Gaming Audio
Gaming Audio is comprised of the work of composers, sound designers, voice artists and audio programmers working together. In addition to traditional music production skills, game audio professionals often work with game engines such as Unreal and Unity using third-party middleware software to manage the audio assets and create adaptive audio environments.
Aside from being a deeply creative artform, video games generate over 90 billion dollars a year in revenue, dwarfing the film, TV and music industries combined. The Interactive Entertainment Industry is vast and encompasses many different computer platforms. Each one has an entirely different way of handling audio and many use proprietary engines. Creating this audio content and making it play seamlessly inside the software can be a massive creative and technical undertaking for sound professionals.
Examples of Great Gaming Audio Engineers
Here are some of the most notable, all time gaming audio engineers.
Ben Prunty
Ben Prunty, sound designer, grew up in Scarborough, Maine. He played in his high school band, and was always interested in composing music using computers, but lacked musical expertise until preparing to compose the FTL soundtrack. He also grew up playing video games and recalls thinking making music for them would be the "coolest job ever". He attended the New England School of Communications for audio engineering and picked up some skills he would put to use later. He later moved to California in hopes of getting into the video game industry, but found work at Google as a datacenter technician until receiving the opportunity to make the FTL soundtrack. Prunty's first real hit was the soundtrack for the 2012 real-time strategy indie game FTL: Faster Than Light. He has also provided music for the following projects: Gravity Ghost, StarCrawlers, Scale, FranknJohn, The Darkside Detective, Into the Breach, Celeste.
Chris Sweetman
Chris Sweetman is known for his work in Crackdown 3 (Video Game) (sound: designer) (pre-production), Star Citizen (Video Game) (additional sound design) (post-production), Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (Video Game) (sound designer: magic), Cuphead (Video Game) (sound designer), Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Video Game) (pre-production sound design), Fortnite (Video Game) (sound designer), Injustice 2 (Video Game) (sound designer: cinematics), Birds Like Us (additional sound designer), Battlefield 1 (Video Game) (additional cinematic sound editor), Mirror's Edge: Catalyst (Video Game) (cinematic sound editor), Paragon (Video Game) (sound designer), Gemini: Heroes Reborn (Video Game) (additional sound design), Lego Dimensions (Video Game) (additional cutscene sound design), Soma (Video Game) (additional sound design), Dirty Bomb (Video Game) (sound designer), Evolve (Video Game) (additional cutscene sound design), Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (Video Game) (additional audio development) just to name a few!
Kyle Fraser
Kyle Fraser is known for his work for 343 Industries and Microsoft Studios. He has worked on such titles as:
- Halo 5: Guardians (Video Game) (sound designer)
- Halo 4 (Video Game) (senior sound designer)
- Fable II (Video Game) (sound designer)
- Lily and Grant (Short) (sound mixer)
Sotaro Tojima
Sotaro Tojima has worked on such titles as:
- Halo 5: Guardians (audio director)
- Halo 4 (audio director)
- Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (sound director)
- Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (sound producer)
- Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1 (sound director) / (sound editor)
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (sound designer) / (sound editor)
- Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (sound editor)
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (sound designer) / (sound editor)
