Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1470109
58 I m ps e . o rg ERIC MARKS MPSE: I'm joined today by the Senior Manager of Dialogue at PlayStation, Leilani Ramirez. Leilani, how did you begin your path toward working in game dialogue? LEILANI RAMIREZ, SENIOR MANAGER OF DIALOGUE AT PLAYSTATION: I was always a fan of music, audio and experimenting with basic recordings when I was really young. I got curious while looking at old album covers, and I noticed that they always listed recording engineers. I was keen on finding out what that was about. With my ethnicity being Asian, Filipino-American specifically, there were never discussions about creative job forms in my family. I had to figure out how to convince my father that a recording engineer still had technical aspects to the job world (laughs). I was moving toward a medical degree, but my curiosity got the best of me, so I researched avenues to find opportunities and came across recording schools. I did my undergrad at Loyola Marymount University in their recording arts program and started to do music and post-production internships while I was there. I started in film and TV, and then I fell into the interactive realm. During the whole internet boom of 2008, people were starting to create businesses on interactive material. I worked with an ESL company that created programs to teach English as a second language, and from there I was guided to a job posting at Electronic Arts in Los Angeles, working as a dialogue designer for the Medal of Honor franchise. My first official title was Medal of Honor: Allied Assault: Breakthrough. From there, I started focusing on dialogue design and supervision for AAA Games, and I've been with PlayStation Studios now for about seven years, and about four years now as a manager with the sound team. EM: What drew you to games in particular? LR: It was funny because I didn't think about games as a career path. All internet companies fell during that massive crash. [laughs] At the ESL company, I was the only audio person, so I was doing dialogue, sound effects, music; I was basically the one- stop-shop for the company. But through my connections and the people I met at that company, they led me to that job posting at EA. My friend said, "Hey, there's a job posting here. It might be something cool, and I honestly didn't think about it. I was like, "Oh, Electronic Arts. All right!" [shrugs] Leilani Ramirez and the PlayStation audio team celebrating their 2018 MPSE Golden Reel Award for God of War