Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Game Audio in the Modern Age
of Games and Consoles
As we look at the next batch of games and consoles, we enter the
modern age of the big three competing consoles. Companies such as
Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, and Capcom have acquired multiple
development studios and release games in multiple formats. Teams of
audio designers and composers work both in-house and as contractors
to create an array of music and sounds.
You learned in the previous module that, in the San Francisco Bay Area,
the merger of Silicon Valley and Hollywood was referred to as 'Siliwood.'
As production values rose, so did the amount of money spent on games
and interactive media. In many games of this period, money was spent
on elaborate cutscenes, designed to push the story line along in between
gameplay. This was a result of the increased storage capacity of the
CD-ROM format, and game designers wanted to take advantage of this
increased capacity to expand the narrative aspects of gaming.
So you might be asking yourself “Why is it important that I know all of this
ancient history? What's so important about things like sample formats and
i le size restrictions that I need to know all about 8-bit audio and MIDI?”
Well for one reason, it's fun and informative to know about the past, and
another is that it is seriously applicable today! Remember that old quote
“Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it.”
Modern workl ow in games still deals with many of the same challenges experiences by sound designers in the
past. Incompatible formats, multiple compression schemes, variable transfer speeds and streaming problems
all demand creative solutions and thoughtful designers who understand modern day systems. This problem
is not likely to go away soon, because the industry is always innovating. For example, Google's Android OS is
just now being used in low-level consoles (the Ouya for example), and the ability of Android to do much of
anything advanced in audio is somewhat limited. Anyone designing for these devices must take into account
the sound capabilities of the various platforms, and this means understanding limitations and working around
them. Let's say someone wanted to release a game for iOS as well as Android. Did you know that iOS doesn't
support Ogg Vorbis i les? And that MP3s created by most applications won't seamlessly loop? You see, even in
the twenty-i rst century, inconsistencies abound in the wacky world of sound for games.
Middleware
Technologically speaking, things in games got so good for sound artists that
around 2000, new pieces of software called
middleware
started cropping
up. The i rst middleware engines for audio were around throughout the
