Getting In The Game With Audio
Gaming is a huge industry, with major game titles attracting budgets that would rival many Hollywood movies. Just as in movies, games require a significant investment in audio, sound effects and music in order to be a truly compelling experience…
Electronic Arts – Game Audio Presentation
This rather lengthy presentation (over one hour) by Jesse James Allen, Audio Director at EA Sports Tiburon, goes over some of the common myths associated with game audio. He also outlines the different roles (sound designer, composer, technical audio artist etc.) involved in the overall production, and reveals that the most commonly used package in his team is not (as one might assume) Pro Tools, but rather Sound Forge – a very handy piece of kit for sound designers…
Interestingly, he mentions that the days of in-house composers are pretty much in the past – so many freelance composers can achieve high-quality work from their home studio that it just doesn’t make sense to pay someone a salary when such talent is readily available through outsourcing. This is both good and bad news for new composers – on the one hand, companies such as EA are looking externally for game music, but on the other hand there is a lot of very stiff competition to content with…