Going In-House: 7 Years A Freelancer

Since I first made the giant leap into the games industry 7 years ago, I've always been a contract resource for studios to hire when their titles needed a little help in the technical sound department. Under the wing of Bay Area Sound during my first 4 years it was always clear what my role and specialty was within their tight-knit network of professionals. Much credit goes to Julian for recognizing my passion for the technical-side of game sound and constantly finding ways for me to flex that muscle on various projects. My aspirations to create a position for myself where I could bridge the gap between sound content and games was made easier by my focus on implementation. This specialty turned out to be something that, during the previous console generation, was just beginning to gain acknowledgement as a legitimate career path.

After 7 years of fire-fighting and acting the #GameAudio "Mr. Wolf" for projects in various states of completion, I've just accepted a full-time in-house position as part of a large development team as a "Technical Audio Lead" (a job which would've been hard to imagine all those years ago). In this role I'll be helping to inform, create, and help lead the technical focus of audio across a variety of projects and platforms with the goal of building a unified way of integrating sound in games. While the edge of the chasm that separates a WAV file from the game has closed considerably thanks to companies like Audiokinetic and Firelight, there remains a gap that still must be bridged. Some of this gap is unique to a specific game and some of the solutions apply across all games, things like: animation systems, game-objects, game-state systems, or physics sound. I'm really excited to have the ability to affect long-term change and hopefully create a pipeline that will enable the creative use of dynamic sound for the audio team I'll be working with.

With that in mind, I'll be moving the family across the country from Minneapolis (Reprazent!) to Seattle this summer. The game audio community in Seattle has been extremely inviting over my past year of travels. I've met a ton of great people and connected face-to-face with many colleagues who I had previously only corresponded with online. I'm really looking forward to starting a new chapter of my career and getting to know the Pacific Northwest a bit better.

I want to take a moment to thank all of the teams, people, mentors, and visionaries that I've had a chance to work with over the last 7 years. The opportunities I've had, and access I was granted, to help make peoples audio-visions a reality has been an incredibly formative experience.

I hope this find you all well in the new year!