Game Audio_Intro

On Thursday we will be taking a field trip to Sony's Playstation office to learn a bit about the kinds of audio work that goes into video games. In recent years, games have become a huge part of the entertainment industry and it is important to be aware that whether you're an animator, a video person, or an audio engineer, there are many jobs in gaming that require your skills. So today I wanted to take a little time to talk about the different elements that go into sound for games.

Games have come a long way in the last 35 years, or so. One of the very earliest games was this game, Pong:



Pong was a big deal when it came out back in 1972. The idea of playing a game on a screen was pretty high tech and magical. And even in those very early days, sound was considered a key element to the gaming experience. How many sounds did you hear in that clip?

Now let's take a quick look/listen to this clip from the game, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which was released on Sony's Playstation 3 console in 2009:

For the record, I neither condone nor condemn violence in videogames. This particular game, however, is notable for having won a number of awards, including in the audio field.

So, what did you notice about the sounds from that clip? What kinds of sounds did you hear? Were they constant throughout the play?

In a lot of ways, game audio is the same as any other type of audio post production. You have the same basic elements of

• FX
• Dialog
• Music

However, these elements behave somewhat differently in games than they do in, say, films. The big difference is that in a game, the player controls the movements and actions of the character. That means that there isn't just one set order that all the sounds happen. The sounds need to reflect what is happening on the screen in real time.

The main way that this is done is through the use of triggers and zones.

A trigger is just an action that triggers a sound. For example, the character opens a door on the screen, triggering an audio file of a door sound to play back. The character walks, you hear footsteps. The character jumps on a mushroom, you hear a sound.

A zone is like a preset map in that tells the game when to play certain sounds. For example, when the character starts to get close to a waterfall, you start to hear the sound of a waterfall. As he/she gets closer to it, the waterfall gets louder and louder. When he/she walks away, it gets softer and when he/she gets a certain distance away from it, it stops altogether. Zones are also important for music, because they determine when certain transitions are about to happen. Ever notice how a lot of the time you just sort of know when something bad is going to happen? Maybe the music starts to build up, or maybe it goes away completely. Chances are, you walked into a certain zone!

There are tons of topics that we could get into about this, but today I just wanted to give you some basics. Your assignment will be to do some audio post for a piece of this clip from Uncharted 2: