What’s the future of Game Audio… at AnswerGarden.ch.

You probably know the Wilhelm Scream. According to the Wilhelm Scream entry on Wikipedia, the sound effect that was recorded in 1951 has been used in about 149 films. A recent example is Inglourious Basterds…but we also find the sound effect cliche in games. The following video shows some of the most common examples of the Wilhelm Scream in movies:

Last week, Creative Heroes released the Helmut Scream, which can be used freely. You’re invited to download and use Wilhelm’s jealous brother in your projects.

Yesterdag Richard and I presented at the Music Summit of Festival of Games in Utrecht. After visiting many international conferences on audio for games, it’s great to meet all the local peers and professionals. At the bottom of this page, you can find a link to the slides and a special link page.

By the way, it was a splashing venue, featuring a truly wonderful performance installation by Matthias Oostrik. See the two pictures below I made before the summit started:

Festival of Games in Ottone

Festival of Games in Ottone

[Download the Slides as PDF]
More information and weblinks at FoG.AudioGames.net

Saturday June 13. Richard van Tol and I will present developments in game music at the Music@Games Summit of the Utrecht Festival of Games. Attending this summit is free, but registration is required.

Continue reading “Lecture at Festival of Games 2009″

My colleage Kees Went and I attended the AES International Conference Audio for Games 2009. We presented a paper about the Game Audio Lab that was developed in 2008 at the Utrecht School of the Arts.

Game Audio Lab: an educational framework for research and design of realtime, nonlinear sound and music design. Photo © Sander Huiberts

Continue reading “Game Audio Lab featured on AES International Conference: Audio for Games 2009″

In 2007, I supervised an internship for the Adaptive Music Systems Research group under Jan IJzermans. The group [1] researched adaptive sound design and composition for games and developed the Adeptive toolkit, which helps composing in nonlinear settings.

To make things clear: we’re not talking about composing a song from the beginning to the end (linear music); the composer makes a large amount of musical ‘cells’ and the system selects new cells based on the rules of the composer (nonlinear music). Such an approach can be highly suitable for games, that mostly have a nonlinear character, as the music is able to correspond with the narrative or the presupposed experience of the player. And at least, we’re preventing the repetitive background track that drives players crazy.

Continue reading “Adaptive music prototyping”

On a regular base, designers and students question where to find general resources on game audio. There are some websites that provide links to articles, papers and other valuable resources that are useful to start with. The list below isn’t meant to be complete and is aimed at helping you to start with finding references. Useful suggestions are welcome at all times, preferably in a comment below.

Guitar player photo by puja

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This post is about an old thesis written in 2002 for the Utrecht School of the Arts, School of Music and Technology.[1] It contains guidelines for the usability of audio-only menus. It’s written in Dutch and I’d like to share some insights that might be useful for designing audio menus or audio games.

In the past years, I’ve designed quite some audio menus for audio games and supervised projects that used audio-only interaction for blind users. Below I share some of my experiences concerning these menus, and include the original recommendations of the thesis.

illustration by zkukkuiz

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PrettyUglyGameSoundStudy (or PUGS) is an experiment to gather as many examples of audio in games that people consider either to be ‘good’ (or ‘pretty’) and ‘bad’ (or ‘ugly’). On one hand we wish to get a better understanding of game audio that people consider to work well in games and on the other we would like to get an overview of (typical) game audio blunders, from which the field can benefit. We hope that eventually this archive can grow out to be an inspiration (as well as the occasional good laugh) for those working in the field of game audio.

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This is a document Richard van Tol and I compiled in 2006 for the GDC’06. If you’re into the experiences of blind gamers, in relation to regular video games, it can be an interesting read. There are no conclusions, it is just a compilation. Feel free to draw your own conclusions…

Continue reading “What blind gamers want the industry to know”