GameAudioBlog

Moving into Game Audio from being a Sound Engineer  wasn't  easy. It took a lot of hours and hard work, I made a tone of mistakes along the way. ( Embarrassingly, m y very first show reel was 6 minutes long!)  I have been  approached  a couple of times now for advice from  people  in similar positions and backgrounds on how I made the transition, courses I did and things I have found out on my journey.  So, I wrote them down! I guess its fair to say its a list of things I wish I knew when I started my journey. It  doesn't  cover Interviews and tests. That will come at a later date.

In this, my second blog post I wanted to continue on form my first and speak about my experiences with  interviews  and tests in game audio coming from a  completely different industry. With the current uncertainty of my former career, the live entertainment industry, my hope is that by sharing some of what I have learnt, others may befit.  ​ Once again, its fair to say it's a list of things I wish I knew when I started getting interviews. 

A friend put me onto this fantastic Unity project  John Lemon's Haunted Jaunt: 3D Beginner . He wanted to use the game for a wwise project and  integrate  his own sound design but  wasn't  sure how to go about it. To help,  I put together this step by step document. I wanted to share it with the game audio community as a way for those wanting to build their portfolios or even those looking to have a little fun!

No sound designer enjoys tagging animations with annoying notifies. There must be another way, right? In this blog I show how, in Unreal, I created a basic procedural foley system for a third person template project completely in blueprints. It works well on a project with only a few animations, but will it work in a game with multiple animations? Absolutely not. It would have to be developed further.

We all know, it can be hard to get into game audio, in all honesty, bloody hard. There are only a handful of jobs out there and a fair few hundred applications. In my opinion, half the battle is standing out. You could have the most incredible showreel out there, but if no one is watching it, it doesn’t matter. So,  I decided to write a blog on resumes (CVs).  I often see folks asking for advice about their resumes, and there are a few common questions that get asked. It pretty much boils down to one question, How do you stand out and be noticed in a sea of applications? Let’s talk about some of the dos and don’t. Firstly, some obvious ones but they still need to be said. Send it as a .pdf not a word doc. as a .pdf. Name it something unique not “CV-1” or “MyResume” more like “YourName_CV”.  Use hyperlink’s, to link to your portfolio and test all links to make sure they work! And now for the big one. One page or two. Truth is there is no wrong answer. Well, that’s not t

  I was 30 years old when I realized I wanted to work in game audio. I had been playing games all my life and the penny had never dropped. The day it did I was playing Rainbow Six Siege, I fired a shotgun, then fired it again, it sounded cool as fuck . From that moment I knew I needed to change career. But didn’t have a clue how to do it. It wasn’t an easy transition, I found myself at dead end after dead end and wanted to give up multiple times. But, after three years I had managed to teach myself/ gain enough knowledge and skills to get a career in the industry. In the three years I asked many of the same questions that get asked by people in similar situations. I wanted to share my answer s so those in the same situation as I can benefit from what I learnt. If you are looking for tips on what software to learn and where to start first I suggest you check out my blog post Post 1. GETTING INTO GAME AUDIO. Starting out. Do you need to re study? You should soak in everything