In a recent article in gamasutra by Alexander Brandon 'Next Gen Audio Square-off', Gene Semel, audio director of SCEA says,
'I foresee more robust real-time logic systems that will allow sound designers and production directors to actually make decisions and mix the game at a "post-production" like stage of development. '
Looking at examples like Scarface (Rob Bridgett Gamasutra postmortem, + mix magazine article here) the opportunities for 'mixing' the game audio soundscape, as opposed to treating it in the fixed way that has traditionally been the approach up until now, are really exciting.....
However we need be be careful not to wish the 'post-production' role upon ourselves anytime soon. (I'm pretty sure this is not what Gene really meant but let's discuss it anyway...). As I discussed in my related blog post what is needed is better , earlier integration with the planning and development stages, not to ape the unhealthy practices of many films.
'Below is a link to an article on Production Design. Trying to imagine what it would be like as a sound designer to be taken even ten percent as seriously as a production designer, I think it's useful to learn as much as possible about their process with the director.'
'I work primarily on lo/no/micro budget projects. Most of the time I am retained after the first edit is completed, and that happens when the client realizes that there is more to sound than having an unpaid first-time PA with nothing better to do hold a cheap mic on a broomstick somewhere in the vicinity of the talent. That being the case I spend the bulk of my time doing noise reduction or incredibly painful ADR sessions and then adding what touches I can before a quick mix. On those rare occasions when I am consulted before shooting begins I mostly spend my time lobbying for them to hire a competent production sound team.'
'By espousing this multidisciplinary approach to narrative design, developers can elevate the art of game development as well as increase the bottom line. Meaningful games require advance planning, but players benefit much from the integration of story, art, gameplay, sound, and music. Using themes, narrative designers ensure that each play experience is not only immersive, but also a meaningful one....
If we're going to build really powerful games, we need interdisciplinary teams," says Sheri Graner Ray. As a freelance game designer and production consultant, Ray knows firsthand the level of collaboration that can occur when artists, writers, designers, programmers, and composers work together....
As with the narrative designer, Ray recommends bringing in a sound designer and/or composer early as part of an interdisciplinary team. She understands fully the power of sound and music in games. Just recently, she heard the notes from a once-favorite game and experienced an emotional pull back to those times. "I almost got misty over it," she recalls. "It was like a family reunion." Truly, the emotional heartbeat of a game can be heard through its music and sound design. Narrative designers can work with composers and sound designers to strengthen the emotional connection so that players always have a powerful and meaningful experience.'
So at a time when the technology seems to finally be there to allow us to play an equal role in the storytelling within games let us not be relegated to the 'post' production model of film.
'I believe game audio pros have always taken inspiration from all other media. Looking at movies in particular, and thinking about the craft and artistry of sound design, there’s 80 years of development that I’m sure all of us in audio have drawn upon. It’s very exciting that, as technology barriers and constraints fall away, we’re all on more of a level playing field technically - and it’s the power of ideas that really matters. Whether film or games, we are all creating stories, emotional moments, intense action and drama – and sound is an amazing tool to deploy. ........
A few years back, it was a huge blast simply to bring virtual worlds to life – and realism was the watchword. As time progressed, we became able to create a dense literal description of the world with carefully placed sound emitters and x, y, z co-ordinates in 3D geometry spaces, sporting scientifically accurate acoustic reflections and reverberation. ......But what about the subjectively chosen sound treatments that are used purely to enhance and underscore drama and narrative? How many games have fully explored the potent force of sound that tells a story, provides exposition and characterization, leads navigation and drives primal emotional responses – sound that works beyond the literal using metaphor and suggestion?........
It seems to me that we have a job of evangelization to do and that’s something that needs to happen in every developer all over the world, week-to-week.'
Karen Collins (of Gamesound.com) has written a rather good book !
I can highly recccommend it as probably the most academic (in a good way !) book on the subject so far. Particularly strong on dynamic and interactive music techniques it's a must read for anyone interested in game audio.
Coming late to the Portal party I have to say I really enjoyed the game although all the flying through the air and flipping around did make me a little queasy at times. There's been a lot of comment on the great voice characterisation of Glados and of course the now infamous Portal Song - don't watch this unless you've completed the game as it will spoil it !
