Game Audio Pillars

The day to day work of audio can be very detail oriented, and it is easy to get lost in this forest of sound molecules. Solutions to many day to day issues often rely on decision making of a broader kind, and often audio work can be as much political as it is creative, social or technical. Wrangling resources, ensuring that important production information and risks are on everyone’s radar, selling features, ideas, haggling for more time or budget and communicating across disciplinary voids can require a fair degree of entrepreneurial flair.

I’ve been thinking about some general audio pillars within game development a lot. I thought I’d have a go at throwing together some very high-level pillars for game audio which read, to all intents and purposes, like a kind of manifesto promise. The thought here is to provide high-level transparent goals for the audio department within a development environment, and to serve as a series of checks and balances by having a longer term strategic outlook (without that, we are marooned in the reactionary, short-term and arguably heading in no direction in particular). This also serves to hold audio accountable to some tangible realities and deliverables, if things aren’t moving in the direction outlined, then, during regular check-ins, course correction can be applied.

Four Strategic Long-Term Audio Pillars

A Focus on Polish is a Focus on Solid Communication.

Whatever the project, polish is one of the most fundamental areas of audio work (it is the reason we focus so much on having good quality source assets and geek-out about microphones, and also why we focus so much on the idea of a ‘signal path’). Call it post-production, or mixing, or whatever, the process of removing any unwanted jagged corners, cuts, glitches, sounds that grab the attention at the wrong time, or don’t help the experience is an aspect that is universal to every single sound project. This can be an emphasis on being visible about and scheduling audio Post-Production time, or a familiar and contributory appearance at scrums. But, in order for sound to actually effectively polish something, the work in other areas of production (animation, scripting, world building etc) has to have been somewhat ‘locked down’ – This is an increasingly difficult subject in today’s fast-moving, ‘never-finished’ digital production domain, but one thing that these changes have emphasized over all others is that communication is critical. Iteration, visibility and ‘connectedness’ to the team’s thinking and planning is important to providing polish in the digital production domain. Using continual verbal, visual, and written comms is absolutely essential to keeping everyone in the loop on what is happening. Polish is as much about co-ordination and inter-ops, as it is technical or aesthetic choices, and co-ordination is a political endeavor.

Grow, Nurture, and Invest in the Audio Team

Audio teams are often the smallest in the building. They are outnumbered by Art, Design and Tech departments. They can appear to others to be a black box, where no-one understands the processes and hokum that goes on in those sound-proofed rooms. But, we are just like any other department. There is nothing special about team audio; we may see things differently, and have different connections to the team, we have different ins/outs and different skill-sets, but fundamentally, we are exactly the same. We need the oxygen of context. In the early days of game development (which in many ways these still are) audio often needed to shout that bit louder for equality and representation on the team and to get a seat at the table as a ‘principle collaborator’, rather than an end-of-production ‘service provider’. Everyone on the team will be trained in, and versed in the language of collaboration and innovation. They will know who to go to, how to present, how to prototype an idea and set goals, they will have resources at their disposal, and they will be encouraged to push forward and improve every aspect of their craft and process – removing every element of drag, friction and resistance from their work. Career paths will be clear, transparent and on par with other disciplines in the studio culture. Members of the team will have autonomy to control their own growth and path. The audio budget will always be discussed and adjusted to fit the requirements of the project, with a focus on VALUE.

Early (and Continued) Involvement for Audio

Involvement in earliest genesis discussions of a project. Early involvement with script development, pre-vis work and prototyping as well as with early scheduling and budgeting. Simply put, “Audio is another Art Department.”. The sound team will be able to participate in design discussions, or be empowered to create those opportunities and discussions where they do not yet exist.

Tools & Tech: Put Designer/Implementer UX before Player UX. (Player comes 2nd! – The only way to truly put the player 1st) -

Programmers and tool creators are critical to the success of any audio endeavour. Pushing the Technology and pipelines in a meaningful, useful and positive direction is something that everyone should collaborate on. The primary goal is to support, encourage and give wings to the person using the tools and enable them a frictionless experience (alleviate enormous fatiguing or repetitive/heavy lifting tasks) when integrating audio into the game. (From small standalone batching scripts and tools, to game engine and audio engine tools & pipelines – the experience of integrating sound should be simple, straightforward, painless and easy to communicate to others) – focusing tools and processes on the user, allowing audio designers to quickly implement assets, switch them and tune them at run-time is a priority for changing the collaborative nature of review sessions etc. This in turn allows the audio designers to focus more clearly on the ‘player’s experience’ rather than wrestling with their own technical issues.

Every studio culture is unique, and has similarly unique approaches in solving design and production problems for a unique product slate. Also, for some audio departments these are problems that are long-ago solved, while at others, the problems are so much worse (no audio tools, no audio programmer support or resources, and woefully underdeveloped pipelines or collaborative mechanisms) – yet every time, audio finds a way to struggle-on, smash through that which resists and make things work, happen and feel incredible. This is really a hopeful push for a broader, more long-term strategic vision – to build resourceful and confident teams with an elevated view of what is in front of them (and behind them), rather than teams fixated on the short-term problems immediately in front.

(This blog was first floated at http://rbridgett.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/the-audio-campaign/ back in January of this year)