Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/57245
Audio for Games Players often spend a lot of time in their Sims world, which means there is a greater chance of hearing the same sound over and over. To keep the sound from becoming stag- nant, Kauker creates multiple variations of each sound. "Even the simplest sound has several different versions, and the reason for that is immersion. Everything changes. We are constantly evolving everything we can. We do a data-driven environment. The time of day inside the game, what trees you have on your lot, or what's in the world, all drive what ambience you hear. Where your cam- era is changes what you're hearing. All of that allows us to bring you into that world." Kauker also focuses on the emotional aspects of the game as a way to immerse players. Instead of the game telling a story, The Sims strives to let the user tell a story. "Everything we do is within an emotional put the player into the game even more." Over the years, SSX has expanded on what the previous game version could do with music. It started with creating a tool they call Path Finder, which allowed the music to be re-composed, or rearranged, on the fly based on game play. Getting stems for every music track allowed them to remix the tracks using the actual composition elements. "This allowed us to take a part of the verse or chorus or bridge, or any part of a piece of music, and chop it up into stems similar to what GarageBand would do, except on the fly, and that we could tie to game-play action or an event to drive those elements to play- back," says Durity. Durity and Ricardo Almeida, his in-house music director, used a combination of original compositions from hired composers and licensed music tracks. They have a deal with several artists from Ninja Tune to create origi- nal tracks for one mode of SSX called Deadly Descents. "Ricardo worked with the compos- ers and the artists, got the stems for the music, edited the stems, and came up with all the events that the game can drive so they could basically modulate and move the music. Whether it's dropping out the drums or add- ing the drums or going to a new part of the song. We've been doing all that in SSX." The second part of the interactive music EA Sports' SSX allows users to bring their own music into the game. context. Every moment of the game play should be giving you feedback that engages you. Sometimes it's incredibly difficult to find that emotional element, but it's the most rewarding thing when you can take some- thing that seems so simple and turn it into something that makes you feel just slightly better somehow. That is, I think, the high art of sound design, and the high art of game production, taking the things you see every- day and turning them into something you care about and love." SSX The music in the SSX series, an extreme snowboarding line of games, has always played a central role, and it goes way beyond just track selection. The SSX music is interac- tive, controlled by the player's actions. Gor- don Durity, audio director at EA Sports Canada (www.ea.com/ca), looked at how he and his audio team could push the limits of music in the latest SSX game even further. "Here, we've looked at how we can get the music experience for the end user to be bet- ter, adhere to the game play better, and just 34 Post • March 2012 experience came from technology EA Sports used in NHL 2009. It's a tool they call Music Box, and it allowed the user to put their own music into the game. When the music plays back, it actually plays back through the game system, so it can be processed with filters, pan- ning, echo, or other types of manipulation. For example, in NHL 2009 a player could assign a specific song, from their own collec- tion to play when Boston scored a goal at home. The track would sound as if it was coming through the PA system in-game. "It took music to the next level where your music actually plays inside of the game instead of on top of the game," says Durity. "It's not just plastered on there. We can only ship so much music on the disc; it comes down to us deciding for the end user what kind of music they'll get with the game. Most people will play through the game, and listen to the soundtrack, but when you have peo- ple playing for hundreds of hours, no matter how much music you have or how you've adapted it to the game, people are going to want to put their own music in the game." The new SSX doesn't just incorporate the Music Box technology; it goes beyond it by combining it with Path Finder. This created a new tool called Real Time User Music Remixer. The music the end user puts into www.postmagazine.com the game can now be remixed and pro- cessed on the fly, making it reactive to game- play action. "As far as I know this has never really been done on any game title. There was a huge amount of technology that went into this. This is the tip of the iceberg of what we want to do going forward." Durity explains how the Real Time User Music Remixer works: "Like a DJ, it's not necessarily recomposing elements in the song, but it can cut, do reversing and do glitches, but most importantly this tool can actually do beat detection on the fly — which is huge because that's really difficult. When you put your song in the game, it'll check where the beats are, then it'll make loops, trigger loops; it can do things with beats against beats, all matter of filtering, delaying, reverbs and EQing." Just as the music created for SSX will react to game play, the end user's music will do the same. For example, if a player is racing some- one, and they're carving hard right and left, the music will get a filter, or it might pan left and right depending on the player's velocity. If the player is in an avalanche, the sound of the avalanche gets louder and the music gets quieter and more filtered. When the player is grinding on rails, the music will start doing stutter edits and glitches. This all happens to the player's music, on the fly. Fortunately for the audio team of EA Sports Canada, Vancouver, has a lot of local mountains, so they were able to record all the snowboard effects practically right in their backyard. Recording at 24-bit/192kHz, using a six-mic array, with one mic for the front of the board, the back of the board, the boarder's knee, one on the head and two proximity mics to capture the skids and carves, the sound artist captured an unbe- lievably realistic and fat sound. When played back in the studio, Durity was wowed. "It was gorgeous. It felt like you were actually on a snowboard with all the permutations. Of course that would be wonderful for film, but we had to cut it down, and make it work with limited RAM." Once the actual snowboard sounds were established, Durity then enhanced them to make them fit with the over-the-top graphics. He used EQ, distortion and fatteners, and also blended in reverse moose whining sounds, grizzly growls, and cloth ripping sounds to create a sense of speed, reality distortion and a little bit of panic as the player rides over various surfaces. "We have to do all the movie post sound design stuff, but we have the added challenge of having to modu- late that content in realtime, so that it's not static. It's constantly dynamic. We have an in-