What is a Sound Designer?

March 16, 2018 Michael McLafferty

What is a Sound Designer?

One of the questions that often comes up when I’m asked about Stronghold Audio is:

“What do you actually do?”

I often answer with something like: “I make sound effects for games; you know, all the explosions and gunshots and menu noises and stuff…?”

Most people ‘get it’, but a large majority nod politely or give you the old ‘eyebrow-raise’ of understanding, all the while being none-the-wiser about what a Sound Designer is or does.

So, over the next few blog posts, I’m going to try to explain as best I can what it is I actually do, and how I do it. This may (hopefully) be useful to new sound designers or game audio enthusiasts looking to get started in the industry. It’s not going to be a “how to find work” article I’m afraid, as that subject is an ethereal, floating, mystical creature that eludes even the best of us. But, if you at least get good at the thing you’re trying to get work doing, you’ve got a better chance than most!

‘Press Start’

Imagine booting up a video game; you can literally boot one up while you read this if it helps. Something you’ll often see is some kind of ‘Start’ screen, or what’s often known as the ‘Front End’. This is typically a menu screen where you can start a new game, load a previous save, go into the ‘Options’ menu and all that.

It’s likely this screen has some noises happening while you’re here. Possibly some background music, and as you navigate around the menu, it’s highly likely there’ll be some ‘bleeps and bloops’ (most sound designers hate their work being referred to as ‘bleeps and bloops’ by the way :p) to let you know that you’ve pressed a button, and something has happened.

That is the key function of sound design in a game. To let you know that something happened in the game and to connect you to the outcome of that event or draw your attention to it. The visuals should go a long way (50% of the way perhaps) in telling you what’s going on, but the sound is crucial to filling in that other 50%.

As we mentioned above, the menu will often be better with some UI (User Interface) sounds. These sounds will connect you to the navigation actions you make in the menu. For example: moving up and down, ‘proceed’ and ‘back’ actions (moving backwards and forwards through the menu), any popups or notifications that happen, checking/unchecking boxes, moving sliders, ‘error’ noises or messages. All these actions will often, but not always, require some kind of sound to let the player know what’s going on.

Stylistically, menu or UI sounds can be as simple or as complicated as the design brief requires. There’s some really funky menu systems in games these days that aren’t as simple as just clicking menu options, so you may need to get creative with the implementation (something we’ll cover in a later blog).

So, your menu is making noises; that’s a good start! Quick tip: menu sounds will be heard A LOT throughout the life cycle of the game, so bear in mind the effect that will have on the player. As an example: playing a 3 second air horn sound every time you move up or down in a menu might get annoying after the first 2 times you hear it, so choose your sounds wisely. 😊

“But where do these sounds come from?” some of you may be asking. The actual creation of sounds for a game is something I’ll be digging into with videos and articles so stay tuned for those in the coming months.

Level 1

We’ve made it through the menu and pressed ‘New Game’. Assume that we’ve already made it through the 3-day process of customising our character, and we’re into the first level or perhaps the Tutorial section of the game.

The first question to ask is:

What is happening on the screen that could make noise?

Picture a First-Person Shooter (FPS); what would make a noise if this was real life?

Here’s the scene:

You’ve been projected into the game itself and you are the main character (this is even more possible now with the help of VR). Assess your surroundings, move around and interact with whatever is in reach.

Step forward. Did that make a sound? Probably, right?

What kind of footwear are you wearing? What is the floor surface made from? Is there anything on the floor that you’re stepping on? Debris, leaves, rocks, twigs? What kind of clothes are you wearing? That bulletproof vest with all the grenades and ammo clips attached to it might rattle a bit when you run, or crouch, or jump.

And what about the weapon you’re holding? Let’s say it’s an assault rifle with a reflex sight on it (sweeet). What noises can you make with that weapon? Obvious one is fire the damn thing.

BLAM! (*tinkle*)

Ooh, what was that? You look down at the shell casing that ejected from the rifle and bounced on the floor a few times. And what surface did the shot hit? A concrete wall? A window? A watermelon?

Better reload the rifle, so you release the clip and that falls to the floor (bit of a waste if you only fired one shot, but never mind). You slam the fresh clip into place and pull back on the charging handle (the thing that makes that awesome ‘chk-chk’ sound). Maybe you adjust the sights a bit (because you’re cool like that) and take aim at the second watermelon.

*Pause*

Before we’ve even made it 2 steps in the game, we’ve already made an absolute racket and identified about 10-20 different sounds that we’re going to need to create and implement.

A game can typically have thousands of audio assets (sounds) that need to be created and implemented. Not only that, one ‘event’ (an action that happens in the game) may need multiple variations for one action.

Here’s a test for you: take a pen, or your keys or some coins out of your pocket and drop them on the surface in front of you. Now pick them up and do it again. Did they make exactly the same sound both times? Probably not. To achieve the maximum amount of realism and immersion in a game, this level of variation needs to be balanced with how much time and resources we have. This may mean we end up with 30 different sounds for the same type of footstep, or 100 different explosion sounds. Either this, or we explore creative ways to vary the sounds in the game engine itself (we’ll talk about game engines later as well, don’t worry!).

Pause, Save Game…

To summarise the initial steps of designing sound for a video game, we’ve identified what sounds we need for the Menu, and we’ve taken a peek at the sounds required for the gameplay itself; which may have felt a bit like opening the Ark of The Covenant at this point. If your eyeballs remain un-melted however, we’ll move on to how we go about organising this chaos into a plan and the all-powerful ‘Asset List’ in the next blog.

But the key questions to take away at this point are:

What could possibly make a sound in this game?

What sound would those things make in real life?

I hope this was useful and stay tuned for Part 2: The Asset List coming next time!