The EM Poll

Production Values: Games People Play

Jan 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Larry the O

           

Game composer Tommy Tallarico tells all.

Tallarico notes that game composers now have the resources to compose and edit while playing the game they are scoring.
Photo: Jason Vaughn

Now we come to the obligatory question about your tips for people who want to get into the business.

If you want to get into video games, there are three or four things you can do that will get you in, if you have the talent. But the biggest advice I have to give to everyone before I get to those four things is that talent isn't everything in this industry. Talent is 50 percent of it; the other 50 percent is networking and being able to sell yourself. If all the people out there spent as much time working on the networking as they did on the talent aspect, they'd go a lot further.

People are afraid to say that sometimes. They want you to think that it's all about your chops and your composing. But I'm here to tell you it's not. I'm not the best composer in the video-game industry — I'll leave that recognition to people like Michael Giacchino. But I'm one of the best networkers. The four things I have to say all have to do with networking and not the talent side.

How do you get into the video-game industry? The first thing is to join G.A.N.G., and this isn't just a plug for my own thing. G.A.N.G. is an organization run by everyone and it's for everyone; it's a nonprofit organization.

The second thing I'd recommend is to go to the Game Developers Conference. GDC is the best place to meet producers, designers, and other audio people, of course, and to learn from the masters who are doing game audio already. It's not just technical; [it gives you] information about business and the creative aspect and marketing yourself, as well as having a huge job fair where all of the developers and publishers looking for people are sitting right there.

The third thing is to join the IGDA, the International Game Developers Association. That's also a nonprofit organization, and they have a ton of local chapters all over the world. If you're just looking to get into the industry, there are a lot of other people just like you but who are programmers, artists, or smaller developers.

The great thing about the industry right now is that you don't have to get hired to work on a big $20 million-budget project. You can get in the game industry by working on somebody's cell-phone game that has a $50,000 budget.

The fourth thing is to read. There are a couple of great books out there. There's The Complete Guide to Game Audio [Focal Press, 2001], by Aaron Marks, and the other great one is from Alexander Brandon and is called Audio for Games: Planning, Process, and Production [New Riders Games, a series of Peachpit Press; 2004]. These are two fantastic books that give you great insight on the “how” aspect of making games.

Larry the O met Tommy Tallarico during Larry's eight years as a video-game sound designer for LucasArts Entertainment and Electronic Arts. He attended Project BarBQ the year G.A.N.G. was formed and has performed in two Video Games Live concerts.

TOMMY TALLARICO: SELECTED CREDITS

This list represents only a small fraction of the games Tommy Tallarico has worked on. Visit his Web site at www.tallarico.com for a complete list.

VGL: COMING SOON TO AN ENTERTAINMENT MEGAPLEX NEAR YOU

Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall's Video Games Live concert production has spent the past two years circling the globe since it premiered at the Hollywood Bowl in 2006 to an unexpectedly large crowd of 11,000. And things seem to be just getting started. Late in the summer of 2007, I asked Tallarico what was coming up for VGL. The answer: a lot of things, topped by L.A.'s newest and most ambitious entertainment venue. Where does this guy find time to compose?

T.T.: Last summer we played two shows in Dallas, two in Washington, D.C., with the National Symphony Orchestra, Detroit, two nights in Houston with the Houston Symphony, and we played with the Louisville Symphony. We're playing Fort Wayne, Indiana, with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and when you start to play those smaller cities and still sell enough tickets to put on a show, that's when you know it's really starting to take off. We're doing a European tour this fall: Spain, Italy, France, England again, Sweden, Germany. We're going back to Brazil and playing more cities there.

But probably our biggest and most exciting show this year, and for our third year in Los Angeles, [is] the E4 expo, or “E for all” as it is known. It's being put on by the same people that did the E3 [Electronic Entertainment Expo] show, but now they're opening it up to the public. It's going to be held at the L.A. Convention Center — like E3. But AEG, the promoters, have built a $1.7 billion project called L.A. Live right across the street from the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, right next to the convention center. They want [it] to be the Times Square of the West Coast. They have 28 big plasma screens out there, a Grammy museum, a Ritz-Carlton hotel. They're building an ESPN studio, five-star restaurants, and part of this thing is called Nokia Theatre. That's a 7,000-seat indoor theater that boasts the biggest stage on the West Coast.

L.A. Live is opening on October 19th, and VGL will be in the Nokia Theatre as the first show ever to launch this new era in Los Angeles. And it's happening during the E4 show. We're really excited about that.

[The project, formally known as the Los Angeles Sports and Entertainment District, will cover six city blocks and encompass 4 million square feet. Cost estimates have run as high as $2.5 billion. In addition to Nokia Theatre, plans also call for the 2,400-seat Club Nokia. The developers anticipate that major events such as the Grammy Awards and ESPY Awards will be held there.]

[Online Links]

Focal Press (publisher of The Complete Guide to Game Audio, by Aaron Marks) www.focalpress.com

Game Audio Network Guild www.audiogang.org

Game Developers Conference www.gdconf.com

International Game Developers Association www.igda.org

New Riders Games (publisher of Audio for Games: Planning, Process, and Production, by Alexander Brandon) www.peachpit.com/imprint/series_detail.aspx?st=61126

Tommy Tallarico www.tallarico.com

Video Games Live www.videogameslive.com