Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Audio skills and tasks
As a freelance audio contractor and the one and only person on the team who knows
anything about sound, the sound designer is expected to cover all aspects of sound
for games: composing music, creating special effects, mixing, scripting audio events,
managing problems of audio formats, and memory allocation issues related to the
game audio. The sound designer must be ready to deal with different kinds of prob-
lems every day to accomplish his/her task. He/she is also expected to discuss with
other team members about any decision that can have an impact on the audio as-
sets he is delivering for the project. As you may understand, this means a lot of re-
sponsibility for a single person!
It goes without saying that, the sound designer must be a person with music talents.
He/she needs to know how to play at least one musical instrument, how to com-
pose original music, how to record sounds, how to edit them and most importantly,
he must be able to convey emotions through music and sounds.
A less obvious, but still very useful skill is that the sound designer must possess
some basic programming capabilities, especially the most commonly used APIs.
Scripting proficiency is a very valuable resource too. It can be of help in better un-
derstanding the needs of the programmer for specific tasks and help him/her (or the
game designer) with the implementation of audio events in the game, should they be
overburdened with other tasks.
Schools of sound production
Though music talents and a strong interest in music are necessary to trigger the ca-
reer of a sound designer, a background in audio from an accredited college or uni-
versity is very important to be considered for a position on a project. Music produc-
tion, sound engineering, recording techniques, post production and editing are the
necessary theoretical requirements to be able to work on a game development team
and take care of audio.
Then experience comes into play, which is, as usual, the most important thing! Try
to get involved in projects, and experiment with tools and musical instruments if you
are interested in making audio for games, or find someone who can prove his\her
skills with a good portfolio of self made sounds and music for your team.
