Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538144
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 27 Systems & Implementation "Understanding the context of a moment in-game helps you understand which sounds to focus on, which need more or less complex implementations, and which deserve more or less of your time." Designing for Player Experience When designing interactive audio systems, do you begin with mechanics, player experience, or world-building as your foundation? MK: Player experience, always. Mechanics, world-building, all of it is in support of the player experience. Player experience is king. I tend to think of sounds as falling on a Venn diagram, where the three categories are: Information - Important gameplay feedback the player needs to be able to play the game Immersion - Environmental sounds, background storytelling, things that pull player into the world Emotion - Sounds that contribute to the emotional arc of the experience It's important to note that dialogue and music fall into the three groups above, as well as sound design, and they all contribute to the player experience. Story isn't king in games the way it is in film, it's just one piece of the puzzle. I also think a lot about contexts when working: In any given moment, which of those three categories are most important to the player's experience? Is this a gameplay moment, a story moment, a moment where the player is just allowed to explore and experience the world? I think about this when creating sounds, implementing them, and building systems big or small to play them back. The mechanics of how systems work in the game is obviously an underlying factor in all three, because you have to think about how the sounds will practically be triggered to support the context of a given moment. So that is a consideration when designing as well. Understanding the context of a moment in-game helps you understand which sounds to focus on, which need more or less complex implementations, and which deserve more or less of your time (we never have enough time). Managing Music Systems How do you manage adaptive music and dynamic transitions to keep gameplay experiences seamless and emotionally resonant? MK: There's no one-size-fits-all approach to this, and there are specialists (both individuals and entire teams) in our industry whose entire role is built around answering this specific question. At a high level, it's about figuring out what the player experience needs from the music to best support it, figuring out what hooks and variables you have in gameplay to allow you to trigger and control music in-game, then working with an implementer and a composer to build the music pieces needed to plug into that system. Then you playtest it, refine it, and keep going. This is where having a composer who's a collaborator and willing to participate in the process is a huge benefit. Scalability Across Platforms What's your approach to ensuring implementation scales well across platforms and supports immersive formats like spatial or surround audio? MK: You have to build for this from the start. It's important to know your target platforms as early as possible. If there's uncertainty, which often happens, assume the worst and plan for that. I'd rather build the audio for a game for a minimum spec broad enough to handle any platform than find myself painted into a corner by making decisions that will force a complicated refactor later. Obviously, you can't always get it right, and you will find yourself redoing things anyway. But those moments are challenging and costly in terms of time and money, so you want to try to minimize them. Exclusives are becoming far less frequent in 2025. Even games developed by publishers like Xbox and PlayStation are, at the very least, getting PC releases. Xbox games are appearing on Xbox, PC, Windows and sometimes even Switch and PS5.. Third-party publishers that previously were focused on a platform are now opening up to other platforms to try to achieve the highest sales possible. See Square Enix and their current push Mockup of a basic audio feature's logic flow. The three functions of game sound.