Junior, Intermediate, and Senior Sound Designers - what sorts of skills and qualifications can reasonably be expected and required for each of those roles?
That often depends on whether you're looking to be hired - or you're the one doing the hiring.
Here, seasoned senior sound designer Glenn Gullskjegg Goa shares their personal opinions, expectations, recommendations and lessons learned from both sides of the game audio industry:
When it comes down to hiring in the audio industry, there are probably a dozen or more articles that meander about what you need to be hired. As someone who worked in the audio industry, from the movie business to video games, I thought I would put my own two cents in that slot, especially in the video game industry machine—both from the side that was hired and did the hiring. I hope something new can be gleaned from my ramblings rather than just adding to the white noise.
I should add that these are my own opinions and don’t represent the industry as a whole; you’ll find some game studios tackling this differently. However, these are things I’ve noticed in the 10+ years to be the most common and what I personally look for and expect.
Junior Sound Designers:
Sound Reel:
30 seconds to 1 minute long; Can be sound redesigns of other games (gameplay is a bonus); Can be a scene from a student film; Start with your best work; No music; No long introductions or logos.
- A junior to have worked in the industry. (So an intern then? No, not everyone has the luck to gain a foot in the door that way, so I apply this to both.)
- A junior to understand audio middleware the same way as a senior would, but I expect them to have messed around in there in their free time.
- A junior to have any recording experience. (I mean, it requires you to have money even to try)
- A junior to understand mastering or mixing.
- A junior to have fantastic jaw-dropping audio skills. Just passable.
- A junior to have a passion for games, to the point they mod games and hone their skills through modding. Why? Because that is how I learned game audio and would eventually end up getting me a job. Through modding, you learn limitations and the importance of variations. You learn to let go of things beyond your control, which becomes essential when you work in the industry.
- A junior wanting to learn things and take feedback.
- A junior to have a passion for iteration.
- A junior to not be afraid to ask questions from their seniors.
- A junior to have a basic understanding of what makes good audio.
- A junior to have a good attitude.
My recommendations to Junior Sound Designers:
Don’t expect to master things in the next 10+ years; Don’t worry about doing mistakes; Don’t worry about finding your style yet, that will come naturally; Play lots of games and try to decipher what the sound designers are doing; Start networking with people at your skill level; Don’t worship seniors or say to yourself, “When I can make sounds like them, I am good.”
Intermediate Sound Designers:
Sound Reel:
1 – 2 minutes; Start with your best work; Should contain versions of foley, whooshes, drones, stingers; Should contain gameplay (treated video or actual in-game capture); Can contain a small section in the middle toward the end from a scene in a movie you worked on or redesigned (preferably from a game); No music; No long introductions or logos.
- An intermediate to understand complex creature sound design, but knows how to make general creature sounds.
- An intermediate to have mastered dynamics, but to have a basic understanding.
- An intermediate to have a lot of recording experience, but I do expect some.
- An intermediate to have a huge passion for learning; they listen to podcasts, watch YouTube tutorials, read books about audio, etc.
- An intermediate to have a good understanding of audio middleware, not master-level, but good enough to understand and implement things like side-chaining.
- An intermediate to want originally recorded assets and campaigns for recording sessions. Also, in their spare time, life permitting, they record as much as they can to further hone their craft.
- An intermediate to not be stubborn about plugins, DAWs, or audio middleware.
- An intermediate to have a general understanding of mastering and mixing.
- An intermediate to have a passion for sharing their work and gaining feedback. Being vulnerable is how you learn.
- An intermediate to have a good attitude.
My recommendations to Intermediate Sound Designers:
Listen to podcast; Watch YouTube tutorials; Read books by people that work\worked in the audio industry; Play games and put on movies to listen to and not just watch; Network and talk to other sound designers at your level and higher.
Senior Sound Designers:
Sound Reel:
1 minute and 30 seconds max; Start with your best creature sound design work; Should contain versions of foley, whooshes, drones, stingers; Must have gameplay sections (actual in-game captures you worked on); If you apply for cinematic work, must contain a in-game cinematic or CGI for a game that you worked on; No Sound Redesign (if you have to use that, you are no senior in the game industry); No music; No long introductions or logos.
- A senior to come in with a can-do attitude.
- A senior to debate, but not be argumentative when they don’t get their way, because they have learned to let go.
- A senior to have a great desire to teach when someone asks to learn.
- A senior to not think of themselves as better than their peers just because they have more experience.
- A senior to have mastered dynamics.
- A senior to have a great understanding of mixing and mastering.
- A senior to have a wide knowledge of audio middleware, to the point they can implement new ideas and have good organization skills.
- A senior to have a DAW of choice but willing to learn others.
- A senior to have plugins that are always in their sessions.
- A senior to have favorite microphones and know how to use them.
- A senior to work together with the audio lead as an extension of them and not being a hindrance.
- A senior to represent the best in the audio team.
- A senior to put others before themselves.
- A senior to not point fingers at others when something goes wrong.
- A senior to not care about awards.
- A senior to communicate well within the audio team and other departments.
- A senior to have mastered creature sounds to the point that breathing sounds are more important than anything else, and can explain why.
- A senior to accept that to work in audio means you are always learning.
- A senior to have a favorite video game or movie because of the audio (Why? To show you are paying attention to what others are doing).
- A senior to show their work in progress even when it is ugly.
- A senior to fight against crunch and overtime.
- A senior always to be happy to help, even outside of their department.
- A senior to be strict about themselves and forgiving of others.
My recommendations to Senior Sound Designers:
Listen to sound design/audio podcasts; Read books about game design and other departments outside of audio; Read things like philosophy as it can help center yourself to become a better person because you represent the pinnacle of the audio workforce; Keep a network of people that are not just sound designers, but work in the industry.
Final thoughts:
As you can probably glean, the expectations of a senior are massive, but not so much in the area of audio creation. You can teach a person to create sound and direct them when the creative part is lacking, but you cannot teach a person attitude or good demeanor. That requires self-realization on their part and the willingness to improve their character. I guess this is why I hardly ever hired seniors because most of the people I talked to wanted to be seniors because they thought they deserved to be.
Ego and general narcissism with a dash of nepotism are found everywhere in the game industry, and when it comes from a senior, it can cause an entire department to break. I’ve witnessed juniors and intermediate sound designers misbehaving because the seniors put a bad foot forward.
Like a rotten apple placed within a bushel of good ones, they’ll start to rot.
But you know what I have never seen? A senior with excellent creative skills cause others in the team to have the same design skills by just creating things. Again, a senior is more about their demeanor and attitude and less about that trick they learned.
I don’t consider a sound designer a senior until they have proven they are more interested in building a suitable environment for the intermediates and juniors to thrive in, putting their work before their own.
One could argue that it smells more like an audio lead, which is not entirely wrong. I believe a senior is an extension to the audio lead, except the senior get their hands dirty in the craft.
These were my thoughts.
About Glenn Gullskjegg Goa:
Glenn Gullskjegg Goa is a senior sound designer currently working on Baldur’s Gate 3 with over a decade in game audio. Before, they worked as an Audio Director at Frostburn Studios. Learn more about Glenn Gullskjegg Goa here.