Game Audio Philosophy

Our firm belief is that game audio and audio in general are not synonymous. We have clearly shown that games require audio professionals who understand nonlinearity and have the skills and imagination to devise and implement interactive audio systems. We are not audio specialists contracted out for game work. We are, and should strive to be, game developers ourselves. We need to know the ins and outs of our games, understand how audio tells a story in a nonlinear environment, and be fluent in the other aspects of game development in order to effectively immerse ourselves in the development workflow. Audio creators who work on games are game developers.

Not all of us think of ourselves as developers, but we think it is important to cultivate this idea within the game audio community. It is now easier than ever to dabble in game development and design due to the tools and technology that previously were not available to us. Game engines like Twine and GameMaker allow those of us who are inexperienced with coding to focus mostly on the design aspects of the process rather than programming. These tools are a great place to start when you’re looking to understand nonlinear media and get a feel for the development process as a whole. This experience and the skills you will learn will absolutely transfer into your audio work and help you communicate more effectively with developers. This is important because we need to begin to see ourselves as game developers so that we can bear more responsibility during the process. Audio might be (technically speaking) “invisible,” but the effects of music and sound on a game are not. Often it is a key factor in the relationship between player and game.

As game developers we have a responsibility to the game, to our community of audio creators, and to the world in general. Our responsibility is to integrate the game with sound in a way that supports both gameplay and story as effectively as possible. This can only be done by upholding our responsibility to the game audio community and committing our knowledge and our time to teaching and mentorship opportunities. By sharing our knowledge and teaching others we are creating a truly collaborative community, one whose success or failure depends not on a single project, but on our actions as a whole and on our level of support for fellow audio folks. In our view secrecy benefits no one. Yes, the industry is tough and competitive, but by sharing our experiences and offering support to one another we will all be learning and growing together – which can only result in great audio. This mentality is already present in the game audio community more so than any other niche industry we have seen. We intend for this book to add to and further cultivate that group mentality which is so special and important to our culture.

Lastly, games are powerful. We tend to think of games as something we can casually play to relax and unwind. But games and game technology have been used for decades for education, medicine, and research. Games are extremely powerful tools for learning because they go hand in hand with our natural inclination toward reward-based systems. Game technology is being steadily introduced into public education systems as many of you who are parents might already know. This makes sense because a number of studies have shown that games have the ability to literally shape our brains. One 2017 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience suggests that games can make the brain regions responsible for attention and visuospatial skills more efficient.¹

On the player side of things, game technology (especially VR) has been used for decades to study psychology and human behavior. Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson in their book Infinite Reality² detail dozens of research projects and medical advances of the past 30 years which have utilized VR technologies. These applications for a technology that is most often associated with gaming are mind blowing, and should not be underestimated. As developers we need to understand the power of games and game technology. With that knowledge it follows that we have an ethical responsibility to the world to be open-minded, inclusive, and to make choices that make the world better for future generations.

Teaching and Game Audio Pedagogy

We’ve put quite a lot of emphasis in this book on teaching, and it isn’t just because it’s a great way to earn a stable income while venturing out into the competitive world of game audio. In our view teaching is an essential part of any field, and should be taken very seriously. Unfortunately, there are not many college programs devoted specifically to game music or game audio. A cursory Google search yields a ton of game-design programs, and even a handful of film-scoring programs, but very few game-audio-specific college degrees. Even fewer are present at the graduate level. In a field that demands as much technical prowess and creativity as game audio, we think that this needs to change.

Teaching doesn’t just offer freelancers an outlet for their knowledge, it also makes the industry better. By developing a rigorous game audio pedagogy (i.e. teaching methodology) we will be creating generations of game audio professionals who start out with more knowledge than we did. This can only be good for our craft and our industry. Game audio is specific and demanding. By teaching to those demands we will also be bolstering the value of game audio to developers, who can often underestimate audio in games. This will also put game audio on the table as more of a legitimate academic area of research, furthering the pedagogical development.

The need for more practical course materials in game audio was a huge reason we wrote this textbook in the first place. Many people are already doing it on their own, and they are doing it well. But as teachers we still see a growing demand to learn game audio in a way that consolidates best practices and expels the mysteries of the trade. We can’t offer an exact template for this proposed pedagogy, but we hope that this book will inspire a serious and continuing discussion on what that would look like. What we can offer is something of a call to arms. So find a way to incorporate teaching into your life. Be a mentor, find a mentee, teach a class, create a class, write a book, give a talk, and think hard about how to teach game audio.

