The Essential Guide to Game Audio: The Theory and Practice of Sound for Games is a first of its kind textbook and must-have reference guide for everything you ever wanted to know about sound for games. This book provides a basic overview of game audio, how it has developed over time, and how you can make a career in this industry. Each chapter gives you the background and context you will need to understand the unique workflow associated with interactive media. The practical, easy to understand interactive examples provide hands-on experience applying the concepts in real world situations.
The Game Audio Strategy Guide is a comprehensive text designed to turn both novices and experienced audio designers into technical game audio pros. Providing both a theoretical foundation and practical insights, The Game Audio Strategy Guide offers a thorough look at the tools and methods needed to create industry-quality music and sound design for games. The text is supported by an extensive companion website, featuring numerous practical tutorials and exercises, which allows the reader to gain hands-on experience creating and implementing audio assets for games. The Game Audio Strategy Guide is the essential manual for anyone interested in creating audio for games, inside or outside the classroom.
A comprehensive, practical guide to composing video game music, from acquiring the necessary skills to finding work in the field. Music in video games is often a sophisticated, complex composition that serves to engage the player, set the pace of play, and aid interactivity. Composers of video game music must master an array of specialized skills not taught in the conservatory, including the creation of linear loops, music chunks for horizontal resequencing, and compositional fragments for use within a generative framework. In A Composer's Guide to Game Music, Winifred Phillips—herself an award-winning composer of video game music—provides a comprehensive, practical guide that leads an aspiring video game composer from acquiring the necessary creative skills to understanding the function of music in games to finding work in the field. Musicians and composers may be drawn to game music composition because the game industry is a multibillion-dollar, employment-generating economic powerhouse, but, Phillips writes, the most important qualification for a musician who wants to become a game music composer is a love of video games. Phillips offers detailed coverage of essential topics, including musicianship and composition experience; immersion; musical themes; music and game genres; workflow; working with a development team; linear music; interactive music, both rendered and generative; audio technology, from mixers and preamps to software; and running a business. A Composer's Guide to Game Music offers indispensable guidance for musicians and composers who want to deploy their creativity in a dynamic and growing industry, protect their musical identities while working in a highly technical field, and create great music within the constraints of a new medium.
Design and implement video game sound from beginning to end with this hands-on course in game audio. Music and sound effects speak to players on a deep level, and this book will show you how to design and implement powerful, interactive sound that measurably improves gameplay. If you are a sound designer or composer and want to do more than just create audio elements and hand them over to someone else for insertion into the game, this book is for you. You'll understand the game development process and implement vital audio experiences-not just create music loops or one-off sound effects. The Game Audio Tutorial isn't just a book-you also get a powerful website (www.thegameaudiotutorial.com)
Turn your musical passion into a profitable career with this guide to the business & technical skills you need to succeed in the games industry. Step-by-step instructions lead you through the entire music & sound effects process - from developing the essential skills & purchasing the right equipment to keeping your clients happy.
"Create game audio from the ground up with this comprehensive, multi-faceted resource designed to meet the needs of both beginners and industry professionals. Came Audio Development tackles the complex world of audio by addressing the three major game audio disciplines; music composition, sound effects creation, and dialogue recording. It begins by providing readers with a solid background and history of the discipline and then shows how to coordinate the associated equipment, techniques, and skills to produce effective audio that will enhance the game experience." --Book Jacket.
Turn your musical passion into a profitable career with this essential guide to the business and technical skills you need to succeed in the multi-billion dollar games industry. Step-by-step instructions lead you through the entire music and sound effects process - from developing the essential skills and purchasing the right equipment to keeping your clients happy. Learn everything you need to: Find the jobs. Identify your niche, implement a business and marketing plan that includes a great demo reel, and plug into the established network to find clients. Make the deals. Make the bidding and contract process work for you by knowing the standard industry terminology, understanding how to set fees, and employing non-confrontational negotiating tactics to reach sound agreements that establish acceptable boundaries for change orders, reworks, payment options, and other essentials. Create music and sound effects for games. Master the exacting specifications for composing music and creating sound effects on the various gaming platforms and systems. The companion DVD features audio and cinematic examples, demos of useful sound editing and sequencing programs, and sample business contracts.
Tired of video games in which the sound lags far behind the rest of the user's experience? If so, and if you're ready to do better, you need this forward-looking volume! In these pages, sound artist extraordinaire Alexander Brandon provides a broad-ranging exploration of how game audio is created today and how it should be done in the future in order to create groundbreaking audio. After providing a map of the audio development process in Chapter 1, Alexander discusses the basic preproduction, workflow, production, post-production, and technology issues audio designers must address today. Then, after a post-mortem analysis of the audio development process for a game that's currently on the market, Alexander takes a good, hard look at the heights to which video-game audio can be taken in chapters on ideal workflow, technology, and production. Throughout, the focus is on the practical advice you need to create better (and better!) sound!
Whether trying to land that first big gig or working to perfect the necessary skills to fill a game world with sound, Aaron Marks’ Complete Guide to Game Audio 3rd edition will teach the reader everything they need to know about the audio side of the multi-million dollar video game industry. This book builds upon the success of the second edition with even more expert advice from masters in the field and notes current changes within the growing video game industry. The tools of the trade excerpts will showcase what professionals, like Marty O’Donnell, Richard Jacques and Tom Salta, use to create their work and to help newcomers in the field prepare their own sound studios. Sample contracts are reviewed within the text as well as helpful advice about contractual terms and negotiable points. These sample contracts can also be found as a downloadable zip for the reader’s convenience. Aaron Marks also explores how to set your financial terms and network efficiently along with examples of how projects can go completely awry and achieving the best results in often complicated situations. Aaron Marks’ Complete Guide to Game Audio serves as the ultimate survival guide to navigating an audio career in the video game industry. Key Features New, full color edition with a complete update of information. Added and expanded coverage of field recording for games, creating voiceovers, adaptive and interactive audio and other cutting edge sound creation and implementation techniques used within games. Update/Replacement of interviews. Include interviews/features on international game audio professionals New and expanded interview features from game composers and sound designers of every experience level such as Keith Arem, Bradley Meyer, Christopher Tin and Rodney Gates including many international professionals like Pasi Pitkanen, Henning Nugel and Christos Panayides. Expanded and updated game console coverage of the Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4. Includes new scripting and middleware concepts and techniques and review of powerful tools such as FMOD and Wwise.
The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to PlayStation and Beyond traces the growth of a global phenomenon that has become an integral part of popular culture today. All aspects of video games and gaming culture are covered inside this engaging reference, including the leading video game innovators, the technological advances that made the games of the late 1970s and those of today possible, the corporations that won and lost billions of dollars pursing this lucrative market, arcade culture, as well as the demise of free-standing video consoles and the rise of home-based and hand-held gaming devices. In the United States alone, the video game industry raked in an astonishing $12.5 billion last year, and shows no signs of slowing. Once dismissed as a fleeting fad of the young and frivolous, this booming industry has not only proven its staying power, but promises to continue driving the future of new media and emerging technologies. Today video games have become a limitless and multifaceted medium through which Fortune 50 corporations and Hollywood visionaries alike are reaching broader global audiences and influencing cultural trends at a rate unmatched by any other media.
