Sound Design at Edinburgh Napier University

Category: Video games

  • How Do You Give a Monster a Voice? Matthew Collings on Performance, DSP, and Creature Sound Design

    Matthew Collings

    Every audience knows what a dinosaur sounds like. Dragons roar, aliens snarl and giant monsters shake cinemas with impossibly deep voices. Yet none of these creatures has ever existed. Every sound associated with them has been created from scratch, yet audiences instinctively accept them as real. Creating that illusion is one of the most fascinating challenges in sound design.

    This was the starting point for Matthew Collings’ guest lecture on creature vocalisation and real-time sound design. As an audio programmer at Crotos, the company behind Dehumanizer, Collings explored how advances in digital signal processing are changing the way creature voices are created. The lecture, however, was about much more than a single piece of software. It invited the audience to consider a broader question: how can technology extend creative expression without diminishing the artistic judgement that remains central to sound design?

    Creating convincing creature voices has traditionally been one of the most demanding areas of audio production. Designers layer recordings of animals, manipulate pitch, combine multiple processing techniques and painstakingly synchronise every vocalisation with an animated character. The results can be extraordinary, but they depend upon considerable time, technical expertise and countless creative decisions made after the original recording has taken place.

    To illustrate this established approach, Collings showed a video in which legendary sound designer Ben Burtt described the creation of Chewbacca’s voice for Star Wars. Rather than relying on a single animal recording, Burtt assembled the character’s voice from bears and numerous other animals, selecting each recording because it conveyed a particular emotional quality. Some sounds suggested affection, others frustration, aggression or excitement. Through careful editing and synchronisation, these individual elements became the distinctive voice of a character that had never existed. The example serves as a reminder that audiences respond to emotion and personality as much as acoustic realism.

    Collings argued that this creative principle remains unchanged, even as production workflows evolve. Traditionally, creature voices were assembled through careful editing once recording had finished. Increasingly, however, designers can manipulate voices in real time, hearing the transformed result immediately as they work. Instead of constructing every roar, growl or vocal gesture afterwards, they can shape those sounds during the act of performance itself. Digital signal processing therefore becomes more than a post-production tool. It becomes an expressive instrument, allowing sound design to move beyond editing and towards live creative interaction.

    That shift has implications far beyond creature effects. It changes the relationship between performer, sound designer and technology, bringing them together within a single creative process. The remainder of the lecture explored how real-time processing makes this possible, why it offers advantages over traditional workflows, and what this evolution might mean for the future of sound design in film, games and immersive media.

    If real-time processing changes the way creature voices are produced, what actually makes this approach different from traditional sound design? At first glance, the technology itself seems familiar. Pitch shifting, convolution, granular processing and modulation have all been part of the sound designer’s toolkit for many years. As Collings demonstrated, the real innovation is not the individual processes but the way they can be combined and controlled during a live performance. Instead of waiting until recording has finished, designers can hear the transformed voice immediately and respond to it in the moment.

    This represents a significant departure from established workflows. Traditionally, creature vocalisations have been built through accumulation. Designers layer recordings of animals, manipulate pitch, combine multiple processing techniques and synchronise every sound with an animated performance. The results can be extraordinarily rich and expressive, but they are achieved through careful editing and refinement after the original recording has taken place. Every decision is made retrospectively.

    Collings demonstrated an alternative way of working. Rather than treating the recorded voice as material to be reconstructed later, the performer hears the transformed character immediately while responding to the animation. Every breath, hesitation and change in vocal expression influences the processed sound as it happens. Recording, listening and refinement become part of a continuous creative cycle rather than a sequence of separate production stages.

    Watching this process unfold was particularly revealing. It felt less like observing a conventional editing session and more like watching a musician perform with an unfamiliar instrument. The software undoubtedly transformed the incoming voice, but the character emerged through timing, expression and continual adjustment. Technology extended the performer rather than replacing them.

    The individual processing techniques shown during the lecture each contributed something different to the final result. Pitch shifting altered the apparent scale and physical presence of a creature. Granular processing introduced texture and unpredictability, while convolution blended characteristics borrowed from recordings of the natural world. None of these techniques was presented as a complete solution. Instead, convincing creature voices emerged through the interaction of multiple subtle transformations, all shaped by a responsive vocal performance and careful listening.

    This also explains why recordings from the natural world remain so important. Animal vocalisations contain acoustic qualities that listeners instinctively recognise, even when heavily transformed. Rather than imitating individual species directly, designers borrow elements from familiar sounds and reshape them into voices that feel plausible despite belonging to imaginary creatures. The result is neither entirely natural nor entirely artificial. It occupies a convincing space somewhere between the two.

    Perhaps the most striking aspect of the demonstration was how quickly the technology faded into the background. Audiences do not hear convolution, granular synthesis or pitch shifting. They hear a creature reacting to its environment. For the practitioner, the individual processing modules matter far less than the expressive possibilities they create. The objective is not to showcase sophisticated digital signal processing, but to shape a voice that feels authentic within the fictional world it inhabits.

    By reframing digital signal processing as a creative instrument rather than simply a collection of effects, Collings presented real-time sound design as more than a technical improvement. It represents a different way of thinking about the craft itself, where listening, experimentation and creative judgement become increasingly intertwined with the act of performance.

    The implications of this approach extend well beyond creature vocalisation. Although Collings’ demonstrations centred on monsters and dinosaurs, the underlying principles apply wherever sound must respond dynamically to performance. Film, games and immersive media increasingly require audio that can evolve alongside the action rather than being fixed during post-production. As production workflows become more interactive, sound design is beginning to shift from constructing sounds after the event towards shaping them as creative decisions unfold.

    This evolution also changes the relationship between performer and sound designer. Traditionally, these roles have been separated. An actor delivers a vocal performance, while the sound designer interprets and transforms it later through editing and processing. In Collings’ demonstrations, however, those boundaries became less distinct. The transformed voice could be heard immediately, allowing every vocal gesture to influence the next. Performer, practitioner and software formed part of a continuous dialogue in which listening, adjustment and expression happened simultaneously.

    Watching this process unfold felt surprisingly different from observing a conventional recording session. Rather than painstakingly constructing every vocalisation afterwards, Collings responded to the animation as it played, continually refining the sound in real time. The software functioned as an expressive instrument, yet the musicality came from the person using it. Timing, pacing and emotional intent remained far more influential than any individual processing technique.

    Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the lecture was its emphasis on listening. Numerous processing techniques were demonstrated, but none was presented as a formula for creating convincing creature voices. Instead, expressive results emerged through continual refinement, balancing multiple transformations until the voice felt appropriate for the character and the scene. The demonstrations reinforced a familiar truth within sound design: technical knowledge provides possibilities, but careful listening determines which possibilities are worth pursuing.

    This way of working also encourages a more exploratory creative process. Because ideas can be evaluated immediately, designers are free to experiment with subtle variations in delivery, processing and timing without committing to lengthy post-production workflows. Some ideas will inevitably be discarded, but others may reveal unexpected qualities that would have been difficult to discover through a more linear editing process. Real-time processing therefore supports experimentation not by making creative decisions easier, but by making them easier to explore.

    Looking beyond creature vocalisation, Collings’ demonstrations suggest a broader evolution in the practice of sound design. As digital signal processing becomes increasingly responsive, practitioners are no longer confined to refining performances after recording has ended. They can participate in the creative act itself, shaping sound as it develops while drawing upon the same critical listening, imagination and editorial judgement that have always defined exceptional work. The tools may be changing, but the craft remains firmly rooted in human perception and creative decision-making.

