Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524736
C I N E M A A U D I O S O C I E T Y. O R G 39 games. However, games can take years to develop before they are released, regardless of the sound team size. Teams can vary from one person to 40 or more people working to get the game world built with each person on the team focusing on specific tasks or skills. "I specialize in wild sound like gunshots and race cars," Wu said. "I found out early on that I wanted to do too much, but that's a disadvantage. What are you good at? You want to do all those things, but people want to know what you specialize in. Are you a good dialogue editor, or are you a better sound designer? I learned after a few years to specialize in something because then you don't have the competition." The small industry offers a need for personal touch when going into it. "I [received] some good advice; don't use a company name, use your name," advises Wu. "That was good advice from people that know about the business. Use your name. You want to be personal. You want them to call you by your first name. You don't want them to scratch their head because they can't remember you. You got to stand out. It's about knowing people and letting people know who you are." Video games are a continually evolving industry with new games developing regularly and pushing the bar daily. With the addition of VR, sound continues to be pushed to innovative and new perspectives, as Wu experienced working on the VR game Rigs. Ironically, it sometimes requires looking at the past to move forward. "I've gotten into using more ambient sounds or using a lot of mono mics to design my own virtual reality world. Mono is still very, very essential today because I can play those mono sounds all over the space in VR. You have the four channels, and you have to edit in a way where, if you run around, it's going to be consistent from one place to the next place." Whether new or old, the sound team chases the same thing; the perfect three-second clips. "I took it for granted thinking, 'Oh, that's simple.' It's simple for you because you're enjoying it, but for me, I had to experience it," shares Wu when speaking of capturing the perfect three seconds. "You do it again until the right moment and the right intensity happen." Until it is captured like an audio historian. Watson Wu meets Clemson's The Tiger while visiting the college to record for the game Destruction AllStars. Watson Wu and his team record authentic World War 2 firearms for UNITED 1944 by game developer Novarama.