Game Audio Network Guild

Being a part of the games industry is about choosing to pursue fun and creativity for a living. On the job or off the job, my favorite part of being a sound designer is the opportunity to pursue new artistic and innovative avenues.

Just off the high of the crunch-time of shipping a game this week, I wasn’t ready to sit back and relax. So instead, I decided to take this weekend and pursue a fun little side project I’ve been thinking about for a while.

As an interesting way of showcasing some of my music and sound design I made a small flash app. It’s a digital representation of my studio that allows you to pan through to see (and hear!) my workspace.

Take a look and let me know what you think. As always I’d love to see what other inspired endeavors the rest of the audio community is up to – so share away!

In the gaming industry the name ‘Garfield’ brings up a whole different image – a battleground of sorcery and divination, and tupperware boxes stacked with rows of playing cards. Richard Garfield is one of the world’s best known game designers. His first game, Magic: The Gathering garnered him a patent on trading card games and the rest is history.

I can personally say that I have been an admirer of his work for as long as I can remember, and even more pleased to admit that I had the opportunity to work with him briefly during a collaborative project he started with my first in-house company Mind Control Software (MCS). 

Recently though, I was surprised to stumble upon a Podcast on his company’s (Three Donkeys ) blog. Spurred on by the recent release of Oasis (2004 IGF Winner) for the iPad, MCS designer Marc LeBlanc and Richard met to discuss game mechanics and touch on a number of older MCS projects.

Here are a couple of segments if you care to take a listen:

• Interview Part 1
• Interview Part 2

If you’re into unique indie games, Oasis and Stomping Grounds are older but their mechanics (and music! Haha) have stood the test of time.

It’s great to hear that Richard appreciates some of my titles, because I am certainly a fan of his!

 triOS College is one of the many institutes in Ontario that has recently begun to offer a Video Game Design and Development program.

With campuses across Ontario, they are major sponsors for many important events promoting technology and interactive media – like Showcase Ontario.

I met their staff earlier at the Vortex Game Competition, and recently I was asked to come and speak to their students.

I prepared a presentation on game audio from a designer/developers perspective – of course focusing on the Indie side of things.

It was great to see a lot of energy and interest from our local up-and-coming game programmers and designers – there were lots of questions, and overall eagerness to get involved.

It was great that the crew at triOS was so eager and open to sharing indie audio perspective with their students.  I’d be happy to go back any time.

I am going to make this post a two-parter. I started by wanting to share the lecture I gave recently at Trios College , a local game design/development institute. However, to contextualize it a bit, I’d like to start by sharing some information on the game development climate in Toronto, Ontario.

Toronto, while not being particularily known as a significant game development hub, has long been home to some wonderful grassroots indie development. Local talent has been fostered and evolved very much under-the-radar. The community is very close, and have started some great initiatives like TOJam and the Artsy Games Incubator.

As of late though, southern Ontario has been best known as the home of the new Ubisoft studio. This isn’t an indie vs. mainstream sort of discussion, actually, I believe that they generally exist symbiotically. The indie scene is thriving on the fringe. Many indie developers have even made it into the spotlight as great examples of innovation, creativity and artistry in interactive media. They do valuable work in expanding the gaming market by appealing to new audiences and demographics. Games are becoming simpler to play, easier to find and cheaper in a lot of cases, or even free. Indie games are helping to shed a new light on games as rich, diverse, artistic and even culturally significant.

I cannot see the Toronto industry being any different. In fact, quite the opposite. The local indie community has sustained itself through many challenges to survive and flourish. While there will be changes, hopefully it will be for the better overall. A group of developers with the propensity to have a bit more character, create things that are a bit different, a bit more interesting, I like to imagine that it might feed into Ubisoft a little.

While it is easy to put off negative expectations for the future of the Toronto gaming industry, some of the impacts of the amount of focus on Ubisoft’s arrival are pretty clear. For example, it is not a stretch to think that a new Toronto graduate, once only given the option of going indie or leaving the area, might now join Ubisoft rather than creating the next great indie game.

That is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s a very good thing for a lot of local game development students. However, without exposure to information on the local indie community they might not realize there is another great choice.

 I will save that topic for the next post on my introduction to Audio Design for Indie Game Developers.

Y'know how TMBG had their regular dial-a-song phone thing, and more recently JoCo pulled off the song-a-week thingamajigger?

Well that is sort of what this is like, except it's not hilarious at all (well maybe a tiny bit sometimes), also it's not a publicity gimmick, also it doesn't have an '-a-' in the middle. 

So, I guess it's completely different short of that it requires regular creativity and dedication. I've dubbed my endeavor "Just for Fun" and it mostly is, but it's also for exploring new composition styles. 