    Although Dehumanizer provided the focus for the demonstrations, the lecture ultimately explored a much broader evolution in sound design practice. Throughout the session, Collings showed that the most effective technology is rarely the most conspicuous. Whether refining a creature’s vocalisation, combining different processing techniques or responding to an animated sequence in real time, the objective remained the same: to create voices that audiences accepted instinctively as part of a believable world.

    One consequence of this approach is that experimentation becomes far more immediate. Presets provide useful starting points, while more advanced controls allow practitioners to shape every aspect of the resulting sound. Instead of investing time constructing complex processing chains before hearing the outcome, designers can move quickly between ideas, evaluating and refining them as they work. The software therefore accelerates exploration without diminishing the value of experience or technical understanding.

    The lecture also reinforced an enduring lesson about creature vocalisation itself. Convincing voices rarely emerge from a single recording or a single processing technique. They develop through the careful interaction of vocal performance, recordings from the natural world, digital signal processing and critical listening. Each contributes something different, but none is sufficient on its own. The illusion succeeds because these elements are brought together in support of character, emotion and storytelling.

    Taken together, Collings’ demonstrations point towards a broader change in the discipline. As real-time processing becomes increasingly sophisticated, the traditional boundaries between recording, editing and performance begin to blur. Sound designers are no longer limited to refining material after a recording session has ended. Increasingly, they are able to shape expressive performances as they unfold, responding directly to performers, animation and narrative in the moment.

    This does not redefine the purpose of sound design, but it does reshape the role of the practitioner. The craft continues to depend upon careful listening, imagination and aesthetic judgement. What is changing is the point at which those skills are applied. Rather than waiting until production has finished, they become part of the performance itself.

    That is perhaps the lecture’s most enduring contribution. Rather than presenting another collection of digital effects, Collings demonstrated how real-time processing is reshaping the practice of sound design while leaving its creative foundations unchanged. If the opening question was how imaginary creatures can sound so believable, the answer lay not in software alone, but in giving sound designers increasingly expressive ways to listen, respond and shape performances as they unfold.

  • How Does Sound Make Virtual Reality Believable? Varun Nair on Presence, Perception, and Designing for Immersion

    Varun Nair

    Why does virtual reality sometimes feel astonishingly real, while other experiences never quite convince us? Advances in display technology have made virtual environments increasingly convincing visually, yet realism depends upon far more than what we see. The sounds that surround us help define where we are, how large a space feels and whether the events unfolding around us seem believable. Even a visually impressive virtual world can lose its sense of presence if the accompanying audio fails to match the experience.

    Varun Nair explored this relationship between sound and perception in his guest lecture on immersive audio and virtual reality. Rather than concentrating solely on the technologies behind virtual reality, he focused on a more fundamental question: what makes people believe that a virtual world is real? His answer was not a single piece of software or hardware, but the careful combination of perceptual cues that allow listeners to interpret an artificial environment as though they were genuinely present within it.

    A simple example illustrates the point. Imagine standing beside a helicopter as its rotors begin to turn. Even without looking directly at the aircraft, the changing pitch, movement and intensity of the sound immediately communicate what is happening. If those acoustic cues fail to match the visual scene, the illusion quickly begins to collapse. The helicopter may still look convincing, but the experience no longer feels authentic. Sound is not simply an accompaniment to the image; it helps establish whether the world itself is believable.

    This relationship becomes even more significant in virtual reality because the listener is no longer observing events from a fixed position. Every movement of the head changes the perspective, and the soundtrack must respond immediately if the illusion is to be maintained. Instead of accompanying a predetermined sequence of images, audio becomes an active part of the experience, continuously adapting to the listener’s actions.

    Sound helps listeners understand where they are, what is happening around them and where their attention should move next. These functions have always been part of effective sound design, but virtual reality places them at the centre of the experience. Spatial relationships that might previously have enhanced realism now become essential for maintaining the illusion that the listener occupies a coherent physical environment.

    This is one reason why binaural audio has become such an important topic in immersive media. By recreating the subtle differences between the sounds arriving at each ear, binaural rendering allows listeners wearing headphones to perceive sound sources as existing around them rather than inside their heads. Yet, as Nair emphasised throughout the lecture, convincing immersion depends upon much more than simply positioning sounds in three-dimensional space.

    Believable virtual worlds are not built from individual technologies. They emerge when every perceptual cue supports the same experience. The challenge for immersive audio is therefore not simply to reproduce sound accurately, but to persuade listeners that the environment surrounding them behaves as a coherent and convincing world.

    The remainder of the lecture explored how this illusion is constructed, why the human brain depends upon multiple acoustic cues rather than any single technology, and what these ideas mean for the future of sound design in virtual reality.

    The idea that immersive audio depends upon many different perceptual cues naturally raises another question. What are those cues, and why does the brain rely on so many of them at once? Popular discussions of virtual reality often reduce three-dimensional audio to binaural rendering, as though placing sounds around the listener is enough to create convincing immersion. Nair argued that this captures only part of the picture. Positioning a sound correctly is important, but convincing listeners that it genuinely belongs within a virtual world requires a much richer combination of acoustic information.

    Binaural audio provides the foundation for this process because it recreates the way sound naturally reaches the ears. Every sound arriving at the listener is subtly shaped by the head, shoulders and outer ears before reaching the eardrum. Over a lifetime, the brain learns to interpret these tiny differences, allowing people to judge whether a sound is above them, behind them or approaching from one side. Virtual reality exploits these learned perceptual cues so that sounds appear to occupy positions within the surrounding environment rather than simply playing through a pair of headphones.

    One of the more surprising points in the lecture was that none of this is particularly new. Researchers have investigated binaural hearing for decades, and commercial implementations existed long before today’s virtual reality headsets. What has changed is the wider technological landscape. Modern processors are now capable of performing the necessary signal processing in real time, while affordable head-mounted displays continuously track the listener’s movements. As a result, ideas that were once largely confined to specialist research have become practical tools for everyday production.

    Yet Nair was equally clear that accurate positioning alone does not create a believable acoustic environment. Standing inside a cathedral, people hear much more than a nearby voice. Reflections from distant walls, the gradual decay of reverberation and subtle changes in tone all contribute to an immediate understanding of the surrounding space. Remove those cues and the voice may still come from the correct direction, yet it no longer feels connected to the environment. A sound can be positioned accurately without ever feeling present.

    This distinction led to one of the lecture’s central ideas: externalisation. Successful spatial audio should persuade listeners that sounds exist outside their heads, occupying the same world as the visual scene. That impression emerges from many different cues working together. Early reflections reveal the boundaries of a room. Reverberation communicates its size and acoustic character. Air absorption subtly alters distant sounds, while Doppler shifts reinforce movement through space. No single cue creates the illusion on its own. Together, however, they allow the listener to accept the environment as a coherent whole.

    Nair also highlighted another element that is easy to overlook because people perform it almost unconsciously: head movement. Humans rarely remain perfectly still while listening. A slight turn of the head provides additional information that helps resolve ambiguities about where a sound is located. This is particularly important when distinguishing between sounds in front of and behind the listener, a challenge that has long accompanied binaural reproduction. By continuously updating the soundtrack as the listener moves, head tracking becomes far more than a technical feature of virtual reality headsets. It mirrors the way people naturally explore the acoustic world, allowing perception itself to become part of the localisation process.

