GameSoundCon 2019

I had a blast at GameSoundCon 2019. Once again I was honored to serve on the advisory board and to co-chair the ludomusicology/sound studies track, this year with Dana Plank.  Dana did a great job live tweeting the academic conference, if you want to catch up on what we were doing.  GameSoundCon really is my favorite conference of the year for a number of reasons, and I wanted to share some of my highlights from this year as well as encourage anyone reading who has any interest in the conference to consider attending in the future.

While I was of course excited to hear the talks Dana and I selected for the academic track, hearing Sarah Pozderac-Chenevey speak about the music of Metal Gear Solid, watching Martin Leung transcribe from Super Mario Galaxy live, Ryan Thompson discussing about the sounds of the SNES, and many others.  But honestly, my favorite day is the other day of the conference, where I can dart from room to room and hear any variety of presentations on very different topics.

Below I list some of my favorite quotes from GSC 2019 with some of favorite people I met.

With Elizabeth Zharoff

Elizabeth Zharoff speaking about upcoming AI developments in voice commands and video games:  "What if you yell at someone when you should speak to them normally?  Imagine yelling a spell incantation when you should simply speak it normally and thus the enemy is able to block it."

Marc Strait speaking about audio accessibility in gaming: "Why can you adjust the brightness on your TV to optimize your gameplay and suit your eyes the best, but not alter the audio profile to suit your ears?"

With Vincent Diamante 

Hearing Tom Salta speak about his use of leitmotifs in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon

Gender and Safety panel: "How do we ourselves act once in positions of power if we never had good role models as we came up?"

Will Roget's inspiring keynote with a cameo by U-M alum Nico Millado as Scorpion 

Will Roget: "Long term commitment in people and projects is more important than short term networking and gain.  Invest in people and connections and you'll reap dividends over the long term."

At the speakers dinner with Marty O'Donnell and Video Game Pianist Martin Leung

And I loved what Marty O' Donnell said to me: "I'm a big fan of yours!  It's great to have you working in and around this field."  Excited to have some of his music recorded and coming out later this year.

All in all, GameSoundCon is such a great time.  I hope that I might see some of you at one in the future.  If you have any questions about it, be sure to ask away.