Fun and Games

Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Nick Peck

           
 

Courtesy LucasArts entertainment
FIG. 1: Author Nick Peck's first big break in game audio came when he was hired as a sound designer for LucasArts Entertainment's colorful Grim Fandango.

Before seeking work in any industry, you naturally will want a clear idea of what you're getting into. You are likely to inquire about the hours, the balance between creative and technical tasks, your employer's expectations, and what a typical workday is like. You might also debate whether you're better off as an employee or as a freelancer.

It's no different if you are seriously considering contracting or employment in game audio. Whether your focus is on music composition and production or sound design, working in game production can be challenging, exhausting, and rewarding. Tales of nightmare hours and incredible stress abound — as do success stories. But what's the game-audio world really like on a day-to-day basis, and what are the differences between being a game-company employee and being a freelancer?

To help you get a handle on what it's like to work in the game-audio business and what characteristics make up a successful game-audio professional, I'll relate some of my experiences in the field, as well as offer perspectives from several other successful and highly skilled industry veterans. Together, we'll explain what to expect — and what will be expected of you — once you land that killer game-audio gig.

The Way In

My path into the world of game audio was typical. I grew up at the dawn of the information age, dividing my time between keyboards on the piano and the Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 personal computer. I studied computer science in college before earning degrees in electronic music. Through a succession of multimedia computer-programming and audio-production jobs, I built up my project studio, while constantly networking with people in the game and music industries. Freelance gigs in multimedia became plentiful and were close to what I wanted to do, but not right on target.

Then the LucasArts Entertainment Company called, in search of another sound designer for the new game Grim Fandango. (For the inside story of scoring Grim Fandango, see “Dance of the Dead” in the September 1999 issue of EM, available online at www.emusician.com.) I went in, passed the tests, and was soon off to the races at my dream job. My work at LucasArts led to a continuous stream of positions and freelance assignments in film and video-game production.

The game industry is small and incestuous. You hear the same names over and over as industry veterans migrate from one company to another. Everyone in the industry ends up working on some great games and some not-so-great ones. It's good to remember that no matter how fantastic the game might be, it probably has a shelf life of only a few months — far less time than it took to develop the game. With that in mind, I have found that the most rewarding part of the game-sound process is the day-to-day work flow and the relationships you forge in the crucible of hard work. After all, you will spend more of your waking hours with your colleagues than you will with your family.

Getting the Gig

Before you can build those relationships and create sound for those great and not-so-great games, you have to garner your first gig. Every game-audio artisan had to cross that threshold at the beginning of their career. So what can you do to get that job? What skills do the audio directors of the world look for in a potential freelance or employee candidate? In general, successful candidates have skills in three areas: content creation, content integration, and interpersonal dynamics.

If you aspire to be a sound designer or composer, your first task is to demonstrate that you have the chops to design or compose — and that takes lots of practice. If sound design is your passion, then grab a field recorder, go into the world, and grab a load of sounds. Then manipulate the daylights out of them back in your studio and experiment with layering and mixing until you start to gain an intuitive sense for what works.

Electronic Arts Redwood Shores (EARS) senior audio artist J. White looks for candidates who go the extra mile by creating original sounds. In his opinion, “nothing is a greater turnoff when listening to a reel than hearing the same library sounds being used again and again.”

Aspiring composers must spend hours in the woodshed composing. Fortunately, a clear, well-trodden path helps pave the way to success: music school. Without exception, every successful game composer I know (and many sound designers) has a degree in music. I have no doubt that there are exceptions, but I don't know of one. There is nothing like the distraction-free atmosphere of a practice room to help lay the bedrock of one's musical craft.

It all starts with your instrument, a pencil, and paper. No reverb algorithm or cool Reason patch will substitute for that time spent writing musical notes. “You will need tech chops and business skills,” observes freelance composer Mark Griskey, “but your ability as a composer will ultimately be judged based on the music you deliver. Look for any opportunity to compose music that you can find. Study music from as many sources as you can. Ask questions of all of your teachers, friends, and colleagues.”

The Challenge of Integration

FIG. 2: Audio-integration middleware solutions like FMOD are terrific tools that the fledgling game-audio pro should learn.

Once you've created the content, you need to get it into the game. Audio integration is a huge part of the job, typically requiring as much or more time as it took to make the sounds in the first place. Though you don't have to be a hard-core C++ computer programmer, knowing a programming language such as Lua (www.lua.org) can serve you well, as it did for me on games such as Grim Fandango (see Fig. 1) and Escape from Monkey Island.

White is a fan of graphical programming environments such as Cycling '74's Max/MSP (www.cycling74.com), while LucasArts Entertainment audio lead David Collins suggests buying a game that ships with a game editor (Unreal and Star Wars: Republic Commando are examples) and then going in and creating your own audio cues within that environment. Several audio-integration middleware solutions, such as Firelight Technologies' FMOD (www.fmod.org; see Fig. 2) and Audiokinetic's Wwise (www.audiokinetic.com; see Fig. 3), offer free demo versions for download. Learning one or more of these systems will pay dividends regardless of what system you use for audio integration, as many of the core concepts will transfer from tool to tool.