Essentially, I've challenged myself to compose a new song every two weeks. The rules of engagement are as follows:

• It must be composed in less than exactly four hours. 
• It has to be different than my current niche or project. 
• It has to be something fun.
  

I have managed to keep at it since January 1st 2010, and I'm working on my 10th at the moment. It's been an awesome exercise for doing some informal personal development while relaxing and thinking a bit outside-the-box. 

Is there anyone else out there with a little personal project outside their regular work day? If there is, I'd love to hear what you're working on.

If you want to see the silly stuff I've generated, you can take a listen here.

From what I can see on the forums, Toronto has a fun group of GANG members. It also has, as you may have read in my last post, a burgeoning and active indie game development community.

Probably one of the most spectacular testaments to the creativity of this community is the annual Toronto Independent Game Development Jam (fondly dubbed TOJam). For those of you in or near the GTA, it's a can't miss.

What is it? Basically it is a public game making event. Local game makers come out for a crazy 3-day, around-the-clock game making binge. Participants have from 3:00pm Friday to 11:00pm Sunday to complete a good, small game.

This year's event brought out 180 jammers, with 25 additional people working remotely. I was one of four audio designers that attended.

It was interesting to see how other local designers approached the trade. We were all very different in our focus. There was one focused only on SFX, a film musician, a techno/hip-hop composer, and I represented the single-stop, full-spectrum game audio design side of things.

Just to give you a taste of what an Audio Designer can expect there, over the three days my work included sounds/music for six different games:

1. Macabre Mystery Game

• 45s of spooky and suspenseful intro music.
• 90s of chilling ambient game-play music
• 30s of excited revelation music as the mystery unwinds.
• 60s of hilarious 80s sitcom music, muffled through the headphones of a serial killer - and once again in full clarity for the end credits.
• 25 Gory and spooky sounds.

2. Scrolling Shooter Puzzle Game

• 120s of high-energy racing rock music
• 16 Sci-Fi explosive sounds.

3. Psychedelic Deterioration of Your Senses Game

or "The Particle of Infinite Wonder"

• 120s of hippie trance music
• 20s of intro tripping-out ambient soundscape

4. Redneck Missing Fish in a Barrel Game

• 80s Banjo music, deliverance style
• 90s Hillbilly ‘check out my gun' music

5. Hungry Hungry Cats, Nomnomnomnom

• VO endless terrible cat noises

6. Film Noir Game

• 40s Dark and stormy jazz music
• 90s Suspenseful detective jazz music
• 60s Ambient background jazz-fusion drums

 A total of ~15 minutes of music, 40+ SFX and a handful of voice recordings.

As you can see, not only is it a great exercise in speed-audio-design, but it's a chance to work in a wide variety of styles all in one weekend.

This is my first GANG blog, but I’ve been trying my hand at blogging elsewhere for a few years now. I’ll be short on my introduction, but if you’re interested in checking out the blogspace that I use to share news about my games and other career-related things, you can check it out here.

My name is Harry Mack and I love indie game culture. That is not to disparage the bigger, shinier, 3Der mission of the mainstream industry. However, I definitely belong where the hands-on passion, interesting games, and unique industry visionaries are.

I have been in the industry for about ten years, a fifty-fifty split between in-house and out-house (or freelance if that’s too lavatoryesque). I’ve been a pianist for twice that time, with a formal background in music and a little game design education for bonus marks. 

This year’s GDC brought me a fun blast from the past. I’d like to take a moment to use it to highlight some of the stepping stones that originally led me into the indie game world.

Those of you in attendance at the GDC this year may have caught a great little panel titled “What you Need to Know About Casual Games 2010 .” Speakers Nick Fortugno and Juan Gril did an excellent job rapidly reviewing some of the innovative and dominant trends in casual game space over the last year.

Just to clarify, from Nick and Juan’s perspective ‘casual’ game really means ‘super-awesome indie’ game. They shared a lot of insight and perspective into experimental design choices, and it was also a source for leads on some new games to try out.

I enjoyed it so much, that I decided to do some looking back into their presentations at past GDCs. I got quite the surprise when I found out that examples chosen for two of four of the 2009 categories were games that I worked on. Corpse Craft was selected to highlight new themes and mechanics in multiplayer games. To show a trend in the evolution of arcade games they recognized Braid ’s innovation and brilliant level design. 

Even if it took place a year ago, it was nice to see these very creative games getting recognition. If you’re interested in checking  out the session transcript, it is still posted on Gamasutra. 

For me it was a chance to reflect on some of the excellent memories that began my serious love affair with indie games. I mean we flirted before, but those games were the moment where it became really serious. Now that I am completely immersed, I look constantly forward to being one of a sea of participants playing a role in creatively shaping the indie community, both locally and globally.

It would be great to hear from any other game audio designers out there with a similar focus.