Inclusivity and Accessibility in Game Audio

Ethically speaking, we believe our top priority as developers is to create an inclusive and accessible space for game audio professionals. This topic is complex enough that it can and should warrant its own textbook, but here we will attempt to distill some of our thoughts and advice. In the game audio community we have seen more enthusiasm for this topic than in many other industry niches. But the fact still stands that there is a diversity problem in game audio and in game development as a whole. The number of women in game audio is actually on the rise. However, according to the 2017 GameSoundCon Industry Survey,³ women (despite comprising roughly half of the population) make up only about 12.7 percent of the total composers and sound designers in the industry. What is more disheartening is that women in the industry only earn 83 percent of what men earn on average.

According to the IGDA (International Game Developers Association) 2017 Developer Satisfaction Survey (DSS) Report⁴ the vast majority of developers identify as white/Caucasian/European at 68 percent and only 1 percent identified as black/African American. By contrast, according to the U.S. 2016 Census 61 percent of the population was white, and 13 percent was black. Now this survey is voluntary, and international – about 40 percent of respondents are from the U.S. so these numbers are not a perfect representation of the worldwide game development community. Nevertheless, these demographics are skewed and the disparity is pretty clear. What’s more alarming is that 14 percent of respondents reported that their company had “no policies whatsoever directed toward diversity or equality. Among those whose company did have some form of policy, most said that their company had a ‘general non-discrimination policy’ (57%), an ‘equal opportunity hiring policy’ (49%) or a ‘sexual harassment policy’ (48%). Only 26% said that their company had a ‘formal complaint procedure,’ and 21% reported a ‘formal disciplinary process’ related to equality and diversity policies.”

Surveys like this one are important, and despite the fact that they show us how far we have to go, they also show us that most if not all developers consider inclusivity a priority. Of all respondents, 81 percent reported that diversity in the game industry was “very” or “somewhat” important. This was the highest in the history of IGDA’s DSS. This shows that inclusivity is already important to people, and we just need to push forward and explore ways of increasing our progress towards diversity.

No discussion of inclusivity is complete without a discussion of sexism and harassment in online gaming. One 2015 study conducted by Michael Kasumovic and Jeffrey Kuznekoff reported the following results: “We show that lower-skilled players were more hostile towards a female-voiced teammate, especially when performing poorly. In contrast, lower-skilled players behave submissively towards a male-voiced player in the identical scenario.”

The scenario described above is tragically commonplace. As individuals it is not our fault that this phenomena pervades gaming culture, but as game developers it is our responsibility to do all we can to defend against this toxic behavior. On a societal level we need to reflect on our culture, and the culture of gaming to negate tropes and to promote inclusivity and diversity in games. At the individual level it is vital for us to do what we can to halt this behavior if witnessed, and to hold others and ourselves accountable when it happens. Events like the Games for Change Festival⁵ are platforms for social impact games to be seen and played. Social impact games deal with real-world issues like climate change and social equality. They are created with the idea that games are powerful enough to educate players, and to inspire lasting, positive change in the world. While it is not necessary to focus our efforts on a specific genre, we can still take a lesson from Games for Change and social impact games by injecting some of these ideals into our respective companies and game designs. Simply speaking up about an idea that might make your game more inclusive or diverse can make a big difference.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect answer to the question of how to create the perfectly inclusive, safe space for diversity to blossom in the industry. For one thing, just discussing the issue is in itself an important step. Women in Games International (WIGI)⁶ regularly hosts roundtables and discussion groups at GameSoundCon and GDC focused on the underrepresentation of women. Blacks in Gaming (BIG)⁷ hosts similar events and meetups. There are a number of other advocacy organizations working toward similar goals. Girls Who Code⁸ is an NPO devoted to increasing education and opportunities for women in the field of computer science. Kellen Beck’s 2018⁹ article also outlines a number of developers like Culture Shock Games and Dim Bulb Games looking to make game development more inclusive and diverse.

Anna Anthropy, a game developer and advocate, has a very interesting take on the game industry as a whole. Her book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters¹⁰ is essentially a call to arms for hobbyists, amateurs, and basically everyone to start developing and self-publishing games. The hope is that by making game development and publishing possible at the individual level, minority groups will be more adequately represented in the industry. This would certainly go a long way towards making the conversation about diversity and industry ethics a priority. She recommends using the streamlined game development tools mentioned above (see “Game Audio Philosophy,” Chapter 12, page 380) to keep the process from being overwhelming. Anthropy suggests that the result of such a personalized indie game development boom would be a striking increase in the diversity of subject matter and game mechanics. The way we interact with games could be positively impacted by simply encouraging more people to make games.

