Game Music and Sound Design Conference

9:25 - 10:25 Introduction to Game Audio: How Games are Different from Anything You've Worked on Before

Brian Schmidt

ESSENTIALS TRACK: This session provides an introduction and exploration into the many ways in which video game music and sound design are fundamentally different from linear media such as television or film. It also covers what to expect when working on a game, and how being part of a game team is very different from being hired to score or do sound design for more traditional media.

9:25 - 10:25 tba

To Be Announced

PROFESSIONAL TRACK: To Be Announced

9:25 - 10:25: VR: VR Audio Workflow

Chris Hegstrom, Jesse Holt

VIRTUAL  REALITY TRACK: Everyone is excited about VR audio & all of the potential new opportunities but what do we needto do to get there? What will the VR audio workflow look like in 5 years time when we’re more confident & comfortable with this new medium? Wwise & FMod are the standards for game audio today, yet they weren’t created in one day. What elements from games, film, live & broadcast can we cherry pick for VR audio & what from those fields will we need to relearn?

VR audio requires a new point of view for recording, designing, integrating, monitoring & mixing
3D sounds. Being able to envision & discuss this workflow will help us arrive at it sooner & start
creating & experiencing sonic VR content the way it was meant to be.

10:35 - 11:35 Essential Game Audio Tech I

Brian Schmidt

ESSENTIALS TRACK: The technology behind game sound, both its capabilities and limitations can have a profound impact on how game sound is created and put into a video game. Knowing these gives the composer or sound designer the ability to set a high bar, but not promise more than they can deliver. This session will cover the essential issues in game audio technology and how they affect what is and isn’t possible when creating game sound and music. Digital Audio, Game Sound Compression, Inside a Game Console, How Console Technology Affects Game Music & Sound Design are some of the topics covered.

10:35 - 11:35 PROFESSIONAL: Runtime Sound Design is Funtime Sound Design

Jaclyn Shumate

PROFESSIONAL TRACK: At PopCap, I make sounds for mobile games by using Middleware as my DAW to create something from (almost) nothing. I use a combination of run-­‐time synthesis, envelopes, LFOs, filters, tone generators, dsp, and a small, carefully created set of 
.wav assets to make great sounding games with minimal download size, CPU, and RAM use.  These techniques can be heard on the GANG award winner Peggle Blast (iOS, Android, 2014) and the soon to be released Bejeweled Stars (iOS,Android). 
 
In this talk, I’d like to walk the attendee through this process, including examples 
from both Peggle Blast and Bejeweled Stars. I will discuss techniques for using synthesis, tone generators, envelopes, and dsp to create and modify content. I will show the attendee through these examples the effects this has on the creative pallet, and how to make smart decisions to match the esthetic target of the game you are working on.  I will show the workflow, including creating a real-­‐time asset to 
picture, getting it from middleware into the game, and then the iteration pipeline.  Lastly, I will show examples of how this leads to easily having procedural game audio as an option in your regular work-­‐flow, and talk about the exciting future of real-­‐time procedural audio.   

10:35 - 11:35 VR: Beyond 360: Advanced Audio Techniques for Virtual Reality

Scott Gershin, Viktor Phoenix

VIRTUAL REALITY TRACK: The consumer VR market exploded this year and, with that growth, brought a renewed focus on audio. Developers and storytellers working in VR are now looking to sound designers to help them realize their visions with 3D audio. Making the transition from traditional 360 positional sound to more advanced uses of 3D sound brings exciting potential with it, but can create some creative and technical challenges as well. While there is plenty of available information on 3D audio, it is mostly academic with very little practical insight. Technicolor's Scott Martin Gershin and Viktor Phoenix draw on their experience to share creative techniques, discuss technical tools and review best practices for designing, implementing & mixing 3D audio for VR. The information will be presented in an approachable, yet thorough, presentation that will inspire and inform.

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12:10 - 1:10 Composing Interactive Music (I)

Paul Lipson, Formosa

ESSENTIALS TRACK: This session will follow the creation and implementation of an interactive musical score for a major console game. Beginning with how to work with the designer to map game levels to music, the session will focus on the interaction between what's technically possible and the composer's vision for the game, through the planning, recording and production phases.

12:10 - 1:10 Video Game VO: Evolving Techniques and Practices

William "Chip" Beaman (Formosa), Randy Coppinger (Disney), Kevin McMullan (Line In Audio), Morla Gorrondona (Independent), Michael Csurics (Brightskull)

PROFESSIONAL TRACK: With this panel we would like to introduce, and discuss, topics that are currently relevant to the VO side of Game Audio Development with a panel of leading industry experts from GVAC, the Game Audio Network Guild’s (GANG) professional voice wing.
Planned topics include: Modern Recording and Performance Techniques (ensemble, p-cap, etc...), Working with Independent Studios, Localization, How VR impacts VO, and more.

12:10 - 12:40 Creating Music for the VR-driven “Edge of Nowhere”

Michael Bross

VIRTUAL REALITY TRACK: Composer Michael Bross will discuss his work on Insomniac Games’s “Edge of Nowhere”, a third-person action-adventure game published on the Oculus Rift and due for release in June
2016. Michael will walk through his process of composing for this special title and gives a post-mortem along the way while discussing the 6-month timeline, from early music sketches to the final hours of production. Involving intense music “design” and a 55-piece orchestra for the 2-hour long music score, he will present creative approach, insightful music examples, challenges encountered with the title and also VR, and provide a behind-the-scenes view of Wwise implementation.

