Aaron Marks' Complete Guide to Game Audio

For Composers, Sound Designers, Musicians, and Game Developers

Aaron Marks

• Publisher: A K Peters/CRC Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317636182
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Whether trying to land that first big gig or working to perfect the necessary skills to fill a game world with sound, Aaron Marks' Complete Guide to Game Audio 3rd edition will teach the reader everything they need to know about the audio side of the multi-million dollar video game industry.

This book builds upon the success of the second edition with even more expert advice from masters in the field and notes current changes within the growing video game industry. The tools of the trade excerpts will showcase what professionals, like Marty O'Donnell, Richard Jacques and Tom Salta, use to create their work and to help newcomers in the field prepare their own sound studios.

Sample contracts are reviewed within the text as well as helpful advice about contractual terms and negotiable points. These sample contracts can also be found as a downloadable zip for the reader's convenience. Aaron Marks also explores how to set your financial terms and network efficiently along with examples of how projects can go completely awry and achieving the best results in often complicated situations.

Aaron Marks' Complete Guide to Game Audio serves as the ultimate survival guide to navigating an audio career in the video game industry.

Key Features

• New, full color edition with a complete update of information.
• Added and expanded coverage of field recording for games, creating voiceovers, adaptive and interactive audio and other cutting edge sound creation and implementation techniques used within games.
• Update/Replacement of interviews. Include interviews/features on international game audio professionals New and expanded interview features from game composers and sound designers of every experience level such as Keith Arem, Bradley Meyer, Christopher Tin and Rodney Gates including many international professionals like Pasi Pitkanen, Henning Nugel and Christos Panayides.
• Expanded and updated game console coverage of the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4.
• Includes new scripting and middleware concepts and techniques and review of powerful tools such as FMOD and Wwise.

1

An Introduction to Game Audio

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Any worthwhile journey begins with a first step, followed by another and then another. Regardless of whether you are already many miles down the road or are just about to make that first stomp, this book is designed with you in mind. Working in the multi-billion-dollar game industry as an audio content provider is a challenging and rewarding avenue—best traveled with a useful guidebook in hand. My thanks to you for bringing this particular one along.

There are as many reasons as there are individuals for wanting to work in video games. Doing something you enjoy, creating games which millions will experience, or getting a paycheck for it, are all undoubtedly given the most often. Another, perhaps more enticing reason, is the mystique and prestige associated with it. Most of the world is still practically computer illiterate, and those of us who can get inside “the box” and make it do incredible things hold a measure of prominence in our society. We like to be that kind of person.

There are countless job descriptions within the industry: programmer, artist, animator, game designer, producer, and so on. But the ones which probably drew you to pick up this book are titles such as game composer, musician, sound designer, or audio content provider. These are the jobs which will bring us the kind of satisfaction we crave, creating music and getting paid to do it. It will also give us another way to get our music “out there” and maybe even be considered for a Grammy Award in the process. It will give us some needed recognition and acceptance from our family and friends who thought being a musician was a waste of time, and might even serve as a stepping stone to another career—such as film or television, if you wish. There are endless possibilities to meet your personal and professional goals as a game composer and sound designer. And really, it’s not such a bad career, either.

Music had always seemed to be a part of my life, and like everyone else, I had big dreams. I just didn’t have a clue as to the “what” or “how” part of it, though. I did know how to spend money, and as my abilities and interests grew, so did the number of instruments and recording gear in my inventory. So much, in fact, my wife became concerned with the excessive outflow. The foot was brought down with a resounding thud and a new challenge was posed: I could not buy any more “gear” unless I made money with what I had, and after that, this little hobby of mine was to remain self-sufficient.

Originally, local television and radio seemed to hold some promise but as I jumped into that madness with both feet, I quickly realized the competition was fierce and I was merely plankton in an ocean populated by whales. Out of necessity, my strategy widened and diversification became fundamental. I looked into composing for music libraries, local video production companies, and multimedia. I had to have more gear, after all.

I soon learned just how these other businesses worked. They all wanted grand, original orchestral scores, à la John Williams, but only wanted to pay $200 for them. Considering the amount of time and effort you need to pursue this course, there is no way to see any return on the investment and it became painfully obvious that even though I was still overwhelmed by the urge to sell my music to someone, this was not the way to go about it.

I didn’t naturally move to video games, though. I was still playing the original Nintendo at this point and didn’t consider what I was hearing to be the kind of music I was even interested in creating. And I was certain nobody was actually making any money for “game music” either.