    Many of these mechanisms operate almost entirely beneath conscious awareness. Few listeners actively notice early reflections, frequency-dependent air absorption or subtle changes in reverberation while exploring a virtual environment. Instead, these cues quietly reinforce one another, allowing the brain to construct a coherent interpretation of the surrounding space. Remove one or two and the experience may still appear convincing. Remove several, however, and the illusion begins to weaken, even if listeners cannot explain precisely why.

    Taken together, these ideas challenge one of the most common assumptions about immersive audio. It is tempting to search for a single breakthrough technology capable of making virtual reality sound convincing. Nair suggested that no such shortcut exists. Believable experiences emerge because numerous perceptual cues remain consistent with one another, each reinforcing the listener’s interpretation of the environment. The role of the sound designer is therefore not simply to position sounds accurately, but to ensure that every acoustic detail supports the same perceptual story.

    Seen in this way, immersive audio becomes much more than an exercise in spatialisation. It is an exercise in environmental design, where every decision contributes to the listener’s understanding of the world around them. The objective is not simply to convince people that a sound exists. It is to convince them that the world itself exists.

    Understanding how people perceive space is only part of the challenge. Once those principles are understood, the next question becomes considerably more practical. How should sound designers actually use them? Knowing that reflections, localisation and head movement contribute to immersion does not automatically produce a compelling soundtrack. Technology provides the possibilities; design determines how successfully those possibilities are translated into an experience.

    One of the recurring themes throughout Nair’s lecture was the importance of scale. Although the term is often associated with visual design, he argued that sound is equally responsible for establishing the perceived size of a virtual world. A room may appear life-sized, but if sounds travel too far, decay unnaturally or fail to attenuate in believable ways, the illusion quickly begins to weaken. Listeners may not consciously identify the problem, yet the environment no longer feels internally consistent. Sound and vision must reinforce the same interpretation of the world if presence is to be maintained.

    Nair also distinguished carefully between scale and size. The overall scale of a virtual environment establishes the listener’s relationship with the world, while the apparent size of individual objects determines how those objects should behave acoustically. A mosquito and a passing truck may both move away from the listener, but they do not disappear into the distance in the same way. The truck remains audible over a much greater distance, while the mosquito rapidly fades from perception. These differences are shaped not only by level but also by pitch, frequency content and attenuation. Together, they allow listeners to make surprisingly sophisticated judgements about the physical properties of objects without consciously thinking about them.

    This observation extends well beyond realistic simulations. Sound designers frequently create worlds that bear little resemblance to everyday life, whether they are fantastical landscapes, stylised games or abstract interactive experiences. The objective is therefore not to reproduce reality exactly, but to establish a world whose internal logic remains believable. A listener who believes they are inhabiting the body of a giant should hear the environment differently from someone exploring the same space at the scale of a child. Perception is always relative to the world the experience creates.

    One of the most thought-provoking moments in the lecture came when Nair challenged a common assumption surrounding immersive audio. It is easy to believe that adding a binaural renderer or spatial audio plug-in will automatically transform an ordinary mix into an immersive one. His argument was almost the opposite. These technologies do not replace sound design; they expose it. Spatial audio recreates many of the same perceptual constraints that exist in everyday listening, meaning that weak decisions about balance, distance or attention become more apparent rather than less. Better technology cannot compensate for poor creative judgement.

    That perspective places even greater emphasis on the fundamentals of sound design. Decisions about pitch, dynamics, attenuation and spectral balance continue to shape the listener’s experience, not because virtual reality introduces entirely new principles, but because it allows established principles to influence perception in more direct and immediate ways. Spatial audio therefore broadens the range of creative decisions available to the sound designer rather than replacing established practice. It provides additional ways of communicating meaning, directing attention and shaping emotional response, while relying upon the same careful listening and critical judgement that have always underpinned excellent sound design.

    It also explains why Nair resisted presenting immersive audio as an all-or-nothing proposition. Some elements of a soundtrack benefit greatly from full spatialisation, while others may work more effectively in conventional stereo. Music, interface sounds and other non-diegetic elements all raise creative questions that remain largely unresolved. Rather than prescribing fixed rules, he encouraged sound designers to experiment, allowing the needs of each project to determine how technology should be applied rather than assuming that every sound must be treated in the same way.

    This willingness to experiment reflects the broader stage of development that virtual reality currently occupies. Stereo, surround sound and film mixing each developed their own conventions over decades of experimentation. Virtual reality is still at an earlier stage in that journey. Many of its techniques, workflows and creative conventions remain open questions. For today’s sound designers, that uncertainty represents an opportunity rather than a limitation. Instead of inheriting an established language, they have the opportunity to help create one.

    As the lecture drew to a close, Nair returned to a theme that had quietly connected every part of his discussion. Virtual reality is often presented as a technological revolution, yet its greatest challenges are no longer defined by processing power or display resolution. They concern perception, creativity and the ways in which people make sense of unfamiliar experiences. The technology continues to evolve rapidly, but the language of immersive sound is still being written.

    This places today’s sound designers in an unusual position. Many areas of audio production have inherited decades of established practice. Recording engineers, film mixers and game audio professionals all work within conventions that have gradually matured through years of experimentation and shared experience. Virtual reality offers far fewer certainties. Questions surrounding spatial music, interface sounds, narration, transitions between perspectives and the balance between realism and artistic expression remain active areas of exploration rather than settled practice.

    Nair suggested that this uncertainty should not be viewed as a weakness. It provides an opportunity to rethink long-standing assumptions about how audiences experience sound. Conventional stereo and surround formats are largely designed around listeners who remain outside the action, observing events from a fixed perspective. Virtual reality places the listener inside the experience. They choose where to look, what to investigate and how quickly to move through the environment. Audio therefore becomes less about presenting a carefully controlled sequence of events and more about supporting exploration without overwhelming the listener.

    These ideas also extend beyond entertainment. Training, education and professional simulation all depend upon helping people interpret unfamiliar environments naturally and confidently. The same understanding of attention, localisation and environmental perception that strengthens a virtual world can also improve learning, communication and decision-making wherever immersive experiences are used.

    Another message emerged just as clearly. Progress in immersive audio is unlikely to come from a single technological breakthrough. Better rendering algorithms, more accurate head tracking and increasingly sophisticated hardware will undoubtedly improve future systems, but believable experiences will continue to depend upon thoughtful design. Every new technical capability simply provides another opportunity for sound designers to apply their judgement. Creativity remains the defining ingredient.

    That perspective also reinforces an idea that extends well beyond virtual reality itself. Throughout the history of audio production, advances in technology have repeatedly expanded the possibilities available to practitioners without replacing the need for careful listening. Multitrack recording, digital editing, surround sound and object-based audio all transformed production workflows, yet each ultimately depended upon people deciding how those tools should be used. Immersive media appears to be following the same trajectory. The challenge is not learning a completely new discipline, but applying enduring principles of sound design within a medium that offers new creative possibilities.

    Perhaps this explains why Nair’s lecture felt less like a demonstration of emerging technology and more like a discussion about perception. Virtual reality undoubtedly introduces new tools and workflows, but its success continues to depend upon familiar questions. How do people understand the spaces around them? Which sounds deserve attention? What makes an environment feel coherent enough that listeners stop analysing it and simply accept it as real? These are questions that sound designers have explored for decades. Virtual reality provides a new context in which to ask them.

    The lecture therefore leaves an encouraging conclusion for anyone entering the field. The future of immersive audio will certainly be shaped by advances in computing, displays and signal processing, but it will be shaped just as much by the people who decide how those technologies should be used. As virtual reality continues to mature, its greatest innovations may prove to be neither new algorithms nor new devices, but new ways of making virtual worlds feel believable enough that listeners simply accept them as real.