Above all, we would recommend immersing yourself in the events, talks, and round tables available at industry events. Progress on these issues is halted by ignorance and complacency. So don’t be shy! These discussion events are safe spaces, and they are vital to progress. Show up, listen, speak up about your experiences, and make friends. The more people who are aware of the issue of diversity, the more allies we have to help defend against it.

Accessibility in games is, of course, its own issue that deserves equal attention. According to Adriane Kuzminski (Smash Clay Audio, owner, designer), sound design is not just a tool to entertain players. It can and should be used to make games more accessible to players with disabilities ranging from blindness and low vision to dyslexia, and even those with autism or sensory processing disorders (SPD).¹¹ According to Kuzminski, “One of the first things is to use UI sounds as a means to teach the gamer to memorize how the game works. The way to do this is by making ‘iconic’ UI sounds, which just means that they are consistently tied to an action or outcome. When a sound means the same thing every time, you create an audible user interface.”¹²

This concept is taken to the extreme in MMO games like Paladins (Hi-Rez Studios). Our work on this project taught us how important it is to create recognizable and predictably timed weapon sounds. For example, creating a reload sound that predictably rose to a specific pitch gave players a competitive edge because it offered valuable information about when the opponent would be ready to fire. According to Kuzminski, design decisions like that also makes games more accessible, which in turn makes them more marketable for developers. In her own words, “We have too much technology and too many people working on this to say that the gaming experience is not meant for certain groups of people.”¹³

Making our industry space more inclusive and diverse is not only ethically important, it is also important for games. Look back at Chapter 6 and re-read “Generating Musical Ideas and the Creative Cycle.” If creativity is the fire, then the fuel is a diversity of ideas. This does not happen without true diversity at the source of those ideas – people. Diversity in the game industry will yield innovative approaches to development, and truly beautiful games. Not only that, but inclusivity in the industry will increase the likelihood that marginalized groups will be able to relate to the subject material, thereby opening up a wider audience and a more inclusive gaming experience. This, in turn, will encourage people from disabled and marginalized communities to rise up as game developers themselves and share their stories. A focus on accessibility in gaming will ensure that everyone is able to enjoy and benefit from those games. Games are powerful, and games are for everyone.

The Possible Future of Game Audio

If it isn’t clear already, we have the utmost respect for the craft of creating audio for games. We also have a sincere degree of optimism for its future. Technologically speaking, we have explored some of our thoughts on the possible future of game audio. Machine learning could come into play in a very real way at some point. In many cases it is already being explored in regards to design and development. But what if machine learning was used to create music and sound? Is there a chance that future generations of game audio practitioners may find themselves in the role of aesthetic coordinator rather than content creator? Will they be feeding original content into algorithms that “procedural-ize” audio for them? Will they be creating the algorithms themselves? One thing is perfectly clear – composers and sound designers alike are finding themselves in increasingly technical roles in the game industry. It may be that the lines between audio creators and programmers will become more and more blurred.

While we can’t predict the stylistic trends in game audio, we can say what we hope to happen. We hope that game audio continues to find a unique and personal niche in the world of art and entertainment. We also hope that the public begins to understand the technical and academic validity of game audio as the singular and exceptional medium that it is. All too often we hear comparisons between film and game sound, or film and game composers. Obviously there are similarities, but we hope to see the differences come into public awareness as well. The difference between film sound and game sound is exactly what makes games special. Regardless of the genre, composers and sound designers are producing audio that is dynamic and interactive. These audio experiences are essentially tailored to each player, and that is something very special in our view. It’s common today to hear people leave theaters saying, “Did you hear that theme at the end of the movie? It was awesome.” We like to think that in the not-too-distant future it’ll be just as commonplace to hear people saying, “Did you hear how the soundscape evolved as I defeated the final boss? I felt like it was designed specifically for me! Sick.” And then sound designers, composers, Foley artists, voice actors, implementers, musicians, mix engineers, audio programmers, and audio directors can all smile knowing that our impact as game developers is as indispensable as the games themselves.

We will leave you with one final thought. Game audio is for everyone. With enough passion and persistence anyone and everyone can learn it. As sophisticated as the topic of game audio is, the essence of it is still passionate people making sounds for games that they love. That’s it! It is our sincere hope that this book demystifies the process and makes the methods and technology clearer and more accessible for those who want to learn. If you finish this book with just one piece of advice, let it be this: just make sounds. Go out and record some sounds, or make some music, or make a game. Whatever you do, do it now. Good luck!