There was some discussion of how the process was done at Engine Audio but it seems to have disappeared and so below is a youtube version instead :
There are a couple of ideas about how to recreate the effects here and CosmicD has done a tutorial on how to recreate the vocal effect using Melodyne (while your there look at the video doc on their new 'direct access' technology - impressive and certain to result in a flurry, more like slurry, of crazy remixes featuring Girls Aloud singing Bach Cantatas etc).
Whilst GlaDOS is great she still doesn't beat my favorite menacing-female-sci-fi-type-character Shodan from System Shock.
Guy Whitmore talks to John Broomhall in develop this month (here) about using the greater processing power of current gen consoles for real time effects. Guy has a permenant place on my list of games audio genius's for his score to 'No one lives forever', probably still one of the most convincing adaptive games scores out there, and certainly the one that first convinced me it was possible. He discusses it on the IASIG site.
It's great to hear them discussing the reasons why the adoptiong of real time DSP and mixing is vital and that is to move away from the very fixed way in which games audio is usually treated.
John Broomhall: As for dynamic mixing – presumably we also want to get funky with fader moves and DSP behaviours (in response to game variables we’re polling) for purely creative, moment-enhancing, subjective-effect reasons?
Guy Whitmore: Yes - I think most dynamic mix decisions would be based on emotional subjective things rather than realism. For me, mixing for games is way too stuck in a literal distance-based approach – everything getting quieter the further away it is, regardless of how important it is. We need a re-think and again, to me, DSP is a very important component, particularly when you’re getting into ‘I want this section to feel dreamy the second time’ or ‘I want the player to suddenly feel the sadness of the character’s feeling’. It’s the same type of emotional choices a sound designer for a movie might make but working in a non-linear context…
If you listen to a film soundtrack there is often a deliberate attempt to highlight the story through a manipulation of the soundtrack, for example by hearing the filmworld through one of the characters' subjective point of view. (Read Randy Thom's 'Designing a movie for sound' for more thoughts on this subject + all of filmsound.org while you're there !). When audio in games is treated as a fixed system we miss out on all of these creative opportunities.
Whilst working on a game I was once pleasantly surprised to come across a game designer who'd actually thought about sound.. At a certain point (when the player was crawling through an air duct above a room full of hostiles - classic !) he wanted all the sound to fade out and just to highlight the players movements and breathing in this confined space. Great idea (he'd obviously recently watched Bressons 'A man escaped') but impossible to do with our then 'state of the art' audio engine without significant amount programming time (and of course that wasn't going to happen was it !).
Over the past few years I've noticed a few specific instances where the audio system has started to become more flexible (in the now ubiquitous 'Shell Shock' effect - volume down + filtered sounds after proximity to an explosion - first noticed by me in the original 'Call of duty' but probably used somewhere before then) so lets hope this is a continuing trend.
Lately I've been getting up to speed with the new Unreal engine's sound and music capabilities. Much more user friendly than UT2004 and with real scope for some interesting projects.
Two part article on Game Audio by Steve Kutay 'the co-founder of Radius360, an award-winning audio post production company, specializing in sound for film and games, located in Los Angeles, California.'
These videos from creative labs look at the implementation of audio in the Unreal 3 engine. The UT2004 was pretty weak in terms of sound in it's basic incarnation (although many developer extended this significantly for their own games) so I'm looking forward to seeing what they've come up with.
News courtesy of wemakemoneynotart that Steven Poole's excellent book 'Trigger happy' has been made available for free download. A link to the download + copies of all of Steven's articles for Edge magazine are available here.
'Trigger Happy is a book about the aesthetics of videogames — what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics. It was first published in 2000; this is the revised edition with the Afterword written in 2001. It’s offered under a CC license, for a limited time only. I’m not sure how limited that time will be, so grab it while it’s hot.'
Links have a habit of changing / disappearing. I have done my best to make sure these are correct but do not take any responsibility for what might be at the end of them ! Please let me know if any are not working and I will do my best to update them.
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