VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Deirdre · Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:05 pm Post subject: No audio guys

I was at "POWERING UP" conference today—Boston's digital game industry conference.
If there was an audio guy there, I didn't meet him.

It was an interesting meeting of folks in the biz in and around Boston-- we mostly talked about the game industry and higher education.

I am beat.
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Jeffers · Guest

Hey DB,
So are ya say'n that the VG industry needs Audio guys/Gals???
Humm......

Jeffers

Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 10:57 pm Post subject:

There are plenty of audio guys. The problem with video games is that audio isn't given the same treatment as art or design. Go to any video game developer and you'll find a team of 20 artists and 1 audio guy. Not because there aren't audio guys to fill the slots, there just isn't more head count to hire more audio guys.
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Deirdre · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 3:17 am Post subject:

Audio is the bastard child of game development.

To borrow from the stuff I said in Vegas:

At the Game Developers Conference in San Franciso this year, there was a talk entitled The Importance of Audio in Gaming.
This was a panel discussion that included the guys who are in charge of the audio for hugely successful titles like Need for Speed, Onimusha, and Devil May Cry— and they were gathered together to defend the place of audio in the game world, to insist that audio really needs to be taken seriously.

The fact that there even needs to BE a talk like this tells you something.
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louzucaro · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 5:57 am Post subject:

Jeez that's ridiculous! I remember the same thing, though, when I worked in game dev. The audio and music was almost like an afterthought.

Kudos to the people who take it as seriously as it should be taken, though, in terms of voice acting, music and sfx.
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Jeffers · Guest

Yea, go ahead and play your game WITHOUT the audio!
Sure it will be fun but... ah... something will be missing!!

Too bad, audio is a big part, at least in MY mind!

Jeffers

Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 4:34 pm Post subject:

Audio is a big part, but gameplay is ultimately most important. And most would say visuals are as well.

However, when a game has either really good or really bad sound design including VO, gamers and critics notice it. But it rarely affects the success of the game, unlike gameplay and graphics.
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bobbinbeamo · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 8:02 pm Post subject:

Isn't game development in general still "in process", and likewise its audio will become more relevant over time? DB- what do you think?
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Deirdre · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 8:34 pm Post subject:

Audio is still mistakenly viewed in the film model as "Post Production" whereas real post production for games is packing and shipping.

Audio is the way most people in a household experience a game. Too few people in game dev either know or care about that. I've heard about guys testing games with the sound down! I'm hoping those days are gone.

Gameplay is indeed the key, but a bad character voice can blight the experience and bad sound design will have players up in arms. It won't, as JK correctly says, have a huge effect on the game's success in re sales, but the skewering across the net is merciless if the sound design or VO sucks.

As some of you know, I played Final Fantasy XII for over 160 hours, and very early on stopped using the main character in my party because I couldn't stand his exertion sounds.
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louzucaro · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 8:43 pm Post subject:

And sometimes that exact thing (an annoying character voice) is used to great effect...there was a character in Neverwinter Nights 2 that was like that...she was SO annoying. But she was written that way, so it ended up being pretty funny.

It is in fact a shame that audio is sort of an also-ran in both film and game production, but yeah, when it's either really bad or really good, people notice.

I for one was sorely disappointed after reading, for the better part of a year, how Oblivion's NPCs were "fully voiced". Maybe so, but they were done so with about 8 actors...and there were hundreds and hundreds of NPCs. To be honest, it was kind of lame.

On the other side of that, and this is a music comment, I keep going back to Guild Wars because the combination of the gameplay, the visuals and Jeremy Soule's phenomenal soundtrack* make me actually miss the environment when I don't play for a while. That guy is seriously talented.

* really I should say "soundtracks" because all three GW games have their own musical theme and they're all great.
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Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 10:22 pm Post subject:

louzucaro · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:02 pm Post subject:

Speaking of which, do you remember Lucasarts' "Loom" which was a game actually based on stuff related to sound / music?

You know, there's something to be said for low-tech. Think of all the amazing stuff that was done with 64k of memory or less, very few sprites, no 3D, and "primitive" sound. It forced a level of cleverness and creativity that, as with any medium that makes substantial technological leaps forward in a relatively short period of time, make current developers take a lot for granted.

But just in terms of pure sound effects, when so few are possible, the few that are well designed are lasting.

Think of things like the two-tone Space Invaders "heartbeat"
The Robotron / Joust / Defender sounds (which were re-used, some, from game to game but still had that very distinct Williams sound)
The Galaga theme song
The Dig-Dug pump sound
The Pac-Man death sound
Donkey Kong's "laugh"
The Tempest "zoom" (level change) sound

If you played these games, you probably know the sounds I'm talking about. How many individual sounds can you remember from current games?
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Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:16 pm Post subject:

louzucaro · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:23 pm Post subject:

Well Mario and Sam n Max I consider old school as well. I honestly don't remember the Halo theme or any of the sounds from Doom.

But of course that only goes to show that one person's great is another's whatever (and I'm not saying that as a one-side comment...there likely are people who did play the games I mentioned who don't remember those sounds...or people who have heard Jeremy Soule's music and don't remember a single note of it).

Absolutely right about the layering of sound and them not standing out as much as a result.

The unfortunate truth is that just about any game *can* be played with the sound off. How many games can you play with the sound on but with the picture off?
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"Well, yeah, there's my favorite leaf!"

Deirdre · Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:42 am Post subject:

Who can forget the Victory theme from Final Fantasy?

Comparing gaming and sound on-off/video on-off is like looking at driving with your ears closed/eyes closed.

Games are a kind of "life simulation", and the "life" is the environment the game presents: whether real, surreal or fantastic.
In the same way that our perception of sound increases our experience and awareness of our environment, game audio is being created to replicate an intensified model of that.

Our lives do come with a soundtrack, but we don't always recognize it as such.
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