12:45 - 1:15 How To Job - Lessons from the Audio of "Job Simulator"

Daniel Perry

VIRTUAL REALITY TRACK: Through the development of Job Simulator, the premiere VR launch title for HTC Vive as well as Oculus Touch and PlayStation VR, I stumbled upon a lot of situations that have not been seen in any other form of interactive gaming.

I will talk about how the concept of ambience in VR has changed, and how it affected the decision making of
audio placement in Job Simulator.
I will talk about hand interaction with objects, and the importance being able to interact with every single object in VR, and and insight into the design of a specialized audio impact tool within Unity was created, and how we approached the unique challenge of draggable objects such as drawers and sliding doors.

2:45 - 3:45 Composing Interactive Music (II)

Paul Lipson, Formosa

ESSENTIALS TRACK: In this session, Paul will continue his discussion of how to create an interactive game soundtrack. Paul will discuss how composing within the framework of an interactive music engine affects how you think, compose and implement your music.  Using examples from games, he will demonstrate different video game music implementation techniques.

2:45 - 3:45 Sound Design of League of Legends

Adam Swanson, Brad Beaumont, RIOT Games

PROFESSIONAL TRACK: Our talk will cover how we go about designing champion sound effects for League of Legends. As League of Legends has such a large selection of different character themes, creating iconic sound design that supports gameplay can be quite a challenge. We’ll start off by walking you through our process from the start of exploration through to final polish. We’ll talk about how we approach the feedback process, and some specific elements we feel help us continue to push the quality bar. The second half of our talk we will dig into a few specific champions and tear down their spells to show you how we created the sounds. We will discuss everything from the tools we used, how we get our sounds, our individual approaches and even some examples of what worked well and what didn’t.

2:45 - 3:45 Creating Immersive & Aesthetic Auditory Spaces for Virtual and Augmented Reality

Chanel Summers, Syndicate 17

VIRTUAL REALITY TRACK:Every year more complex interfaces and completely new forms of experiences emerge that we audio designers are called upon to master, each with its own brand new complications when it comes to creating immersive, compelling audio designs. But with wearable interfaces and head-mounted displays becoming more commonplace, it will be important to cultivate the skills to create quality audio that not only meshes seamlessly with the world and experience that is being created, but also does so in an artistic way that furthers the design goals of the game. This presentation will discuss the challenges and specific solutions for creating audio for interactive virtual and augmented reality experiences. It will reveal audio techniques that can be used today to advance storytelling and gameplay in virtual environments while creating a cohesive sense of place. And it will demonstrate processes and techniques used in shipping products to construct the audio for everything from immersive mixed reality experiences to multiparticipant, multi-site location-based games.

4:00 - 5:00 Staying Power How to Have a Long, Thriving Career in Game Audio

MODERATOR: Emily Reese; Michael Bross, Caron Weidner, Adam Gubman

PROFESSIONAL TRACK:

In this session, we seek to explore topics relevant to contract audio developers composers and sound designers, VO and contract audio directors in an effort to demystify the process of professional development when you’re on your own. We will highlight the differences between working in and out of house, while offering suggestions, strategies, and anecdotes from our own work experience that will plant the seeds for attendees to cultivate their own booming entrepreneurial selves. Topics will be divided into several sides of the ‘audio entrepreneur self’.

Social entrepreneur we will demonstrate a few different networking styles, discussing what has and hasn’t worked for us, and why it can take so long to build a steady client base. The social side will also include how to trace trends in social networks that might lead to business opportunity.

Professional entrepreneur we will discuss the differences between the career ladder in and out of house, how your current project will influence your next move, and how to understand the market needs vs what you have to offer. We will also touch on how to track financial trends in games in order to determine where to look for your next gig.

Life entrepreneur this will cover some regular ‘life lessons’ that touch on self development, in both the creative and technical sides of audio, while nurturing your uniqueness in order to help you find your own voice and marketing angle. We will also discuss family balance, friends and familial sacrifice, and how to avoid burnout.

4:00 - 5:00 I’ve been working in VR Audio all year and all I’ve got to show was Headset Hair and this Panel

Sally Kellaway (Zero Latency), Bonnie Bogovich (Schell Games), Daniel Perry (Owlchemy Labs), Stephan Schutze (Magic Leap)

VIRTUAL REALITY TRACK: 

In this self-moderating panel, a collection of professionals from across the VR/AR/MR scene will explore the experiences they have come across working in the field to date. With a particular focus on the pathway and adaptations that have occurred in the industry in the last year, we will discuss the experience of developing in a development/pre-consumer environment and the current consumer ready environment, and how this movement has impacted on VR audio.  As our panellists work in a range of VR/MR mediums, and developments across Seated, Room Scale, and Free Roam delivery mediums will be explored and contrasted.  Attendees will gain a sense of the challenges they may face, and the successes they may make when working on VR audio.  This panel will provide attendees a balanced view of working in VR Audio and should form a great starting point and series of thoughtful topics for those who already work within these mediums.​

Keynote Address

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