  • Why Does Game Audio Matter? Professor Lennart Nacke on Playability, Player Experience, and the Psychology of Sound

    Professor Lennart Nacke

    How much would a game change if you turned the sound off?

    Many players might be tempted to answer very little. Graphics dominate marketing campaigns, technical demonstrations and online discussion. Higher resolutions, realistic lighting and increasingly detailed worlds are often presented as the defining characteristics of modern games. Sound, by comparison, can seem almost secondary. It accompanies the experience, but rarely receives the same attention. If forced to prioritise one feature over another, many players would probably choose visual quality long before they chose audio.

    Everyday experience suggests something rather different. Silence a racing game and judging speed suddenly becomes more difficult. Remove the weapon sounds from a first-person shooter and every encounter feels strangely detached from the player’s actions. Eliminate footsteps, environmental ambience or warning cues and even familiar games begin to feel oddly incomplete. The mechanics have not changed. The graphics remain identical. Objectives, controls and level design are exactly as they were before. And yet something fundamental has disappeared. If sound is supposedly one of the least important elements of a game, why does its absence change the experience so profoundly?

    That paradox formed the starting point of Professor Lennart Nacke’s online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University. Drawing on research spanning human-computer interaction, game studies and psychophysiology, Professor Nacke explored a deceptively simple question: what role does sound actually play in the experience of playing a game? At the time of the lecture, he was Research Director of the HCI Games Group and preparing to join the University of Waterloo, where his work continued to investigate player experience, physiological interaction and the design of engaging interactive systems.

    One of the first findings he discussed appeared, at first glance, to reinforce the common assumption that audio matters relatively little. Survey research suggested that players ranked sound below features such as graphics and, perhaps most significantly, playability when asked to identify the most important qualities of a game. Many observers interpreted this as evidence that audio simply was not a priority. Professor Nacke saw something quite different. His question was not whether sound mattered. It was whether players had misunderstood what sound was actually contributing.

    Viewed from that perspective, playability becomes much more than responsive controls or balanced mechanics. It is the continuous conversation between player and game. Every action produces a consequence. Every consequence communicates something back to the player, guiding the next decision. Much of that conversation takes place through sound. A weapon firing, footsteps approaching from behind, an engine changing pitch during acceleration or the subtle cue confirming a successful interaction all provide information that helps players understand both the game world and their own actions within it. Sound does considerably more than create atmosphere. It helps make games playable.

    This also explains why players often underestimate its importance. Rhythm games and audio-only games make sound impossible to ignore, placing it at the centre of the experience. Conventional games achieve almost the opposite effect. Audio works so seamlessly alongside graphics, animation and interaction that its contribution becomes largely invisible. Only when it disappears do players recognise how much guidance it had been providing all along. Feedback becomes less immediate. Decisions become less confident. Successes feel less satisfying, while failures become harder to interpret. Sound is not simply something players hear. It is one of the ways games teach players how to play.

    By the time Professor Nacke moved from the history of game audio towards his own research, the lecture had already shifted onto much firmer ground. The question was no longer whether sound made games more entertaining. It was whether sound quietly underpinned many of the qualities players described as good game design. That possibility led naturally towards psychology, player experience and a series of experiments designed to investigate whether sound changes not only what players hear, but also how they understand and navigate interactive worlds.

    If sound helps make games playable, the next question becomes unavoidable. How does it do that? A racing game does not become easier simply because its engine sounds more realistic, nor does a first-person shooter become more engaging merely through louder explosions. Something more fundamental is taking place. Sound continually provides information that helps players interpret the world around them, anticipate events and judge the consequences of their own actions. Without that information, interaction becomes less certain, even when every visual element remains exactly the same.

    Feedback lies at the heart of this process. Every time players press a button, move a character or perform an action, the game responds. Some responses are visual, others are physical through a controller, and many arrive through sound. Together they form a continuous exchange between player and system. Rather than simply confirming that something has happened, effective feedback helps players understand what happened, why it happened and what they should do next. Viewed in this way, playability becomes inseparable from communication.

    Professor Nacke argued that this relationship between sound and feedback has often been underestimated. Discussions of game audio frequently focus on music, realism or cinematic atmosphere, all of which undoubtedly influence the player’s experience. Yet those aspects represent only part of audio’s contribution. Equally important are the sounds that players rarely think about at all. Footsteps revealing an approaching opponent, the subtle cue confirming that an object has been collected, the changing rhythm of a weapon, the shift in an engine’s pitch or the warning that danger is just beyond the edge of the screen all guide behaviour long before players consciously reflect upon them. The most valuable sounds are often the ones that disappear into the act of playing itself.

    Some games make this communicative role impossible to miss. Rhythm games such as PaRappa the Rapper, Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero and Rock Band place sound at the centre of interaction. Players succeed only by listening carefully and responding with precise timing. Performance is inseparable from audio. Professor Nacke observed that these games introduced a strongly performative dimension in which rhythm, musical timing and vocal control become the mechanics of play rather than decorative additions to it.

    Most conventional games appear very different, yet the distinction is not quite as large as it first seems. Action games, strategy games and multiplayer titles rarely ask players to perform music, but they still depend upon continual interpretation of auditory information. Experienced players often react to sounds almost automatically, recognising threats, opportunities and changing situations without consciously analysing each cue. Learning to play therefore involves learning a game’s sonic language alongside its visual and mechanical systems.

    Audio-only games expose another assumption that many players rarely question. Remove the graphics from most games and many people expect the experience to collapse. Yet audio games communicate entire worlds through hearing alone. Developed partly to improve accessibility for players who cannot rely on conventional visual interfaces, they demonstrate that sound can convey location, movement, interaction and progress with remarkable effectiveness when designed carefully enough. Eliminating graphics does not eliminate gameplay. It simply requires designers to think much more carefully about how information is communicated.

    Taken together, these examples gradually reshape the original question. Earlier, the lecture asked whether sound contributes to playability. By this point, the discussion suggested something stronger. Playability may itself depend upon the quality of communication between player and game, and sound is one of its most important languages. If that proposition is correct, it should also be possible to investigate it scientifically. Professor Nacke’s own research set out to discover whether those ideas could be measured as rigorously as they could be experienced.

    A persuasive theory is only the beginning. Can the contribution of sound actually be measured? It is one thing to argue that players rely upon audio when navigating a virtual world. Demonstrating that relationship through rigorous research is considerably more demanding. Professor Nacke devoted the latter part of his lecture to exactly this challenge, describing an experiment that attempted to move beyond intuition and examine whether sound produces measurable changes in the player experience.

    Rather than relying solely upon interviews or personal opinion, the study combined subjective evaluations with physiological measurement. Participants played Half-Life 2 under different audio conditions while researchers recorded indicators such as heart rate and skin conductance alongside established player experience questionnaires. Bringing these different forms of evidence together reflected a broader ambition within human-computer interaction. If engagement, immersion or enjoyment genuinely change when sound changes, perhaps those differences should be visible not only in what players report afterwards, but also in the body’s physiological responses during play.

    The initial results appeared disappointing. The physiological measures revealed remarkably little difference between the experimental conditions. Heart rate and skin conductance remained far more stable than expected, suggesting that the presence or absence of audio did not produce the clear biological distinctions the researchers had anticipated. Judged solely on those measurements, it would have been tempting to conclude that sound contributed relatively little to the player’s experience.

