Getting Into Game Audio Part 3: Know The Craft – Audio Premium

Want to get into game audio? This is a must-read. West Latta continues his series on getting into the Game Audio business. Today he touches on the the key components of the craft of audio in the game industry, and how the process of learning the craft can help to guide you to success.

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There’s a common misconception about audio in the game industry that audio in games is ‘just some sounds and music’ and that ‘we can get someone to do that job easily’. While it may be true that there is no shortage of composers and audio designers anxious to get into the industry, it is a dangerous miscalculation to underestimate how much work is actually involved in creating audio for games. Moreover, there is a growing differentiation among audio tasks in the game industry, and to assume that one person can handle all of them ‘easily’ usually results in a poor audio experience.

Much like the film and television industries, the roles and responsibilities for audio people in the game industry continue to fragment and become more defined. In the early days of the industry, it is true that one person would program the music and sound effects for a game. This became less common as the various game platforms became more complex and started to include orchestrated music, recorded voiceover, and realistic sound effects.

Casual and mobile games (partially) excepted, the vast majority of todays games are developed by a team of skilled artists, designers, programmers, producers, audio designers, and testers. For a AAA title, it isn’t at all uncommon to see teams of 6 or 10 full-time audio designers, in addition to one or more composers, several audio programmers, voiceover producers, and localization specialists.

Let’s take a look at each of the various roles of audio in games, so you can get a better understanding of how audio is designed for today’s top games.