Sitting in a cozy living room in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and eating a bag of Haribo BuildA-Burger Gummi Candy, it's clear that 28-year-olds Daniel Lopatin and Joel Ford have been hanging out for a long time:
way before Lopatin began crafting ambient synth tracks as Oneohtrix Point Never, before Ford joined soft rock band Tigercity, and before they combined forces as Games. The guys are at tremendous ease with each other, divulging how they first met in a sixth-grade science class in Wayland, Massachusetts, a town that Ford claims was "totally suburban bubble-fied." Spending their teenage days listening to drum & bass pioneer Goldie, college radio from nearby Boston, and Lopatin's father's jazz fusion records, they started a band called Polyphonic when they were both 15. Ford played drum pads on an Ensoniq SQ-2 keyboard and Lopatin manned the same trusty Juno-60 synthesizer he still uses. "We played at the talent show at our high school," Lopatin says. "With rappers! And a DJ scratching," Ford adds, chuckling. "That's really the true origin of Games," Lopatin continues, referring to their current joint endeavor. Moving into a run-down Bushwick apartment together in February 2010 ("We didn't have hot water or heat," Ford describes), they started
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