    The investigation, however, did not end there. When participants described their experiences directly, a rather different picture emerged. Questionnaire responses consistently indicated that sound influenced immersion, enjoyment and the overall quality of play. Players recognised differences that the physiological measurements had failed to capture. Far from undermining the original hypothesis, the contrasting results raised a much more interesting question. The problem may have lain not with the importance of sound, but with the methods used to measure its effects.

    Professor Nacke reflected on several possible explanations. Physiological signals fluctuate for many reasons, many of them unrelated to the specific design features being investigated. More importantly, the experiment averaged measurements across relatively long periods of gameplay. Memorable moments rarely unfold in that way. A sudden enemy encounter, an unexpected sound cue or the brief confirmation that an action has succeeded may last only a fraction of a second. Averaging responses across several minutes risks smoothing away precisely the moments that matter most.

    That observation carries implications extending well beyond this individual study. Human experience is rarely distributed evenly across time. Games are composed of countless moments requiring players to notice, decide and respond. Audio often contributes most powerfully at those precise instants, directing attention, confirming actions or warning of imminent danger. A research method designed to capture overall levels of physiological arousal may therefore overlook the highly localised effects that make sound so valuable during interaction.

    In many ways, this became one of the most revealing aspects of the lecture. Scientific research is often presented as a straightforward progression from hypothesis to confirmation. Professor Nacke instead demonstrated something much closer to the reality of research. Unexpected findings do not necessarily invalidate an idea. Sometimes they expose limitations in the way questions have been framed or measurements have been collected. Negative or ambiguous results become opportunities to design better experiments rather than reasons to abandon promising theories.

    By this point, the discussion had moved well beyond the simple question of whether sound matters. The evidence already suggested that players experience games differently when audio changes. Research was no longer asking whether sound mattered. It had begun asking how games should communicate with their players. That shift naturally pointed towards the future of game audio research, where the challenge is no longer proving that audio influences experience, but understanding which sounds matter most, which forms of feedback guide behaviour most effectively and how interactive systems can communicate with players more clearly, naturally and intelligently.

    By the end of the lecture, the original question had changed almost completely. It no longer seemed particularly interesting to ask whether sound matters in games. Few experienced players would seriously argue that it does not. A more revealing question had emerged instead. How should games communicate with their players? Once viewed through that lens, sound becomes much more than an aesthetic choice. It becomes one of the primary ways interactive systems explain themselves.

    Such a shift carries important consequences for the future of game design. Advances in graphics have often dominated discussions of technological progress, while audio has frequently been treated as a complementary layer added once the visual experience has been established. Professor Nacke’s work suggests that this sequence deserves to be reconsidered. If sound continually guides attention, confirms actions and shapes decision-making, then it should be regarded as part of the interaction itself rather than something applied afterwards to increase realism or atmosphere.

    Sound designers also occupy a rather different position within this way of thinking. Creating convincing effects and emotionally engaging soundtracks remains an essential part of the craft, yet interactive media asks for something more. Every cue becomes part of an ongoing dialogue between player and game. A well-designed sound does not merely create excitement or reinforce mood. It helps players understand where they are, what has changed and how they should respond next. Good game audio therefore succeeds not simply when it sounds impressive, but when it communicates clearly while remaining almost invisible.

    Lessons emerging from game audio extend far beyond entertainment. Interactive systems increasingly shape everyday life, from educational software and medical training to vehicle interfaces, industrial control systems and virtual reality. Each depends upon users making accurate decisions within changing environments. Many of those decisions rely upon information that can be communicated more quickly and more intuitively through sound than through visual displays alone. Games therefore provide an unusually rich environment in which to explore how people receive, interpret and act upon information under constantly changing conditions.

    Equally revealing was Professor Nacke’s willingness to embrace uncertainty. The physiological experiment did not produce the clear confirmation the researchers had hoped for, yet that outcome ultimately opened more interesting questions than it closed. Which sounds matter most? At what moments do they influence behaviour? How should researchers measure effects that may last only fractions of a second? Scientific progress rarely follows a straight line. Careful experiments often reveal that the next question is more valuable than the original answer.

    Looking back to the opening paradox makes that progression easier to appreciate. Players may continue to rank graphics above audio when asked which aspects of a game matter most. Yet the lecture suggests that such judgements overlook the extent to which sound quietly supports many of the qualities they value most. Confident interaction, satisfying feedback, effective learning and a strong sense of presence all depend upon communication between player and system. Much of that communication happens through sound, even when players scarcely notice it.

    Future interactive technologies will make these questions even more important. As games and other digital systems become increasingly adaptive, personalised and intelligent, designers will need to think less about individual sensory channels and more about the complete experience of interaction. Sound will remain one of the fastest, richest and most flexible ways of guiding attention without demanding it. Used thoughtfully, it can inform, reassure, warn, encourage and teach, often within fractions of a second.

    Professor Nacke’s most enduring contribution may be a simple change in perspective. Game audio is not fundamentally about making virtual worlds louder, more cinematic or more realistic. It is about making interaction intelligible. Every carefully designed cue, every subtle confirmation and every moment of auditory feedback helps players understand a world that exists only through continual exchange between person and system. Sound is not simply something games produce. It is one of the ways games reveal themselves to their players, allowing them to understand, navigate and ultimately master the worlds they inhabit.

  • How Do You Make a Game Feel Dangerous? Will Morton on Emotion, Attention, and Designing Sound for the Player

    Will Morton

    How do you make a game feel dangerous?

    A gun can sound enormous and still fail to make a gunfight frightening. Every weapon may have a powerful attack, convincing mechanical detail and an impressive environmental tail, yet the player can remain strangely detached from the danger. Solving that problem may have little to do with redesigning the weapon itself. Bullets pass close to the head. Impacts strike nearby walls with exaggerated force. Brickwork breaks apart, fragments scatter and the environment appears to react violently to the threat. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, game audio designer Will Morton explored how sound can shape emotion, focus attention and guide players through complex interactive experiences. Drawing upon twelve years at Rockstar North, where his work included the Grand Theft Auto series, Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire, followed by the establishment of Solid Audio Works with fellow former Rockstar audio specialist Craig Connor, Morton presented game sound design as a discipline of selection. Thousands of sounds may exist within a game, but their value depends upon knowing which ones matter at any particular moment. Throughout the lecture, one principle repeatedly emerged. A designer must ask not only what a game world should sound like, but what the player needs to hear in order to feel what the game intends them to feel.

    Morton began by placing creative decisions within the realities of AAA game production. Large games are expensive, technically constrained and continually changing. Development rarely follows a fixed design from beginning to end. Features evolve, producers reconsider decisions and new requests arrive late in production. Platform restrictions impose further limits through storage, memory, streaming performance and processing capability. Scale introduces organisational complexity as well. Larger games require larger teams, while experienced creative specialists can find increasing amounts of their time absorbed by scheduling, administration and coordination. Sound design develops inside a moving system of technical, financial and organisational constraints. Success requires more than imagining an ideal soundtrack. Designers must create one capable of surviving years of changing requirements.

    Historical changes in technology have altered the scale of those constraints without eliminating them. Morton recalled Commodore 64 composer Martin Galway fitting numerous sound effects into approximately one kilobyte of memory. Restrictions of that magnitude appear almost comic from the perspective of contemporary production, yet modern open-world games can still leave audio teams fighting for storage and memory. Vastly greater resources are now available, while games simultaneously attempt to represent entire cities, landscapes and fictional worlds. Technological abundance creates new possibilities, but ambition expands alongside it. Designers still have to decide where limited resources will make the greatest contribution.

