier work on the Nether and later disc tracks including Creator and Otherside.

How Pigstep turned into a reference point

Raine said her first Minecraft assignment was the revitalisation of the Nether, the game’s underworld space. She described that work as drawing on survival-horror ideas and aiming for music that felt unsettling, which stood in contrast to the calmer, more soothing tracks Daniel “C418” Rosenfeld had already created for the game.

The disc music gave her a different brief. Raine said Mojang told her that for discs, she could simply write whatever she wanted. She noted that the early discs were not tightly tied to any event or location, so the format gave her room to experiment. That freedom shaped Pigstep, which started with a simple idea about what Piglins might listen to if they had music of their own.

Her own shorthand for the concept was blunt: “Dubstep for pigs!” Raine said she turned that into a joke prompt, then wrote what she called a funny little tune. She did not expect the response it would get, or the way it would feed back into the rest of her work on the game.

The effect of Pigstep, in her account, is that the conversation around later Minecraft music shifted. “The prompt I keep hearing is ‘Oh, Pigstep was such a banger that they want more bangers.’” Raine said that dynamic started with her track and has continued to shape expectations around the game’s discs. She framed it as an idea that would keep pushing future discs toward that same energy.

Raine also said Pigstep is only the best-known part of her Minecraft output. Beyond that one disc, she has written “tons of other tracks” for the game, but the discs are what most players recognize. She pointed to Creator and Otherside as part of the set of popular disc songs she contributed to over several years.

Her comments fit into the broader role music has played in Minecraft. The game’s sound has long been one of its most distinctive features, and Raine’s work helped move it from ambient world-building into songs that players actively seek out. The disc format also shows how music in the game can function as collectible content as well as background atmosphere.

Raine said her time working on the game now feels finished and that she wants to focus on other projects. Even so, she sounded amused by the way Pigstep continues to shape the conversation. In her telling, the track created a benchmark: future discs are now expected to be memorable in the same way, not simply pleasant or atmospheric.

A career that moved from testing to composition

Raine’s route into game music was not straightforward. She said she had always wanted to compose for video games, but she entered the industry first as a games tester for Nintendo America. After that, she worked several other testing jobs before being hired by ArenaNet as a game designer.

While working on Guild Wars 2, Raine designed a bell-choir minigame for the MMO’s Winter’s Day Christmas update and wrote the music for it. She called that a “bizarre first-step into game music,” but said it eventually gave some visibility to the other music she was writing.

After leaving ArenaNet, Raine wrote the soundtrack for Celeste in 2018. She later spent several years composing for Minecraft, where her disc tracks became some of the game’s most popular pieces. She is currently writing music for the early access volleyball RPG Beastieball and is also returning to game design with ANOTHEREAL, an RPG with schmup-style combat that she said she has been working on basically since the pandemic. Her goal is to have something released within the decade.

Raine said that path from designer to composer still shapes how she thinks about game music. The early bell-choir project showed her that music could grow out of design work, and her Minecraft contributions extended that idea into a larger audience. In the interview, she connected the two by describing music as something she builds into games, not just something placed on top of them.

The interview also made clear that Pigstep did not emerge from a grand plan. It started as a joke about Piglins, then turned into a disc that players latched onto quickly. The result, according to Raine, is a very specific kind of expectation now attached to the game’s music: when Minecraft adds a new disc, people want it to be a standout track.

That expectation has not changed the fact that Raine sees the disc as part of a larger body of work. She said the Nether music, the disc tracks and her other contributions all sit within the same project, even if players are most likely to remember the songs that became fan favorites. For her, Pigstep is the best-known example of a broader approach that mixes atmosphere, design and a willingness to try something unexpected.

Raine’s current schedule stretches beyond Minecraft, but the game still marks an important part of her career. The interviewer’s questions covered what she is playing now, what she last finished, what she keeps installed, and what software she depends on for composing. Her answers ranged from Deadlock to Elden Ring to Bitwig Studio, but the Minecraft discussion was the clearest example of how one track can change the way a studio thinks about music.

She said Pigstep was born from a throwaway idea and became something that now colors the brief for later discs. That shift is the story of her Minecraft work: a survival-horror approach for the Nether, a joke about Piglins, and a track that made “more bangers” feel like the new normal.