Today we had a guest lecture from Suddi Raval, who is the Audio Manager at TT Games; who are a part of Warner Bro’s, acquired in 2007. Suddi’s lecture talked about his history within the audio industry and then his breakthrough into the games industry and all the other little projects he’s had the pleasure to take part in.
- 5 years in the music industry
- 22 years in video games
- 2 years as a teacher 2007-09
- Short films
- Motion graphics
- Interactive toys
- Various bands
- Radio show
- Monthly magazine column
Suddi first began in the games industry after being approached by the Art Director of Software Creations to work on the Spiderman Separation Anxiety for the SNES. Suddi said that although it was his first time working within that industry, he found the work really exciting as it “felt like [he] was working on an album”. Initially he thought it would be a “cool” project to have as part of his CV, along side his music career, however ended up falling into it as a full time career and has been a part of that industry for 22 years.
I asked Suddi about the different roles typically seen within the sound department of the Games Industry. His main answer was company specific to TT Games, however he said this is typically the format for most companies of this size. The main job roles/titles typically include;
- Junior Sound Designer
- Sound Designer
- Composer
- Voice Over Team
- Front End (Titles, Credits etc)
- User Interface
- Audio Manager
Typically on a project, Suddi would get a ‘design spec’, which would typically include a level breakdown; number of levels, length of time of the project etc. From this information, Suddi looks at the team he has at hand and their skill sets and gives each member a level to work on throughout the year.
Suddi discussed on a project such as LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, each level normally had a group of sound designers working on it at once. The workload would be split between ‘In-game sounds (Spot effects, foley etc)’ and ‘Ambient sounds (Wildtracks, room/environment ambience)’. With both of these roles they would access the sounds from a sound library, CD’s, or they would create them from scratch with either field recordings or in their in house foley recording studio.
Other departments within the sound team such as the VO Team, Front End and UI team have their own specific roles within the game that are outside of the main levels. Within the games industry these are normally specialised roles that have their own dedicated workflow, again a timeline of work to hit certain milestones over the year would be distributed by the Audio Manager.
For myself, this lecture was incredibly interesting and really insightful into an industry that I want to get into. I asked Suddi the question of “What do you believe are the key skills needed for somebody to get into a role within game audio?”. Suddi’s answer confirmed what I already thought was the standard;
- A core understanding of DAWs, show an applied understanding of how they work and also to show knowledge of a wide range of software.
- To understand studio recording techniques (multi track recording, mic placement, different styles of microphones, polar patterns etc)
- To show a keen interest and passion for Game Audio and/or the Games industry.
- To have a demo show reel to showcase your potential; the show reel doesn’t neciserilly have to be a fully audio implemented playable demo. It could be a video of a movie or game play footage stripped down and replace all of the audio with your own work, which can prove your potential and creative drive.
- And to show an understanding of different middleware that can be used within the games industry; essentially just ‘do your research’.
When AP2 is almost complete, I am going to email the video over to Suddi, who said he will be very critical and tear it apart, which is how TT Games work in their “post-mortem” of their games, once it is in the final stages of completion. This will give an honest, yet professional feedback on areas to improve my work.
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