    Money introduces another set of choices. Sound effects require designers, recording equipment, locations, editing time, libraries, software and continually changing computer systems. Dialogue adds writers, actors, directors, studios, recording staff and extensive editing. Music may involve composition, licensing, performers, orchestras, specialist recording facilities and interactive implementation. Morton’s overview exposed the consequences hidden behind apparently simple creative ambitions. Another recording variation, character voice or interactive music feature consumes time, money, memory and attention that cannot be spent elsewhere.

    Dialogue provided one of the clearest examples of complexity hiding behind familiar production tasks. Morton spent much of his Rockstar career dividing his time between sound design and dialogue before the scale of Grand Theft Auto V led him to work entirely as dialogue supervisor. For story-heavy games, dialogue cannot be treated as a sequence of lines requested by designers and recorded by actors. Repetition needs consideration. Lines must make sense across changing gameplay situations. Story information may unfold over many hours or days of play, while players can interrupt, delay or alter the circumstances in which dialogue occurs. A dialogue designer therefore needs to understand the interactive structure of the game as deeply as the individual performances being recorded.

    Direction presents a related challenge. Experience in film and television can produce excellent performances, yet game dialogue introduces problems absent from linear media. Cutscenes may operate much like conventional scenes, while in-game dialogue can occur within changing gameplay circumstances and across story structures experienced differently by individual players. Directors need more than an ability to elicit compelling performances. Detailed knowledge of the script, game and eventual context of each line becomes essential. A performance recorded in isolation must later remain convincing within circumstances that may not even be visible inside the recording studio.

    Morton also challenged assumptions about professional recording. Technically excellent dialogue can be captured with comparatively modest equipment in a carefully treated space. A suitable microphone, simple accessories and an acoustically controlled room may produce results approaching those of a far more expensive studio. Recording quality, however, forms only one part of a professional session. High-profile performers need confidence that they are participating in a serious production. Environment, organisation and treatment of the actor can influence trust in the project and relationships with agents and management. Professionalism encompasses the experience surrounding a recording alongside the technical quality of the resulting file.

    From these production realities, Morton moved towards the central creative argument of the lecture. Designers can easily assume that everything visible in a game should automatically produce a sound. Faced with an unsounded world, teams begin filling every action with detail. Cars receive engines and collisions. Characters acquire footsteps. Objects gain interactions. Environments fill with ambiences. A technically comprehensive and entirely plausible soundtrack gradually emerges, yet plausibility alone cannot guarantee clarity, excitement or emotional effect.

    Practical concerns provide one reason for restraint. Every additional sound requires creation, editing, implementation, memory and testing. Artistic considerations are even more important. If everything demands attention simultaneously, nothing receives focus. Morton encouraged designers to identify what deserves to be heard and what can remain absent. Important sounds require room to breathe. Dynamics rely upon contrast, while emotional emphasis depends upon moving attention between elements. Silence and omission become active design decisions.

    Player experience consequently takes priority over literal acoustic reconstruction. Real events often sound less dramatic than audiences expect. A gunshot captured from a particular position may seem surprisingly small. A suppressed weapon does not necessarily produce the familiar cinematic whisper audiences have learned to associate with it. A real minigun may collapse into an almost continuous mechanical roar instead of revealing every stage of its operation. Decades of film, television and games have established sonic conventions that now influence how audiences expect objects and events to behave. Designers work within that accumulated perceptual history.

    Morton demonstrated the point by comparing cinematic and real recordings of suppressed firearms. A familiar designed version sounded short, controlled and immediately recognisable, carrying characteristics audiences strongly associate with a silenced weapon. Real recordings behaved quite differently. Neither approach offered a universal answer. Documentary representation might favour acoustic accuracy, while an action game may need immediate recognition, excitement and dramatic satisfaction. Before designing a sound, Morton considers the role accuracy should play, whether an event needs to feel larger than reality and how strongly audience expectations should influence the result.

    Miniguns provided an even clearer illustration. Morton discussed the famous weapon sequence in Predator, where mechanical movement, spinning and other details reinforce the spectacle shown on screen. Real recordings present a very different impression, dominated by the extraordinary density of rapid gunfire. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto V offered further interpretations, each constructing the weapon differently, while Terminator 2 adopted another cinematic approach that remained closer to aspects of the real sound. Comparing them did not reveal a correct minigun. Instead, their differences showed how each design serves the experience of a particular production.

    Reality and relevance are therefore separate considerations. A game designed as escapism may gain little from reproducing everyday acoustic experience with complete fidelity. Players do not always need to hear events from the perspective of ordinary observers. They need a version that communicates the event’s importance within the game. Sound design selects, enlarges, simplifies and reshapes reality according to dramatic purpose.

    Attention can be directed just as effectively through subtraction. Morton used a remotely detonated explosive from Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony to demonstrate how removing surrounding sound can make a single event dominate awareness. Immediately before the explosion, the wider soundtrack recedes and the bomb’s warning becomes the focus. He compared the moment with the seismic charge sequence from Star Wars: Episode II, where a brief interruption in the expected sound field creates anticipation and gives the subsequent event greater impact. Both sequences derive part of their power from absence.

    Focus involves more than increasing the level of an important sound. Every event competes with its surroundings. Removing distractions can achieve more than additional layers, greater loudness or further spectral exaggeration. Presence acquires meaning through contrast with absence. A fraction of a second of reduced activity can prepare an event more effectively than a continuously dense soundtrack.

    Morton’s most revealing example concerned a producer asking for guns to sound more dangerous. Existing weapon sounds already seemed successful to the audio team. They contained convincing mechanical detail, a strong initial attack, substantial body and satisfying environmental tails. Reworking those qualities did not solve the problem. Although the request appeared to concern the sound of the guns, the underlying dissatisfaction was emotional.

    An unexpected experience away from the studio suggested another approach. During a paintball game, Morton found himself sheltering behind structures made from metal oil drums. The paintball markers themselves produced relatively insignificant sounds. Fear came from sudden, violent impacts striking the metal around him. His immediate environment appeared to contract as attention focused upon nearby impacts, resonances and the sense that projectiles were arriving from directions he could not fully control. The weapon itself was not frightening. Being under fire was.

    Recognising that distinction transformed the design problem. Bullet passes became more prominent, with their levels responding more strongly to proximity. Impacts against brick and concrete gained force. Low-frequency energy added physical weight, while debris and crumbling material made the environment appear to react to nearby gunfire. Details that might be acoustically subordinate to a real gunshot were deliberately brought forward. Stronger weapon sounds had never been the answer. Gunfights needed to communicate vulnerability and danger.

    Here Morton identified a broader professional skill. Directors and producers rarely describe every sound problem in acoustic terms. They may ask for something to be louder, bigger, darker, faster or more dangerous while expressing dissatisfaction with an emotional result. Following the literal wording can send a designer towards the wrong solution. Morton argued for interpreting the intention behind the request. Someone asking for a more dangerous gun may actually be asking to feel vulnerable. Once the desired experience becomes clear, the designer can decide which part of the sound world needs to change.

    Creative collaboration therefore requires translation between intention and acoustic action. Sound professionals develop specialised vocabularies for frequency, dynamics, spatial behaviour, envelope and processing. Producers may describe experiences through emotion, imagery or metaphor. Useful information can exist within both forms of language. Professional expertise includes moving between them and identifying the experience concealed inside an apparently vague request.

