Sound - Game Design Essentials - page 190

aaa G a m e s
AAA is an industry term for a game that is high quality and produced with a
large budget, such as Halo, World of Warcraft, or Gears of War . The average
budget to make a AAA game is about $30 million. These games can take
around 18 months to produce, with a crew of approximately 120 people.
A lot of indy games are made with small crews of two or three people doing
all the work, with a turnaround time from a few weeks to a few months.
Midsize games employ crews of about 30-65 people and generally take about
9 months to make. Indy game production has grown over the past few years
due to increased online distribution systems and the mobile game market.

When music is created for games, the composer will produce what are known
as stems , or segments, that the audio producer can then program to play during
specific moments during gameplay. Some of those tools added to the engine are
from third-party software creators with programs such as FMOD ( www.fmod.org )
and the WaveWorks Interactive Sound Engine (Wwise) ( www.audiokinetic.com ).
These allow the audio producer to tell the game engine when to turn on or turn
off specific pieces of audio (the stems).
Stems can also be created as variations. In other words, the composer may
create different versions of music that range from subtle to providing a very
strong presence. Usually the composer produces high, medium, and low ver-
sions. By playing these in loops or layering them, the audio director can build
a unique sound experience for each aspect of the game. As soon as stems are
delivered for a project, the audio producer will begin to implement them into
the game, so that even as a vertical slice is being created, the correct audio is in
place. Temp tracks are occasionally used in the vertical slice; however, whenever
possible, the more finished audio is always the first choice to see how it works
with gameplay. It's best to get the ambient sound down first and then add posi-
tional audio for things like waterfalls and streams.
Ambient sounds are the background noises, the atmospheric audio, that can
be heard in a particular scene or location. For example, if you're playing a game
where your character is walking through a forest, you may hear crickets, creak-
ing tree boughs, wind rustling the leaves, birds chirping, and other nature
sounds. Those ambient sounds, when layered into the game, help create a more
immersive environment.

Audio helps cre-
ate realism and
an immersive
environment.