But when scoring for video games did finally run up and slap me across the face, I realized my perceptions of this strange new world were woefully distorted. The gaming world has advanced far beyond what I had imagined and the music has become utterly fantastic! And to top it off, I discovered some game composers were making $50,000-plus per game for just a month or so of work. Now I was interested!

Constant pursuit of more gear is great motivation for selling your audio to the game industry. (Courtesy of AMC Studios.)

Thus began an incredible journey, making money selling my flavor of noise, realizing my goals and dreams, taking my “hobby” to a successful business, and, most importantly, bringing peace and harmony to the home front. But, because I knew absolutely nothing about the business, it took a couple of years to struggle into it, learn the ropes, and find my niche before I began to arrive at some semblance of success.

That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of this book—to educate you, to help you decide if this industry is right for you, and then give you the knowledge to take on the gaming world by storm. My experiences have given me a certain view of this unique industry and this is what I intend to share with you. If I can provide you the assistance to hit the ground running and save a couple of years in the process, my objectives have been fulfilled. So, sit down, hang on, and enjoy the ride.

The Bleeps and Bloops of Yesteryear

In 1971, video games made their grand public appearance with the game Computer Space. Although this game isn’t as well remembered as some, society took to this new form of entertainment—plunking down stacks of quarters at a time. A year later, Atari’s Pong took its place in history. This console game was uncomplicated by today’s standards; the few sounds it played were simple, single-tone electronically generated bleeps. Atari’s home entertainment offering in 1975 brought Pong into our homes, but it wasn’t until 1977 that the Atari 2600 game system brought the first (although slight) improvement in game sound.

As the thirst for these games grew, so did the technology and the search for more stimulation was set into high gear. Various methods and audio processors were applied to aurally satisfy the game player and keep them coming back. In 1979, Mattel presented their Intellivision system—offering a sound generator capable of three-part harmony. Atari answered back in 1982 with their 5200 platform and a dedicated audio processor called Pokey. The Pokey chip used four separate channels which controlled the pitch, volume, and distortion values of each—allowing a four-piece virtual band to perform for the first time.

From here on out, each new game system introduced had more audio resources to draw from. The original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985 used five channels of monophonic sound. 1986 brought Sega’s introduction into the ring with monophonic sound generators using four octaves each. By 1989, the NEC Turbo Grafx brought six voices with stereo output—and the Sega Genesis brought 10 voices. Both incorporated a later add-on which allowed for CD-quality audio, and at last we were getting to enjoy some music and sound the way it was meant to be heard. Audio processors continued to improve, adapting synthesizer chips, 16-bit processors, more voices, more memory, better compression and decompression algorithms, and even internal effects processors.

But far away from the consoles and dedicated gaming platform market, the personal computer was beginning to show its potential. Initially, the sound quality was no better than the early console games: the generated bleeps played back through an even more horrendous-sounding internal speaker. Memory space was always an issue and the considerations for audio were last on a very long list of priorities. As a response to the almost hopeless situation, separate sound cards were developed with small synthesizer chips which allowed for very small message files (encoded with triggers similar to the roll on a player piano) which told the device what sounds to play and when to play them. The sound bank consisted of 128 sounds with the capability to play a total of 16 notes at a time, and this use of the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) standard gave us some hope. The tinny, cheesy sounds early cards produced were a far cry from the real thing, but at least the compositions were improving and musicians were replacing programmers at an increasing rate.

The computer sound file, such as today’s .wav and .aif files, utilized a compression algorithm which enabled real recorded sounds to be played back initially in the .voc format. This gave a musician the ability to track music in a studio using traditional recording methods and then convert to the required sound file format. The sound quality wasn’t much better than the MIDI music being expelled; initial sample rates of 11 kHz, 8-bit, mono were hardly even AM radio quality but at least the composer wasn’t restricted to the sound palette which came with the hardware. Sound designers benefited as well, enabling their creativity to literally explode. The stage was set, ready for the next level and beyond.

Where Sound Is Now

Today, game audio has evolved into an art form all its own. Game music quality, the release of stand-alone game music CDs, and their potential for a Grammy Award have at last put us on par with the television and film industries. Hollywood-quality sound effects and celebrity voice-overs are commonplace and help create an incredible, almost movie-like experience. Who would have thought this even possible 30 years ago? Game audio has made a quantum leap forward, ...