    Gunfire also demonstrates how game audio operates through systems of cause and consequence. A weapon consists of more than the sound emitted when a trigger is pulled. Projectiles move through space. Near misses pass the player. Bullets strike walls. Debris falls afterwards. Environments respond differently according to material and distance. Danger emerges from relationships between these events. Concentrating exclusively upon the source can leave the wider experience emotionally incomplete.

    Similar systems govern the game mix. Morton described mixing a large game as a potentially overwhelming process involving thousands of assets and potentially hundreds of simultaneous channels, all changing according to gameplay. Exact combinations cannot be predicted in advance as they can within a linear soundtrack. Dialogue, music, ambience, vehicles, weapons, footsteps and environmental interactions combine differently according to player behaviour. Even excellent individual assets can produce an exhausting result when their relationships are poorly controlled.

    Morton recalled playing games whose soundtracks felt like continuous acoustic assault. Constant density can be as tiring as excessive level. When every category remains active and prominent, listeners receive no opportunity for recovery and little indication of where attention belongs. More detail can therefore produce less communication.

    Working with Craig Connor, Morton developed a useful analogy for managing this complexity: approach the game as a music producer approaches a song. Every element needs an appropriate place and enough space around it. The comparison does not imply imposing a static musical mix upon an interactive system. Its value lies in encouraging relational thinking. Sounds acquire meaning through their positions alongside other elements rather than through isolated perfection.

    Arrangement offers another useful parallel. Music producers rarely expect every instrument to occupy the foreground continuously. Parts enter and leave, density changes and contrast creates structure. Individual elements occupy different spectral, spatial and dynamic roles. Interactive audio can apply similar principles while responding continuously to player action, with priority changing according to what the player is doing and what the game needs to communicate.

    Waiting until asset production is complete before attempting a final mix creates serious problems. By the time thousands of sounds have accumulated, assumptions about level, density and priority may already be embedded throughout the project. Assets designed without a meaningful reference mix can prove difficult to reconcile, particularly when each has been created to sound impressive in isolation.

    Morton recommended an iterative alternative. Early in development, designers can choose a small but representative collection of sounds and make them work together convincingly. A useful reference might include something loud, such as a gunshot or explosion, alongside quieter material such as footsteps. Approximate ambience establishes the environmental bed, while dialogue examples can cover a range from quiet speech through ordinary conversation to shouting. Mixing these elements early creates a working scale for everything that follows.

    New assets can then be designed in relation to an existing sonic framework. Designers know roughly where a sound needs to sit and how much space surrounds it. Original reference assets may eventually be replaced, but their early role remains valuable. They establish relationships before growing complexity makes fundamental decisions harder to change.

    Mixing, from this perspective, becomes part of sound design rather than a finishing process. Working without context encourages every gun, vehicle, impact and interaction to become enormous, detailed and impressive. Once combined, they compete. An evolving reference mix permits more varied decisions. Some sounds can remain small. Others can be narrow, distant or restrained. Detail can be reserved for moments when players have enough space to perceive it.

    Focus also connects sound directly to gameplay. Players continually decide where to look, where to move and what to do next. Audio can support those decisions by drawing attention towards useful information or allowing distractions to recede. An approaching threat, important character, changing environment or imminent event may receive temporary priority. Elements contributing little to the current experience can move into the background.

    Informational and emotional focus can coexist. A soundtrack can communicate danger without identifying an enemy’s exact position, or create suspense without explaining precisely what will happen next. Morton’s examples showed how game audio shapes a player’s state of mind while remaining part of the fictional world. Excitement, suspense, drama and humour are designed responses. A weapon feels powerful partly through its sound. An approaching explosion gains anticipation from the quiet preceding it. A gunfight becomes dangerous when incoming fire appears to tear apart the world immediately around the player.

    Realism consequently remains flexible. Effective sounds may preserve recognisable aspects of reality while exaggerating qualities useful to the experience. A weapon can retain enough mechanical identity to remain believable while gaining additional weight. An impact can exceed its real counterpart without feeling inappropriate to the image. A suppressed firearm can satisfy an established cultural expectation even when that expectation differs from literal acoustic reality.

    Morton resisted turning these observations into universal rules. Predator and Terminator 2 can present radically different miniguns while both succeeding on their own terms. A game pursuing realism may demand a different balance from an exaggerated action title. Intimate narrative experiences may use restraint where large-scale spectacle needs greater sonic scale. Designers need to understand what their particular project is asking players to experience.

    Selectivity also shapes resource allocation. No production can pursue every possible recording session, dialogue variation or interactive feature. Large games generate an almost unlimited number of potential tasks while budgets and schedules remain finite. Designers select which events deserve sound, which sounds deserve prominence, which systems justify development time and which details will genuinely improve the experience.

    Morton’s discussion of sound libraries introduced a longer view of professional practice. Building a useful collection of original recordings is expensive, but opportunities to capture interesting material should be taken when possible. A sound recorded today may remain unused for years before finding its purpose. Game audio professionals develop habits of listening beyond individual projects, continually noticing potential material in the world around them.

    His paintball experience represents an even deeper form of professional listening. Morton did not return merely with a useful recording. He had experienced a relationship between threat, proximity and environmental impact that changed how he understood a design problem. Everyday experiences can reveal how attention and emotion respond to sound. Listening professionally involves recognising such relationships as well as collecting interesting timbres.

    Technical constraints and psychological effects remain closely connected throughout Morton’s practice. Memory budgets, recording costs, dialogue systems, asset creation and mixing strategies eventually converge upon one question: what experience is the player having? Sophisticated technology has limited value when it does not support that experience. Conversely, a simple decision such as briefly removing surrounding sound can transform a moment when it directs attention effectively.

    By the end of the lecture, Morton had presented AAA game audio as a discipline balanced between enormous complexity and deliberate restraint. Contemporary designers have access to more memory, processing, channels and real-time synthesis than earlier generations could have imagined. Additional technical capacity, however, does not remove the need to choose. More available sounds do not make more audible sounds desirable. Processing power cannot determine where attention belongs. Larger worlds make focus increasingly important.

    His account also challenged the familiar suggestion that audiences notice game audio only when it fails. Players respond to powerful sound design even when they cannot describe every mechanism behind it. They feel the danger of a gunfight, anticipate an explosion during a sudden moment of quiet and recognise when a world has enough space to breathe. Good audio can elevate games whose code, visuals and other systems already represent enormous investment. Its contribution reaches far beyond correcting problems. Sound helps determine the emotional character of the experience.

    Morton’s lecture ultimately revealed game sound design as the management of attention through an interactive world. Designers decide when reality should be preserved and when expectation should take priority. Silence can become more powerful than another layer. A producer’s request needs to be interpreted through the emotion it seeks to achieve. A gun may already sound excellent while the gunfight surrounding it remains ineffective. Thousands of assets can exist within a game, yet the success of the soundtrack depends upon knowing which ones deserve attention at a particular moment.

    Perhaps the most important question is simply what the player needs to hear now. Sometimes the answer is a spectacular weapon. At another moment, it is the violent impact of a projectile against the wall beside them. Elsewhere, a quiet footstep, distant ambience or line of dialogue needs enough space to be understood. Occasionally, almost everything should disappear. Game audio becomes powerful when sound shapes experience rather than catalogues events. A virtual world may contain thousands of possible sounds. The art lies in choosing the ones that make the player feel something.

  • How Do You Design the Sound of a Blockbuster Game? Michael Caisley on Creativity, Recording, and Crafting the Sound of Call of Duty

    Michael Caisley

    How do you design the sound of a blockbuster game?

