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Audible Words, Pt. 2: 'Updating the State of Critical Writing in Game Sound'
Sound has evolved to occur at the end of the production process in film, however in games this isn’t the case, or more accurately, is only the case for freelance contract content creators. Sound Designers, Sound Directors, and Composers all have legitimacy right from day one of an interactive project in the in-house model. This follows through audio design documentation, style guides, reiterating content, right through the project’s production life-span, right into the Alpha stage of product development. The only comparable phase to that of film post-production is the Beta phase of game production, usually at which point all assets are merely finalised or mastered. Sound is represented and championed all through the production from project inception to gold master. Both in film and games there are a great many cases that now prove otherwise. While film learned the lessons of relying on post-production only for sound design is not necessarily a great idea, games have learned that being able to include a post-production phase at the end of a game is a good idea. “This is why any systems which enable scripting of the sound to lie in the hands of a sound designer are highly significant — together with a wider recognition of the power and importance of sound within the rest of the development team. It is also essential that sound be placed near the beginning of the planning process.” (1) As Deutsch predicted, scripting has now for some time been in the hands of the sound designer, and for more in-depth control over any of the game’s content there exists a strong sense of communication throughout game production teams. If access is required to any piece of game-side data, one can merely ask the audio programmer or the responsible staff member, such as AI programmer, to expose those parameters to the audio engine. Audio is now widely recognised by all other disciplines in a development team. When the various disciplines of a team are working independently on several sides of the same object there can be no failure in communication. “It would be a wise move for games manufacturers to commission a survey as to how many users actually do turn the music off, or would do so given the opportunity” (1)
The ability to choose one’s own soundtrack has in fact become a defining feature of interactive entertainment. Games give the player a rich and independent control over the mix level of sound effects, dialogue and music independently and allow a custom mix preference. This also, of course, allows players to turn off the music and to play their own music along with the game, allowing users a hitherto unavailable degree of freedom – echoing older debates of cultural artefacts being taken out of their original and intended contexts. (2) |
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