Current News: Day 2 at GameSoundCon

So I've just finished up my second day at GameSoundCon.  I'm a bit exhausted from the experience, but really glad to have been here.  It's really an amazing experience that I think anyone who's interested in thinking about and getting into game audio should attend.

I started the morning with a hands-on Wwise training class.  This was undoubtedly one of the coolest things that I did at the conference.  As a teacher of music technology, I know there's nothing like getting down and dirty with the software to understand how it works.  Led by Robert Brock, the session starts by getting the current version of Wwise and some sounds on a flash drive to install on your laptop.  Then, in an hour, you learn some of the very most basic of the features by giving sounds to a gunshot.  The demo is available on the Wwise site and is called Cube.  This training was great because it's something that I can show to my students.  I'm definitely planning to explore more of the Wwise demos in coming weeks.

After the hands-on training, I headed to a session entitled "Integrating Game Audio with Unity" led by Steve Horowitz and Scott Looney.  This session caught my eye because my engineering friends who teach game development at UM use Unity, so anything I can learn about how sounds work in that engine is of interest.  Several of the examples they discussed came from their book and the corresponding app that goes with it, so I was familiar with them already.  (I haven't reviewed the book yet because I want to play around more with the examples and training first.)  Their session opened my eyes to how much there is to learn in with regard to Unity and sound integration.  The session felt a bit rushed and I was glad to hear that they offer whole day long courses on the same material.  Hope I can either catch one of those in the future.

Before lunch, I caught a demo of Dolby Atmos which was superb.  When I bring my students to tour the sound facilities in the Duderstadt at UM, one of my recording engineer friends at UM, Dave Greenspan, has been talking to my students for years about the importance of height in sound and mixing.  Atmos is basically that to a huge degree.  Speakers above make an incredible difference in sound and I loved seeing it demoed both in games and movies.  Afterward, I snuck in a bit late to Penka Kouneva's session on budgeting and recording live instruments for games without large budgets.  It was definitely an interesting session with lots of good information-- particularly in her discussion as she surveyed friends/colleagues about how they made music work on tight budgets.

Not only does Brian Schmidt do an amazing job of coordinating this entire event, but he gives a great talk as well.  I'm so fortunate that he was one of the first people who I came in contact with when I started my game audio journey years ago.  Thanks Brian for finding me on my blog!  His talk on Casual/Mobile games was informative with lots of details I can share with my students.

Probably my favorite part of today (aside from the raffle where I won a GameSoundCon t-shirt) were the roundtable discussions at the end of the day.  The first roundtable discussion was with composers Garry Schyman, Austin Wintory, Adam Gubman, and Tom Salta.  The second was with audio directors Paul Lipson, Guy Whitmore, and Steve Horowitz.  I thought I'd just jot down a few of their quotes that I found most interesting in the chat.  I've got a ton more than it's useful to share here, so these are just a few highlights.

First, here's a picture I took from my seat during the composers' roundtable.

"If I get stuck, 9 times out of 10 it's because I'm not having fun anymore."  -- Tom Salta

"Don't let technology get in the way.  Don't let interactivity limit your creativity."  -- Garry Schyman

"Writing the first note is the biggest challenge."  -- Adam Gubman

"The industry is like this convention: everyone sharing a space together.  It's about relationships.  Contribute to the community.  The industry is accommodating to all different personalities and skill sets.  Find your place in it.  Be authentically yourself."  --Austin Wintory

"Audio programmers are instant hires right now.  They're unicorns."  -- Paul Lipson

"We need to break the freelance gap-- and by this I mean that freelance workers don't see the game.  I don't hire composers who don't deliver their material in Wwise or otherwise implemented."  -- Guy Whitmore

"If you're thinking of getting into the industry, do some research: what's a company where you'd like to work?  What kind of titles would you like to work on?  What languages and software do they use? What does their music sound like?"  -- Steve Horowitz


In this second picture, you can see George Sanger, Michael Csurics, and Marty O'Donnell just in front of me enjoying martinis as they take in the audio director roundtable discussion.  Wish I'd thought to get one during the break between the discussions!

