Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524863
Traditional Workflows istorically, designing sound for AAA games involved an in-house audio team supported by external freelancers and audio post-production studios. This in- house team typically consisted of an audio director, sound designers, technical sound designers, audio programmers, and sometimes a music producer. Not so long ago, sound designers for games focused primarily on designing assets and collaborating with programmers to implement the sounds in the game engine. With the advent of accessible development tools and industry-standard audio middleware like Wwise and FMOD, in-house sound designers began handling sound effects design, implementation, mixing, and building audio systems, embracing more technical roles. As the scope of work done by in-house sound designers has increased to include more complex integration, so has the required knowledge and tool set. Gone are the days when the only software an audio designer needed was a DAW. Today, game audio designers must be able to implement their work in Wwise, integrate it in the game engine using Blueprints or C++, manage bugs in JIRA, and submit work in a source control system like Perforce. Outsourcing to external freelancers and audio production studios remained largely the same until more recently. Sound designers continued to design based on gameplay captures provided by the development team, send WAV files "over the wall" to an in-house team for implementation, and made revisions after testing. How Is This Changing? n recent years, there's been a noticeable shift toward external individuals and studios working directly in game engines alongside in-house teams. Previously, developers were often hesitant to open their game development repositories to external teams due to concerns about security and potential for broken builds. The necessity of remote work during COVID-19 accelerated this transition, forcing teams to integrate remote workers securely into their networks at scale. The last 18 months have also seen significant budget cuts and layoffs across the game industry, with H I 26 M PS E . O R G