{"id":2016,"date":"2015-06-03T19:10:02","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T19:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=2016"},"modified":"2015-06-12T05:45:24","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T05:45:24","slug":"the-missing-game-audio-part","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2015\/06\/the-missing-game-audio-part\/","title":{"rendered":"The missing game audio part"},"content":{"rendered":"

Game audio has become stale like a piece of bread in the back of a grocery store.<\/p>\n

The game industry today has separated game audio into three things that should be almost only one: music, sound effects, implementation. So many games sound clean but feel soulless, I blame the absence of blending in the sound department. I mean, watch this series<\/a> about Japanese \u201cvideo game music\u201d and its impact. <\/p>\n

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80s Japan was booming, game companies were rich and could innovate and take risks. But they were also hiring people who were capable of doing everything from music to SFX to implementation. Those games feel consistent for that very reason. It gave them life.<\/p>\n

When they thought mixing rock beats and baroque melodies for Castlevania was a good idea and maybe add some cost to the cartridge by adding a sound chip (imagine the conversations about sound chip prices and benefit of a bigger sound)? So cool. Thanks to positive capitalism feedback loop, Japanese companies were willing to go for it<\/em>. It was a race and they needed to stand out. It was a game.<\/p>\n

We can all remember how cool that Castlevania\/Konami music was for the rest of our lives though. There\u2019s something timeless and definitive about sound.<\/p>\n

Recognizing a game just hearing it blast through an arcade and being like \u201coh that\u2019s definitely a Capcom game\u201d, that\u2019s just fantastic.<\/p>\n

Successes keep showing the same trend: sound FXs need to be good enough, music needs to stand out. Bloodborne has really basic footstep sound FXs, no one cares. Hotline Miami has no 5.1 adaptive music system but great music is great music and will stay in people\u2019s minds forever. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not about accuracy and realism, guys. We\u2019re making games. It\u2019s fun. It\u2019s wonky. It\u2019s about intention. It\u2019s about standing out. It\u2019s about identity. Thousands of games ship every year now, they all need to stand out and audio is amazing for that.<\/p>\n

What we should spend way more time on in game audio is DESIGN talks, not TECHNICAL talks. We have the tools, we\u2019re fine. Implementation is trivial. It\u2019s in the processes and intentions that I wish we had more \u201cgame audio grammar\u201d used to determine what works, what doesn\u2019t etc. So much to explore.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s amazing that we have full on technical flexibility but design wise we are very stiff: I see games with beautiful 2D cartoon style, chiptune music and realistic sound FXs and that\u2019s just a weird aesthetic sandwich. Epic Orchestra is regardless of the type of gameplay something you will hear in any game these days. Programmers and game designers just love that shit. But there are over 200 different kinds of music out there. Strive for more uniqueness.<\/p>\n

Games more than ever need soul. Audio is here for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Game audio has become stale like a piece of bread in the back of a grocery store. The game industry today has separated game audio into three things that should be almost only one: music, sound effects, implementation. So many games sound clean but feel soulless, I blame the absence of blending in the sound […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2016"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2018,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2016\/revisions\/2018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}