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!

Technical Sound Design - Illustrations

Illustrating the art of technical sound design can be a tricky thing. Fundamentally the role I play is usually as a supporting actor for the lead role of content creator. My job is to make other peoples sounds sound good, so to speak. How that get's done from project-to-project can be a bit of a mystery. A little bit of pipeline, some animation tagging, ambient placement in a level editor, text file hackery, code spelunking, maybe some audio middleware wrangling? I've always tried to expose the inner workings of the process: from my first title rocking FMOD on Conan, unleashing mad physics on StarWars: The Force Unleashed, complicated vehicle simulations of The Saboteur, and now Uncharted 3.

Game audio demo's for technical sound design are inherently difficult to create. How do you express in a video the  process of finding and unifying the implementation across over 300 doors in a game like Dead Space 3? Or what about the look of the producers face when one morning, after weeks of preparation, you flip the switch on the impact implementation for 150 physics objects in Uncharted 3? Pushing thousands of lines of dialog through the pipeline on Marvel Heroes was no small task, but how to show the work?

If you're lucky enough to have survived the development of a game you at least have the pixels on screen and the sound from the speakers to tell the tale, but in the case of technical sound design that is usually only half the story. So it's always a challenge when I try to put together something that represents the work that I've done. Thankfully I've gotten to work with some amazing sound designers (on some amazing projects!) whose work helps carry some of the explanatory text that seems like a necessary evil in these long-form video exposés. Hopefully the side-effect of creating these is that people can gain a greater understanding of the work that goes into making great sounds sound great in-game. It should be clear (by now) that sound for games is nothing like film. Nowhere is this more true than in the role of technical sound design.

Uncharted 3 - Technical Sound Design: Physics Set Pieces from lost lab on Vimeo.

Uncharted 3 - Technical Sound Design: Procedural Animation from lost lab on Vimeo.

Uncharted 3 - Technical Sound Design: Physics Impacts from lost lab on Vimeo.

Uncharted 3 - Technical Sound Design: Animation Set Pieces from lost lab on Vimeo.

Star Wars - The Force Unleashed:
The Saboteur: Conan:

Wwise [HDR] Audio Adventure

A funny thing happened last year...

Audiokinetic approached me to help them craft a sort-of manual for their Wwise Game Audio Middleware. I started by revising some of their already existing documentation. Audiokinetic has worked hard to position their resources as both easy to understand and with a deep well of knowledge. As a continuation of that practice, Simon Ashby contacted me with the seed of an idea: his intention was to create a tutorial for Wwise which encompassed the creation of a fictitious adventure game project. Through a combination of step-by-step instruction and linear storytelling, the development of a comprehensive Wwise project could be created by someone with little-to-no experience, while also providing semblance to the process from start-to-finish.

This was the beginning of the Wwise Project Adventure.

Released in 2012, the "Wwise Project Adventure: A Handbook for Creating Interactive Audio Using Wwise" now comes as an option during the installation of Wwise. In an interview with DesigningSound.org last September, some more of the process of creating the document and associated project was discussed. This was an incredible opportunity for me to solidify some of the practices I had been using on other games and try to bring methodologies from my experience to the community. As I've previously mentioned, good resources in my formative years were hard to come by. It's a great experience to be asked to share knowledge and be given a platform to attempt to increase the Technical Sound Design knowledge share.

So when the time came for Wwise to unleash their vision for HDR Audio in the latest 2013 version of Wwise, they asked me to write a chapter weaving their new feature into the established story line and project. Building on the established work of DICE, HDR Audio in Wwise is just one of six different mixing techniques, including: set-volume mixing, state-based (snapshot) mixing, auto ducking, RTPC (parameter controlled), sidechaining, and high dynamic range mixing. What amazes me about the possibilities in game audio continues to become enabled and able to be realized using Wwise. I can be said that not every game needs all of the tricks available, but to be without the potential, in a situation that could benefit from any one of them is beginning to seem like an oversight.

Audiokinetic's Xavier Buffoni (who I had the pleasure of meeting and hanging out with this spring during the Londaon Audio for Games Conference) wrote up an excellent technical overview of "Finding your way with High Dynamic Range Audio in Wwise" last month. He chronicles the some of the thought process behind bringing HDR to Wwise and clearly expresses the under-the-hood mechanics that make HDR Audio in Wwise a comprehensive addition to the toolset.

Here's a more storied version of HDR Audio that hit the cutting room floor during the writing of the Wwise HDR Audio chapter:

From high atop the mountain: the threshold engages the HDR audio system as the first magic blast resonates across the battlefield. The volume of the magic blast has been authored as the loudest sound in the project, which swiftly engages the window top and removes footstep sounds from the mix. The concussion of the blast is a force of danger regardless of your position during battle. At that moment, nature, footsteps, and the sounds of fallen soldiers are removed from your purview while you focus on the magnitude of sound.

As the window top follows the magic blasts envelope, the cold sound of steel-on-steel begins to cascade across the ravaged field of warriors. Authored below the relative volume of a magic blast, each impact rings out with a sharp attack that continues peaking the window top. The ratio property directly relates to the attenuation of sounds below threshold. This leaves ambience out of the mix amidst the battle cries rise up towards another assault.

The last warriors stand alone. Locked in battle, the final sickening smack signals the triumphant blow that will put an end to the war. Once the window top has adjusted to the amplitude of the impact, the release mode and release time return the HDR window to rest. There is now a return of ambience and sounds of the wounded scattered across the battlefield. Their voices heard quietly and clearly, as if they whisper to the wind seeking sweet relief.

