Gamasutra Podcast: 'Diablo II Audio Case Study'

Gamasutra is proud to present the latest Gamasutra Podcast, part of our weekly podcasts, which include both the Tom Kim-presented Gamasutra Podcast show, alongside the best lectures, tutorials, and roundtables from this and previous years' Game Developers Conferences. Today's edition of the Gamasutra Podcast comes from the archives of the 2001 Game Developers Conference audio track, with Blizzard Entertainment's Matt Uelmen describing his role on, and giving a general overview of the making of Blizzard's hit sequel Diablo II from an audio standpoint. As Uelmen introduces in his case study synopsis: "This presentation will discuss some of the nuts and bolts of one particular aspect of the development of this series: music and sound effects. Relationships in the development world have three facets - business, creative and personal. Despite the obvious fact that none of these three aspects exists in a vacuum, I will attempt to focus on the creative elements of my experience in working on these two titles. Aside from some work as an itinerant musician in my teenage years, my time at Blizzard has been my only real experience in the working world, so I lack the experience to offer much comparison between the environment we have created here against other workplaces. Still, I hope that by focusing on some basic elements of the production of these titles I can help shed some light on whatever "magic formula" it is that has given us our string of #1 titles. I will focus specifically on the tools I used in creating these hits; the individuals who played a great part in helping me get my material in the game, and, most importantly, my relationship with the final product while in the muddy trenches of content creation." You can now download the Gamasutra Podcast, Diablo II Case Study (.MP3, 56 minutes, 13.6 MB). In addition, you can subscribe to the Gamasutra podcasts by clicking this link for iTunes. You can manually subscribe to our feed in your favorite RSS reader that supports enclosures by using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GDCRadio.