All in all, I have to say GameSoundCon was incredible.  The networking is powerful-- meeting others who are thinking and learning and interested in what you are.  I definitely refined some of my thinking about game audio and got some awesome hands-on knowledge.  The knowledge wasn't earth shattering for me, probably because I've read and studied so much about game audio so far.  However, I'd definitely recommend GameSoundCon to anyone who is interested in game audio as an early step toward learning more and meeting folks working in the trenches.  I'll suggest to my students that they attend GSC for as long as I teach video game music!

Surveying Literature: Audio for Games (Alexander Brandon)

Over my recent trip up north I finished reading Alexander Brandon's Audio for Games: Planning, Process, and Production.  I have to say that out of all the things I've read, this book was one of my favorites.  For one, it's written by an industry professional who can give insight that only someone who's lived and worked in the field can.  For another, the writing is in a clear, easy to read style, and the book has a great flow overall.

I was struck by how much space/attention the book gives to organization and workflow.  Of course, this process development is useful knowledge, but not what I'd think would be such a large focus of a book on audio.  From that I deduce that the game audio process needs better organization.  Really, no matter what your industry, if you're in management at all, this book would be a worthwhile read for how to work as an efficient and organized team.  I read this book at exactly the right time considering that I've been playing around with The Game Audio Tutorial and integrating audio, which is a process this book explains methodology for, but gives no practical exercises.  This book and GAT would pair well together in an audio integration class.

Any portion of this book is worth a read if you're interested in game audio, but I easily had three favorite chapters in the book:  The fourth chapter, "Design" presents a really interesting historic discussion of the use of audio in games.  I'm sure I've read most of that information elsewhere, but at this point, the repetition is making everything click and Alexander's writing style is really easy to follow.  Since I'm interested mainly in the creation of game audio and those who create it, chapter seven, "Ideal Production," resonated with me.  Although certainly dated now that it's eight years old, this chapter is an important historical documentation of what has happened, methods, prices, licensing practices, etc.  (Actually, early in the book, Alexander says that if you're reading the book in 2015, don't discount all the info, just up the technological requirements!)  Finally, I loved the last chapter "Looking Ahead" where interviews with Guy Whitmore, Tommy Tallarico, and George Sanger present some contrasting views toward the future of game audio.

While I'm also hoping to better understand how game audio functions in smaller productions as well, this book gives insight into how game audio is produced in the larger game companies.

Other short reactions through the reading:

As someone who's played a lot of RPGs, I love that the book states that RPG audio is pretty much as complex as it gets and if you can do that, you can do any of the other styles/genres of games.

I love the emphasis again on creating prototypes and sharing them with the development team.  Almost all game audio creators write or talk about the importance of that task.  Certainly, it's the absolute clearest way to communicate about game audio to non-audio folks.

In the Workflow section of the book, Alexander describes the follow Operational tasks:
-Lead time (scheduling, budgeting, staff meetings, documentation, programming/design meetings)
-Purchasing: software/hardware
-R&D: reference soundtracks, field recordings, Foley work, experimenting with sound and instrumentation, and most importantly: playing games that relate to yours!
-Prototyping:  Everyone says this is important and much better than text descriptions of audio!

I hadn't considered that games have Quality Assurance staff to play-test games (here focusing on game audio), but the book lists tips for the best ways to get the most out of game testers for game audio.  Bug databases, for instance.  

Who knew that game audio designers used metric tools to gather information about how many times music/sound occurs in a given area?  What are these tools?- the book doesn't go into detail.  Wonder if these can be applied to retrospective gaming studies as well as games in development?  It'd save me a lot of post-its and ink pens....

Ever wonder why turning on your console/starting a game is so loud?  "A lot of developers use their highest volume in the game as the same volume played when the turn on the console and the console logo is played... From there, you need to figure out how voice, sound effects, and music will all interact."

