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30 Post • March 2010 www.postmagazine.com MacPherson leaves an "open window at the very end" of the production cycle to get "last-minute stuff," such as a late roster change, a new rule change, or the rise of a new player. FIFA 10 offers 500 teams and 20,000 players around the world. "It's by far the largest in scope." L U C A S A RT S "The industr y's really growing up and audio's just a huge par t of that," says Dar- ragh O'Farrell, senior manager of audio at LucasAr ts. With 15 years at LucasAr ts, O'- Farrell is amused by how much videogame production has changed. "Now a lot of peo- ple from film and television call me ever y week to try and get in because they see it as such a growth area. There's a lot of work and the quality bar is so high now." Maybe such callers saw Sam Witwer (The Mist, Smallville, Dexter) portray a threatening person of interest in Star Wars:The Force Un- leashed — LucasAr ts' award-winning 2008 game that's proved to be the fastest selling title in the catalog. Saw him? Yes, in recent years LucasAr ts has been exploiting its own facial-perfor- mance-capture technology to use an actor's facial expressions as well as his vocalizations for major roles. So you can see as well as hear a likeness of Witwer in Unleashed and in the sequel (www.lucasarts.com/games/theforce- unleashed2/) to be released later this year. O'Farrell has a past in directing actors — real ones — so it's almost as if videogames' maturing technology is helping him come full circle while making use of the mindboggling effects, animation and 5.1 sound experience available today. Witwer has also provided motion capture and video reference of full- body actions to lend realism to his animated character's motions. LucastAr ts audio pros such as O'Farrell and his cohor t, sound super visor/voice di- rector David Collins, are in business to de- liver a compelling experience to users, but they also labor under arguably the greatest legacy in fantasy/action entertainment. "As a game company," Collins says, "we absolutely hold ourselves to the standards set by Ben Burtt on the sound design front; by George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg on the acting/performance front; and by John Williams — one of the most prolific and well-known com- posers of the 20th Century." Collins has experienced record- ing technology's revolution since he first star ted in film audio, interning on Skywalker Sound's scoring stage. He's worked on big orches- tral recordings for games since 2003 and by late 2007, Collins was back on the Skywalker stage help- ing to record orchestration for The Force Unleashed. "With an orches- tra it really allows you to score the action in a much more subtle way." The team recorded close to two hours of orchestrations and other musi- cal cues for The Force Unleashed. Even more orchestration serves the action in Star Wars: The Old Republic, an MMO prequel game currently in the works. A linear movie may be 90 minutes or two hours, but a good game, Collins says, may be played anywhere from eight to 48 hours. With an MMO, played online with countless competitors, "It just never stops! You want as much music as you possibly can to avoid listener fatigue." Even with a big orchestral recording O'- Farrell and Collins say they sometimes rely on a sample to make an interactive musical piece fit. Collins adds, "Sometimes we'll do big action cues with 85 pieces all at once, but sometimes we'll just have brass play a line or just get orchestral elements so we can mix them separately and plug them in interactively at different times." Freelancer Mark Griskey composed the "Williamsesque" score for The Force Un- leashed and the LucasArts staff includes vet- eran music supervisor/composer Jesse Har- lin; audio lead Brian Tibbets; and sound de- signers Tom Bible and Aaron Brown. Of course, gamers need to feel satisfaction for fighting their way to new levels. In the world of Star Wars games, O'Farrell points out, levels are often represented by action on new planets — and new planets require their own combat themes and sound design to complement their visual variety. As the anti- hero's character in The Force Unleashed pro- gresses from sinister to a more convention- ally heroic, his theme music changes, too. The sound design also changes, becoming more powerful and impactful as a player "lev- els up."The same is true with The Old Republic — progress in sound design and sound ef- fects must intensify toward the highest levels while avoiding coming off as weak at the game's early stages. "At the end of the game you want [the player] to feel like the most powerful Jedi around," Collins says. O'Farrell says in 2009 the LucasArts audio team was amplified by about 17 outside con- tractors acting as composers, voice editors and sound designers in "audio integration." Audio integration is a growing field — cleverly implementing the audio into a game. Within their proprietar y audio inte- gration tool and DAWs such as Pro Tools, LucasAr ts sound designers manipulate audio effects using shrinkwrap software such as Wwise. "I can create my effect, put it in the integration tool, put some realtime properties on it and it can have a slightly dif- ferent impact every time the player pushes the button," Collins says. All must fit into the game's memory: nu- merous exotic weapons; characters' differ- ent footsteps, costumes and surfaces — all with different pitches and random volume variation. Increasingly effects, including re- verb, take place within the integration process, rather than "hard baking" them in advance. This allows more variation — which feels more live, more interactive and more cool — for less memor y overhead. The result is players can do more, it sounds better, and doesn't sound so repetitive. An unexpected reward for Dar th Vader fans playing The Force Unleashed is the per- formance by Matt Sloan, the creator, with Aaron Yonda, of the Chad Vader videos. (That's Darth's underachieving brother who DAPG's Control Room A: The studio provides all types of 5.1 audio post, scoring and voice talent services to game developers. Activision Blizzard's Guitar Hero: World Tour features a motion-captured Ozzy Osbourne. A U D I O Interactive Audio