The Lay of the Land

The lay of the land


To make it as a sound designer working for a AAA game, it can be seen that you must be multi disciplinary with lots of transferable skills. In this blog post I will discuss the skills currently seen by Sound Designer's and game companies as essential and desirable.

I started off by researching what the ‘lay of the land’ is currently. There are currently lots of roles which provide and create sound for video games. Depending on the size of the studio relates to what role you may have within that team. For example, if you were working as part of a small Indie team, you may see yourself as the sound designer, composer and audio engineer. On the flip side, if you were part of a big AAA studio with multiple teams, you may see yourself only filling a particular role within the larger team. Below is an image from GameSoundCon.com and shows the most common job titles within the industry.

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Now that the potential roles are discussed, I then researched what current sound designers believe are their most important skills. This percentage is broken down into the number of sound designers who agreed that it was an important skill or a skill that they have from a survey produced by GameSoundCon. 

Industry Experience - 69%

Wwise - 63%

Scripting - 48%

Unreal Engine - 41%

Formal Education - 37%

Pro Tools - 38%

Reaper - 31%

FMOD - 24%

Music - 23%

Unity - 23%


Knowing these particular skills help break down what the industry acknowledges as the most important and what the benchmark for getting a potential job. I then researched into current job listings and cross-referenced these skills with what a big games company is asking for. The named example is Creative Assembly looking for a sound designer to join their in-house audio team based in Horsham, UK. The key responsibilities include;

“As a Sound Designer, you will be responsible for creating sound effects using techniques such as location/studio recording,

 

On a day to day basis you will:

Carrying out foley recording in addition to utilising pre-recorded in-house and commercial material

Create, implement, and mix audio content into the game

Use Audiokinetic Wwise, other 3 rd party software and our in-house tools

Ensure sounds are up to AAA standards in quality, creativity and optimisation

 

You will report to the Lead Sound Designer, and ensure that your creative and technical production is in line with the goals and feedback set by the Audio Director, and is consistent with any pre-existing styling and implementations in the project(s)” 

And the Essential and desirable knowledge, skills and experience they are looking for include; 

“Essential

 

In-house games development experience as a 'sound designer' or similar

Proven track record of high-quality sound design, showing creative flair

Experienced at integrating audio in to and mixing game projects

Experience with Wwise audio engine

Pro Tools 9 or above or Reaper experience to advanced level

Must be a pro-active, problem-solver who is highly organized and solution-focused - seeks challenges and delivers results

Ability to work as a team player and under own initiative

Ability to plan, organise and oversee location SFX recording sessions

HND in Sound Engineering (or above) or relevant in-house game audio experience”

 

Desirable

 

A keen interest in and a passion for sound and music in games and other forms of a/v entertainment

Knowledge and familiarity of Total War brand a bonus

Professional location and studio-based sound effects recording experience

Strong ability mixing and tracklay to linear footage.

AAA video game experience

A full clean driving license to be able to attend remote Foley sessions” 

 

It can be seen that the survey information is correct and is in line with what current employers for sound designers are looking for. Now that the skills have been highlighted, I can work towards self-improvement and start to analyse my own strengths and weaknesses. Below is an image which depicts the survey results in line with current job postings, and how I currently sit in relation to them. 

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Using the colour code and numbering system out of 10 allows me to reflect on my own skills, knowledge or experience. Using this I can now start to work forward by improving these areas. First I will start with the red coded areas, Wwise and Industry experience. I plan to use the next few weeks to obtain more knowledge in Wwise and also to see if I can secure any Industry experience or experience which has transferable skills with the current Industry.

Matthew owen