Friday, November 18, 2011

At risk of becoming a link farm...

There were some more interesting sound-in-games articles this past week that are worth a read.

First off from Gamasutra is 'I want it to sound chocalatey'.  Fun title aside, I think it hit on some great points - the most pertinent being that as sound designers, we need to encourage feedback even from people who don't feel like they can 'speak the language', and to let them know it's okay to use more emotive or non-technical terms.  I've definitely found that in the past it's been difficult to get any sort of feedback from other departments, who are always quick to say, 'well, I don't know anything about sound.'  It doesn't matter!  Feel free to use what words you have.

To quote Scott Rogers from his book 'Level Up': 'I need this creature to sound like a phlegmy cougar from hell... but make it sound more shriek-ey than growl-y.' Did you do it?  Congratulations! You are now ready to be a sound designer.

I recall once where my one direction for a massive roar was to make it more 'meaty'.  I pitched it down, added some watery elements to make it sound more wet, and modulated one of the layers at high speed to make it sound like it physically hurt the throat, as though bits of flapping skin were being torn loose inside.  In the end, it was exactly what the designer had been looking for, but he didn't need to specify all those individual steps.  That part was my job.

Develop Online also had an article exploring the trend of working for free and the corresponding controversy surrounding it.  You can read it here.

The first half of the article reads more like a PR defence - 'we do pay for our music!' - but later on it tackles a few more of the issues related to crowd-sourcing and the potential effects on the profession.  In a field where the number of people are trying to break in greatly outnumber the pros already working in it, it's a valid concern, and not just for sound designers or composers but artists and writers too.  Unfortunately, I feel that market forces decide this matter, and no amount of debate on the industry's part will change things.  Much like how Nintendo can beg people not to sell their games for one dollar, but that won't stop them from doing it.

In other news, I've been setting up a new desktop PC as an exclusive editing station, mostly so that I don't have my DAW competing for resources with background programs like Steam or anti-virus or chat clients, and the hard drive can be dedicated entirely to programs and sound data, instead of having to compete with games and photos and funny cat videos.  It might do some good things for my productivity besides - there are a few too many distractions floating around on my personal computer...