Now that we’re in the voting mood…have a look at an AnswerGarden that was added to the Pretty Ugly Gamesound Study. Do you agree with the votes in the garden or do you want to suggest some other games?

Best game sound ever… at AnswerGarden.ch.

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

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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.

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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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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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The IEZA framework defines the communication by means of audio in games. Richard van Tol and I published the theory of IEZA in an article on Gamasutra.

Based on our review of literature and repertoire we have formulated a framework that uses an alternate approach to classify game audio: the IEZA framework. The primary purpose is to refine insight in the communication by means of game audio by providing a coherent organization of four domains belonging to two dimensions.

The authors would like to thank Jan IJzermans for his conceptual contribution to IEZA, as well as the feedback to the article.

[Read the article about the IEZA framework at Gamasutra]

[PDF]

Dit is een artikel dat Richard van Tol en ik geschreven hebben voor het symposium eTonaal, dat gehouden werd op 27  juni, 2006. De sprekers discussieerden over muziek en nieuwe media. Mijn lezing ging over de voordelen en eigenschappen van popmuziek in games, terwijl de lezing van Kees Went ging over de nadelen van het gebruik van popmuziek in games. Het artikel dat Richard en ik schreven ging over zowel de voor- als de nadelen. Het is hieronder gearchiveerd, klik op de link hieronder om het te lezen op het mediaplatform Cut-Up.

[Lees het artikel op Cut-up.com]

[Download als PDF]

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In 2006, Richard van Tol and I visited the Game Developers Conference in behalf of the Utrecht School of the Arts. This is an (originally intended as internal) report which contains the developments in the field of game audio, after attending the audio sessions of the GDC ‘06.

Disclaimer: this is an document reporting the state of a rapidly developing field, many facts may be outdated. Mainly intended for “nostalgia” or reference! You can download the original report as PDF (Dutch) or read the article below this line, oftewel het artikel hieronder lezen: (Dutchy stuff has already started)

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