Director Eric Ye began his composing journey emulating chiptunes and the music of Chrono Cross and Touhou. His passion for video game music led him to formally pursue music composition at San Francisco State University. While at school studying classical and jazz curriculums, he noticed there were no game music repertoire-focused courses. To fill that void, he taught his own VGM composition course in the fall of 2021. An accredited college course at SFSU, Writing Japanese Video Game Music covered 150 tunes, hitting major titles each week, aiming to provide serious study of VGM literature and make great Japanese VGM more accessible.

In 2024, Eric co-founded the Video Game Music Institute with professional game developer Kermit Mitchell III. Growing up with video games and a deep passion for VGM, Kermit brings his extensive knowledge of game development, uniquely connecting the music to the gameplay and the story. Together, Eric and Kermit use their combined pedagogical approaches to create innovative, structured, and effective curriculums at the Institute. They hope to help broaden and formalize the study of video game music, while making it accessible to the world.