Game audio reboot

I’m rebooting myself on game audio, thinking about what really made me want to start that weird job. Playing a large array of games from the 90s to now these days.

Maybe I should do a 3 point “why game audio is still so obscure?” post because it’s always made games much better, the last one I played for which it’s totally the case being Hotline Miami.

1. Game audio became too technical.

Thanks to the AAA industry a lot of game audio is about 3D audio, High Dynamic Rendering and other 7.1 requirement that pretty much -and I know, it hurts- no one cares about. Meanwhile game audio design goes toward the less is more approach which leaves us with background audio fading in and out while dialog takes the main piece of the game audio cake.

I come from a time when game audio was literally made to tractor beam kids to arcade machines blasting kicks and punches, electro bass and sticks clickety-clicks.

In 2013 kids play on soundless touch, mobile devices with shitty headphones at best, no sound at worst. Parents play on their couches in the evening, with the sound on moderate if not low volume after a hard day. Nothing technically or socially that matches what “technical” sound design requires to enjoy it at its best.

I feel like there’s a tremendous difference between what’s going on the market and what game audio designers do. So we end up with very rough, fill-in game audio for 80% of games, 10% with Hollywood-like audio budgets and 10% that are doing something that makes sense (indie games, mostly).

2. Game audio is too hermetic.

I’m from the Mizuguchi school of thoughts which could be described as “there is no difference between Audio and Visual, it’s all one experience with computer games.” So I obviously see all audio to be one experience. Of course there are different fields but let’s blend more, sound folks. Game audio is a mix of different skills. Everything should go together in a better way than in a weird sandwich way, like we often do these days. Old arcade games have great sound design signatures from sound effects to music to voice over. and it goes with the visuals too. It’s tight.

It feels like before game audio was part of the experience when it’s now more on the side of production value (bigger game, more developed audio).

It’s changing, developers are back on caring for audio (all the last indie games shine on that).

3. Game audio doesn’t do music enough and voice over too much.

It’s almost something entirely shifted from game audio and it shouldn’t be. Choosing the type, designing the music should totally be part of the game audio designer’s job. It’s amazing how soporific music became in games with the advancement of 3D graphics. The last game music people talk about§remember are from early 2000s, and most are from the 80s/90s. It says something. We need to be more bold about it. Never forget Sagat stage, one of the weirdest game music ever and absolutely memorable because it fits that moment in the game (almost the end), that character, that mood. Composed by Alph Lyla, Capcom in-house band made of composers and sound designers. See what I mean? We totally lost that or let’s say that it’s too rare.

Past the novelty of it mid 90s –people in the game talking to me, yay!- I’ve never been a fan of voice-over (well explained here). In Skyrim you’re looking at 60,000 lines of dialogs. Mass Effect 3, 40,000 lines. It’s great and all but mid-sized developers shouldn’t dream of doing the same but dig around others aspects of game audio that would cost less and impact I would say, even more than hours of acting. Because seriously, there’s also a whole lot of terrible dialogs out there.

Even on the technical part we never pushed forward true adaptive music, like it was back in the day (music accelerating with the timer approaching zero, muting instruments, starting page 10). So, what’s up with that?

4. Game audio is not core to development enough.

When it is, it always works for the better. But mostly, it’s at the end of a game almost done. And that’s as bad as it gets to make something as great as possible. Despite knowing exactly why and how making a game is so intense, that sound is suddenly low priority it doesn’t change the fact that audio needs to be thought as early as possible and in-game asap too. It’s a battle, I’m making an almost audio-only game so in this case, I’m in the center from the start. For once. Sigh.

Game audio is so fascinating because no one is paying attention to it and yet it does change, elevate things like nothing else.