The battle is never fought all at once, but through a series of small decisions that eventually align themselves toward a common goal. Each relativistic change in amplitude between a sound or group of sounds serves to prepare for the final battle for the perfect dynamic mix. With tools and weapons equipped at the ready, there is no fear from the day when the project ships.

One of the things that continues to impress me about the way Audiokinetic chooses to implement new features within Wwise is that they not only integrate the feature but they also give you a way to audition and measure the effectiveness of it. Nowhere is this clearer than in the newly added "Voice Monitor" which allows for viewing the affect of the HDR Audio properties across the entire HDR System.

Rev. Dr. Bradley Meyer goes into some depth with his experience mixing the latest inFAMOUS Second Son game using "Wwise HDR Best Practices". You can catch a first-listen to Wwise HDR (among other interactive mixing techniques) in action through this recent gameplay footage, I'm especially fond of the detail in distance attenuation for weapons and explosions.



Putting the capability to create interactive and dynamic audio into the hands of many, today's audio middleware is allowing for the rapid advancement of techniques and fidelity in game audio. The availability of tools that can be used to design sounds that fit gameplay is a recipe for a bright future in what's to come. I can't wait to hear what everyone has in store for the future!

Game Audio Aspirations

I recently wrote these suggestions out for an aspiring game audio professional. I thought it might ring true for others and so I'm reprinting it here with permission.

"First of all, thanks for sharing your story. We've all got one, keep cultivating yours and try out different plot lines. Keep trying to envision the next chapter. I think it's so cool that you've been in pursuit of a dream for so long and through trials and tribulations continue to find yourself coming back to the path laid before you, ready to move forward. Sometimes knowing what you want is the hardest part and from there it just takes doing. One of my recent epiphanies...and it's not like I made this up...is that sometimes in order to know, you have to do. So my first suggestion is that you do and keep doing what it is your heart tells you to do. Being honest with yourself about what your heart needs lays fertile ground for the cultivation of dreams. This is at the root of it: dreams can come true. It takes work, time, focus, and magic. There are too many stories of dreams coming true for it to be a hoax, and I've got more than a few myself.


Next up, what should you do? It's easy: do what you love. If you focus on that then you can't go wrong. Don't know exactly what it is that you love to do? Do everything instead, until you figure out the things you are naturally drawn to vs. the things that suck your soul dry. We all know these things inherently, but are willing to overlook some of them depending on the paycheck/ circumstance/ reward.


Fuck.That.Shit (thanks to @joecavers for tweeting that every couple of months)


Follow your bliss towards the thing that makes you feel good. Even if the results of that are terrible, don't worry you can't help but get better at the things you love to do. Because you'll keep doing them, not because of x y z, but because it feels good. When you feel good it bleeds into everything you produce. Need some validation that everyone is terrible when they first start out? Go look up my demo reel from 7 years ago...or an example of anyone's work from their early years. Internalize this acknowledgement and press through the emotions. Keep walking the path.

Maybe you should take a break and ready this timeless tome from Dr. Suess...or this beautiful cartoon of Alan Watts' famous lecture.

Ok, ready? Now for some nitty gritty.


1. Find people to work with. You will learn more from others than you ever will from a book or class...err, I guess classes have people so that's not totally true. Look for opportunities and projects that are willing to give you a shot at lending a hand, then prove to be a handy addition to the team in whatever way possible. Maybe it's by being the person who calls a meeting when shit's fucked up or maybe you wrangle a spreadsheet to help keep assets straight for the animators...whatever it is, do good! Some of the first projects I worked on are still alive in the world. Games I never expected to see the light of day, risen from the ashes of troubled development and shipped. It's heartwarming to think about people I worked with who are now in great positions in the game industry, people who were on the same level as me when I first started out. People who had passion, people who cared for the right reasons, people who loved what they were doing, for the sake of it.


2. Find a community online: twitter #GameAudio, gameaudioforum, G.A.N.G., IASIG...whichever one seems good to you. Better yet, find an IGDA meeting, other gamedev meetup, or audio-centric meeting where you can socialize with people who share a passion for games and audio. Find a way to help with their initiatives, find a way to share the experience of learning so that others might learn from you. Become an expert in the thing you love, share that with people. Dig into resources like GameAudioPodcast, GameAudioRelevance, GameAudio101, GameSoundDesign, DesigningSound, CreatingSound, and while you're consuming all of these tasty morsels of game audio, please keep doing. Find a way to build a feedback loop of doing and sharing what you're doing, whether it's through the community or friends or the internet at large. You will build a body of work just by doing, which will stand as a testament to how far you'll have come when you look back from the future. Dig through some of my old stuff, there's some heinous business out there written in my name...it's who I was and what I knew then. Always try your best to represent yourself clearly and honestly (if you don't know say so) but everyone is entitled to an opinion.

3. Sharpen you tools, whatever they are. Before you can do that, know what it is you're trying to build. This goes right back to the question of what your heart wants. Once you've figured that out (no easy feat!) work on making your process and pipeline a work of art. Nobody could have told me I would be rocking some serious spreadsheets in order to do this technical sound design gig, but I have rocked my fair share on every project I've ever been on. Maybe that's how my brain works. I'm no wizard but I can pull off some cool tricks that help me pass through the unenviable task of data management unscathed by concatenated strings. The same goes for some Wwise/ FMOD/ Unreal/ etc. bidness. Ask me to design sounds in Pro Tools and I'm the slowest cowboy in the mid-west, probably not even that good at it at the end of the day. However, I can get surgical on a .wav file and throw something together for fun. Sound for cinematics ten hours a day does not complete me. The beautiful thing is, it's likely that cinematic sound is someone else's passion. Someone who loves that as much as I love getting sounds to play back and sound good inside a game engine."


Above all else, keep dreaming...that is the key.