Hierarchy of game sounds: Voice (loudest), sound effects (next loudest), music (softest)-- exception might be a musical stinger.

"What makes an audio asset final?  When it's produced?  When it's integrated?  When it's integrated and mixed?  When the leads sign off on it?  Yes to all."

As usual, here's a list of games that are mentioned in the book:

Pong
NBA Live
Mortal Kombat
Madden
Doom 3
Halo
Tiger Woods 2004
Links
Wipeout XL-- prime example of music licensing
Warren Spctor: Ultima 6, Ultima 7: Serpent Isle, System Shock, Ultima Underworld, Deux Ex
No One Lives Forever and No One Lives Forever 2
Deus Ex: Invisible War-- one of the first games to fully feature a physics sound system
Parappa the Rapper and Rez-- music influenced the game design
Knights of the Old Republic-- LucasArts/iMUSE
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge-- first title to use iMUSE
The Dig-- iMUSE with streamed stereo audio files-- incredible audio/soundtrack
Castle Wolfenstein
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss-- first FP perspective to use an interactive soundtrack
Fade to Black-- adaptive soundtrack (not great integration)
Thief-- ambient sounds make an overwhelming impact
Dungeon Master-- occasional ambient sounds from an early title (1989)
Total Annihilation-- 1997, live orchestra work (Jeremy Soule)
Secret of Evermore-- Jeremy Soule's first sountrack
Russian Squares-- subtle changes to music in a puzzle game
Thief: Deadly Shadows-- audio engine was Ion Storm
Halo: Combat Evolved-- Marty O'Donnell
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City--  players listen to the radio, Madonna/Michael Jackson, etc
Frequency, Amplitude: use licensed pop songs where your goal is to mix and remix the songs
Star Wars and MLB Slugfest: Loaded-- use non-top 40 licensed music
The Legend of Kage-- upbeat pop soundtracks with too loud sound effects for the Ninja Stars
Earthworm Jim and Cool Spot: examples of Tommy Tallarico's composing work
7th Guest and Wing Commander-- examples of George Sanger's cinematic sounding work

As a teacher of technology, I understand that technologies change through time.  Many various ones exist that do similar work and the ones we come to use are the ones we like the most.  Any list is thus incomplete and dated.  However, one thing I was wondering when I started this project is what game technologies audio folks working in the industry use.  Finally, here's a book that really lists many technologies and what they're good for in game audio.  Thus, complied from the book, here's a list of all the software that's mentioned, in some cases with notes about what one might use it for:

mSoft-- sound effects
Hollywood edge (FileMaker)-- sound effects
Pro Tools, Cubase SX, Nuendo-- multitrack SFX (or music) production
Renderware Studio-- audio engine for real time mixing, simple GUI, map editor
Unreal Engine-- map editor for integrating sound
PerlScript-- running batch script
DirectMusic
Sound Forge
Microsoft Project/ Visio-- for making a Gantt chart
Absynth/Reaktor-- among top synthesizer programs on the market
Bugzillla, BugCollector, TestTrack Pro-- bug databases
DirectSound, DirectMusic-- first freely available software to create adaptive soundtracks
Miles Sound System-- middleware
Direct X
GameCODA-- an engine sufficient for simple titles and most more complex projects
Creative EAX-- creates decent reverb for free
SoundMax-- middleware to synthesize sounds in real time
Galaxy Sound System (part of Unreal)-- an example of a custom made tool
Xact-- Xbox Audio Content Tool
Scream-- Scriptable Engine for Audio Manipulation (Sony)
Alienbrain-- file management system
iMUSE-- Interactive Music Streaming Engine
Gigastudio
Visual SourceSafe-- file management for Deus Ex: Invisible War
Logic
Xbox ADPCM (adaptive differential pulse code modulation)-- file type used by Xbox
PlayStation 2 VAG-- file type used by PlayStation