We’re currently at GameSoundCon 2019 at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, which is such a beautiful venue! We had the pleasure of talking to the founder of the conservation himself Mr. Brian Schmidt.
Brian has been doing game music and sound for a total of 32 years! When he started you had to be a programmer as well as a composer in order to work on games.
over the last fifteen years, as technology changes more and more people are coming from different industries to work on games. Industries like film, television, and more linear mediums of music generation and traditional sound design.
Game audio is a different thing, there are lots of quirks, and technical handcuffs that you have to deal with. A lot of amazing, traditional film composers are coming in tripping over the same issues. Understanding the memory limitations and streaming constraints that come with game sound design isn’t something you learn when working in traditional music settings.
Brian created GameSoundCon ten years ago for the people who know traditional, linear media very well and are interested in the game sound industry. – It’s a great idea!
The first GameSoundCon was held ten years ago with a total of 40 people, and it has now grown to be ten times the size! They’ve expanded from only discussing game audio 101 to having 6 concurrent rooms. One of the room’s focus is on virtual reality (VR) Audio, another is targeted towards game dialogue design. Dialogue in games extremely important to the user experience. The latest Star Wars game has a total of 317,000 lines of dialogue, whereas, a typical motion picture has about 2,000!
Watch the full episode below to check out some amazing brands that are ahead of the curve in this quickly growing market!
We met a bunch of great people today and brands both familiar and new. – This industry is going to become huge companies are starting to realize it.
We had a wonderful time at GameSoundCon 2019, thank you to all the amazing companies mentioned below and to Brian for showing us around! – We had a lot of fun!
San Francisco Conservatory of Music:
At the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, we give students the framework and foundation to succeed throughout their studies and careers, creating a path of lifelong learning. More than any other world-class conservatory, we focus on educating the whole person, with an interconnected curriculum that breaks down barriers between the intellectual, artistic, professional, and individual. Our faculty, facilities, and position at the heart of the San Francisco music scene have helped SFCM seize a leading role in preparing—and defining—the 21st-century musician.
Steinberg:
With the AXR4, Steinberg sets a new standard in audio interfaces for studios, producers and professional musicians. Featuring facilities and connectivity aimed at professional-level recording, this Thunderbolt 2 audio interface significantly raises the bar, with 32-bit integer resolution and a sample rate of up to 384 kHz. The hybrid mic preamps with Rupert Neve Designs SILK emulation add exceptional tonal control, while SSPLL guarantees ultra-low jitter. The AXR4 ensures universal excellence for all recording applications.
CRI MiddleWare ADX2:
ADX2 has virtually no learning curve as its authoring tool takes the best of what the DAW paradigm has to offer and adds intuitive functions to create interactive sounds. At a time when projects grow bigger and deadlines get tighter, improve your productivity by using ADX2!
From the creation of complex sound behaviors to the composition of interactive music, from digital sound processing and mixing to dialogue localization, ADX2 provides all the functions of a full-featured game audio middleware and then some.
Materia Collective:
Materia Collective™ is a video game soundtrack record label & music publisher. They release your favorite soundtracks, covers, and remixes!
They’re organizing the world of video game music and adding our favorite originals and covers to curated Spotify playlists.
Visisonics – Real Space 3D:
To create a convincing artificial audio environment for a user wearing headphones, sound processing must faithfully reproduce the acoustic spatial cues which would have been received at the ears from a real audio environment. These cues include those created by scattering off the listeners’ body (using a head-related transfer function or HRTF) and cues due to the environment (using customizable room models). RealSpace 3D achieves high resolution by including proprietary adjustments necessary to accommodate the complex interplay between the two cues.
Our efficient proprietary algorithms are already available for gaming engines. A native library, Unity plugin and Wwise integration are all available. Our plugins support complex scripting and allow the game designer to interactively design the audio experience. The perception of 3D is enhanced when the HRTF of the user is customized. VisiSonics has developed technologies for HRTF personalization resolved by rapid measurement on anthropometry (physical measurements), and machine-learning-based customization from an HRTF database.
Gigantic Software – Varantic:
With Varantic, you can create real-sounding variations from a small set of sound effects. Quickly and easily.
Varantic breaks sound effects into their sonic DNA, and it puts the sounds back together as probabilities.
Need a hundred different gravel footsteps? No problem. Need a ton of unique laser guns? Easy. With Varantic, jobs that used to take days or weeks can be done in seconds.
G.A.N.G – Games Audio Network Guild:
The Game Audio Network Guild was formed in 2002 by driven industry professionals with a vision to assist those in the game audio industry to share, continually improve, and evolve their craft, and to inform both the overall game industry and enthusiasts about not only excellence in that craft but fair treatment of professionals. In the years since its inception, the G.A.N.G. awards have become recognized as the industry’s highest recognition for sound-related achievement. But G.A.N.G. is more than an awards show and strives to serve its membership in multiple relevant ways that leverage the power of its broad and deep community. To do so, we have established four pillars that should always be at the foundation of any activity pursued by the organization and its leadership.
HI-REZ Studios:
“Hi-Rez Studios is an industry-leading video game developer at the forefront of the free-to-play, games as a service model.” But we’re just gamers, with passion and skill to make games that anyone can play regardless of income or platform. Hi-Rezzers are fueled by our game communities and the love they have for the realms and battlegrounds that we are lucky enough to create and grow.
Our games have been played by more than 70 million people worldwide on PC, mobile, and console, which blows our minds. Our experiences with such an awesome community of gamers are the major reason why we are trailblazers of the F2P and cross-play movements. We want all players to be able to game with their friends regardless of the platform, just as we like to game with ours.