The Secret World of Sound Design unveiled in ‘Sound Designer – The Game’ (2016 update!):

 

Hi Leif, what inspired you to create Sound Designer – The Game?

Well, you know the feeling. You’re standing in, say, a bar and someone asks you what you do. Tell them you’re a film director – people instantly know what you do. Say you’re a musician – bingo, people know what that means, no problem. Now say you’re a sound designer. People just give you that blank, dead stare. It’s frustrating, and I want to change that.
 

So what’s your plan?

My idea is essentially to show the journey of a sound designer – from the humble beginnings, to the holy grail of sound design: The Paying Gig. We’ll obviously sex things up quite a bit to give it that mass appeal.

 
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What’s the plot in Sound Designer – The Game?

The game is divided into two stages. The first stage is a tutorial of sorts – it portrays the beginning of this wonderful journey.
The player starts out as an aspiring sound designer, looking for that big break AKA The Paying Gig. At this stage, the player is presented with a random series of projects that need some sound – we call these Opportunities. It could be a student film, a wedding video or similar.

At this stage, the player is presented with a random series of projects that need some sound – we call these Opportunities.

We want to keep the realism high here, so to get the job done, the player will only be equipped with a selection of sounds from Freesound. The player is then given a fictional project with a pre-rendered video, in a layout that closely mirrors the one you know from ProTools, Cubase, Reaper and similar DAWs.

It’s set up with markers, and the challenge is then to add the appropriate sounds to each marker in the project. We call it the DAW View.
So what would be an appropriate sound? Well, say the bride slips during that wedding video. A slide whistle or similar comical sound effect would be a great choice here. Maybe even add some canned laughter to really take this one to 11 and set the YouTube crowds on fire.

After successfully completing an Opportunity, the player is rewarded with a selection of achievements. These range from the promise of free exposure, a thank-you in the credits list, a link on a website, a project reference for the resume, and/or potential payment if the project ever evolves beyond the hobby stage.

While these are brilliant offers when you’re just starting out, they do make it somewhat hard to sustain even a basic living – so this is where the secondary element comes in. The Funding: The player has the opportunity to use various resources, such as bank loans, taking on a 2nd job – and we also have a bit of a wildcard entitled Call Mom, for when food is running critically low. The player must carefully balance these resources to stay in the game.

Then, at a certain point – again, chosen completely at random – the player moves on to the next stage: The Paying Gig.
 

Ok, to be totally honest, that first stage sounds pretty challenging?

You could say that – but you could also focus on the fact that it’ll only get better from there. And that it’s a learning experience. It all depends on your outlook on life.
 

Fair enough. So I guess things really pick up in that second stage?

You bet! You’ve still got that cool DAW View from the first stage – only this time, we’re mixing it up a bit: To reflect the pressure of looming deadlines, the pre-rendered video will be played back in real-time. Your challenge is to then find and fling appropriate sounds onto the timeline before the clock runs out. To make things even harder, we’ll change the timing of the video at critical points throughout the project – especially towards the end, to really get the pulse racing.

Internally, we refer to this stage as Guitar Hero for sound design.

If you fail, the project will sound terrible and you’re off the project – and if that happens too many times, tough luck, it’s back to the tutorial stage again. Internally, we refer to this stage as Guitar Hero for sound design. I know it sounds fun, and believe me, it’s even more fun in real life.

Now, as a sound designer, those SFX libraries won’t always cut it, and you’ll need to head out to do some field recording to get the sounds you need. This is where the game gets REALLY interesting: The whole perspective changes from that DAW view, to a 1st person view similar to what you see in the Battlefield or Call Of Duty series. We call this mode FPS, or First-Person Sound recordist mode.

In FPS mode, the player is sent on field recording missions around the world, equipped with microphones, recorders, a boom pole etc – the whole package, basically. Once there, the player’s task is to then activate the in-game sound recording mode and stand still for extended periods of time. We’ll be monitoring via the Xbox Kinect to ensure people really don’t move – move just one muscle, bam, your recording is unusable.

Remember I mentioned earlier that we’ll be sexing things up a bit to reach a new audience. So how do we do it? I have one word for you: Combat.

During the periods of trying to stand extremely still at various locations, you’ll encounter a series of enemies, ranging from noisy crowds, annoying birds, sudden bagpipe players – and the toughest of all: Rival field recordists.

You’ll use the gear at your disposal to take them all down: Rycote windshields for projectiles, Zoom H4’s as relatively inexpensive grenades – and boom poles for jousting with other field recordists. You can also set up booby traps and snares using various types of cabling, and for protection, you’ll be using the new Sound Devices 688 as a kind of shield – those things are built like a tank, supposedly by actual tank engineers.

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How about multiplayer – will that be supported?

Yes, we’re planning an add-on called the In-house Position, which sees the player as an in-house game sound designer. Here you’ll compete against other team members in challenges like Middleware – who can learn a new middleware solution the fastest? Every time you get the grips on one of them, a new industry standard comes out.

Compete against other team members in challenges like Middleware – who can learn a new middleware solution the fastest?

Another challenge is that DAW View again, only this time, up to 16 players are working on the same project at once. The final one is asset management, where we simply randomize filenames and metadata whenever we feel like it. Pretty challenging stuff.
 

Do you think this gives a realistic picture of what life is like for a sound designer?

Not really, but since we’re having a blast developing the game, does it really matter? Haha, no it doesn’t.
 

So how far along in the development process are you?

We’ve got the initial stage fleshed out, and the second one is coming along well. However, we really need sounds for the missions – so here’s an invitation to all the sound designers out there: Drop everything you’re doing, come to Norway and help us create sounds for the game. Our funds are pretty tight, so there won’t be any pay, as such. But you’ll get to work with a killer team, there’ll be daily pats on the back for motivation, and oh, quick tip for you: It’ll look stunning on your resume.
 

 

 

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