    Modern video games are built from extraordinarily complex systems. Artificial intelligence, physics, animation, graphics and networking all operate simultaneously to create worlds that respond continuously to the player’s decisions. Sound design must function within that same complexity. Unlike film, where every frame is predetermined, game audio unfolds differently every time someone plays. Thousands of individual sounds interact dynamically, responding to changing environments, player behaviour and gameplay events without losing clarity or dramatic impact. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, Michael Caisley drew upon his experience as Senior Sound Designer on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare to explore how one of the industry’s largest productions approached this challenge. Throughout the session, one principle emerged repeatedly. Great game audio is designed as a complete system rather than a collection of individual sound effects.

    This philosophy shaped every stage of the project’s development. Rather than asking how individual weapons, footsteps or explosions should sound, the audio team began with a broader question. How should the player experience the world? Every recording, editing decision and implementation technique ultimately served that objective. Sound design therefore became an exercise in shaping perception rather than simply producing assets. Individual recordings remained important, though their true value emerged only through the relationships they formed with every other element of the soundtrack. The player never experiences sounds in isolation. They experience an acoustic world.

    Caisley explained that this perspective influenced one of the team’s earliest decisions. Although Call of Duty already possessed an established sonic identity developed across multiple successful titles, the audio team resisted the temptation simply to inherit those conventions. Instead, they treated Advanced Warfare as an opportunity to rethink the game’s entire sound philosophy from first principles. Existing assets, familiar production techniques and long-standing implementation methods were all reconsidered. Their ambition was not to reject the past, but to ensure that every creative decision continued to serve the experience they wanted players to have. Innovation therefore emerged through careful questioning rather than change for its own sake.

    That philosophy also transformed the relationship between sound design and implementation. In many production pipelines, sound designers create assets that are later integrated into the game by other specialists. Caisley described a markedly different approach. Sound designers remained responsible for implementation inside the game itself, allowing them to shape how recordings behaved once they became part of the interactive experience. The timing of a sound, the circumstances under which it played, the way it interacted with other events and its contribution to the overall mix all became part of the design process. Creating an excellent recording represented only the beginning. The player’s experience ultimately depended upon how successfully that recording functioned within the wider system. Implementation was therefore not separate from sound design. It was an essential part of it.

    The same systems-oriented thinking naturally extended to recording. Rather than relying primarily upon commercial sound libraries, the team invested heavily in producing original recordings specifically for the game. Specialist libraries remained valuable resources, particularly carefully curated collections produced by experienced field recordists, though Caisley consistently argued that original recording provides opportunities to discover sounds that nobody else possesses. More importantly, recording becomes a creative process rather than simply a method of gathering raw material. Unexpected textures, unusual perspectives and subtle acoustic details often emerge only when designers capture sounds for themselves. Distinctive game audio begins long before editing or implementation. It begins with listening carefully to the world.

    One particularly revealing example involved footsteps. Traditional Foley often records isolated footsteps on carefully prepared surfaces inside controlled studio environments. Caisley questioned whether this approach remained appropriate for a first-person game in which movement is experienced continuously through the player rather than observed from an external viewpoint. Instead, the team carried lightweight portable recorders into forests, hillsides and outdoor locations, capturing complete performances that naturally progressed from walking to running and sprinting. Rather than constructing movement artificially from disconnected recordings, they captured the changing rhythm, effort and momentum that emerge naturally when people move through real environments. The resulting recordings felt noticeably more convincing, illustrating that authenticity sometimes depends less upon technical precision than upon preserving the natural behaviour of the performer.

    The recording equipment itself reflected the same practical philosophy. Caisley encouraged students not to become preoccupied with expensive technology at the expense of creative opportunity. Much of the team’s field recording relied upon compact portable recorders that could be deployed quickly whenever an interesting sound presented itself. Mounted directly onto lightweight boom poles, these systems reduced handling noise while allowing recording sessions to remain flexible and spontaneous. The lesson extended far beyond the specific equipment being used. Interesting sounds rarely arrive when it is convenient to record them. Designers therefore benefit from tools that allow them to respond immediately rather than waiting for ideal conditions or elaborate recording setups. Creativity, he suggested, often rewards preparedness more than perfection.

    The same willingness to question established practice shaped the recording of weapons. Rather than organising one large recording session intended to capture every firearm in a single location, the team divided the work across numerous smaller sessions. This approach simplified logistics, though its greatest benefit proved creative rather than organisational. Each session could be reviewed afterwards, allowing the team to identify opportunities for improvement before returning to record additional material. Different environments also introduced naturally varying acoustic characteristics, providing a richer collection of perspectives than a single location could have offered. Recording therefore became an iterative process in which every session informed the next. The objective was not simply to accumulate material, but to refine the sonic identity of the game through continual experimentation.

    Perhaps the most important lesson from this stage of the lecture concerned the relationship between individual sounds and the finished player experience. Caisley observed that players rarely remember isolated recordings. They remember moments. The impact of those moments depends upon countless design decisions working together, from recording and editing through implementation, mixing and gameplay design. The audio team’s objective was therefore never to create the loudest explosion or the most detailed weapon recording. It was to build a soundtrack in which every element supported the player’s understanding of the world. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare consequently adopted a more dynamic approach to mixing, allowing important sounds to occupy the foreground while leaving space for the rest of the soundtrack to breathe. Restraint became every bit as valuable as spectacle. The most memorable moments did not emerge from individual sound effects alone. They emerged from a coherent acoustic world in which every element strengthened the player’s belief that the environment around them was responsive, believable and alive.

    Having established the technical foundations of the project, Caisley turned towards the creative decisions that ultimately give a game its identity. Recording and implementation provide the raw materials, though they do not determine how a player experiences a moment. That depends upon judgement. Throughout the remainder of the session, he returned repeatedly to an idea that sounds deceptively simple but lies at the heart of professional sound design. Every sound reflects a design decision. The role of the sound designer is not merely to create convincing audio, but to decide what deserves to be heard, when it should be heard and, just as importantly, what should remain absent.

    This philosophy shaped the way Caisley approached almost every design problem. Instead of searching immediately for the perfect recording, he preferred to build what he described as palettes of possibilities. Families of related sounds sharing particular textures, movements and tonal characteristics were assembled through recording, processing and experimentation. Organic recordings of motors, impacts, machinery and environmental sounds were manipulated repeatedly, gradually forming a collection of materials from which the final design could emerge. Creativity therefore developed through exploration instead of beginning with a predetermined solution. Designers rarely know exactly what they are searching for at the start of a project. They discover it by experimenting until unexpected relationships begin to reveal themselves.

    His workflow reflected the same exploratory mindset. Projects often began in apparent disorder, with sounds accumulating rapidly as multiple ideas were investigated simultaneously. Immediate organisation was deliberately given lower priority than experimentation. Once a broad range of possibilities had been created, the process shifted towards careful refinement. Caisley compared this approach to sculpting. A sculptor begins with a block of material and gradually removes everything that does not belong until the final form becomes visible. Sound design, he suggested, often develops in exactly the same way. Instead of continually asking what should be added, designers should also ask what can be removed.

    This idea challenges one of the most common assumptions made by new sound designers. Richer sound does not necessarily result from adding more layers. As recordings accumulate, frequency masking increases, textures become crowded and important details begin to disappear. Caisley described repeatedly muting, removing and simplifying elements until only those making a genuine contribution remained. Equalisation, dynamics processing, timing adjustments and careful layering all supported this process, though none represented the objective in itself. Their purpose was to improve clarity, strengthen communication and ensure that every remaining sound justified its place within the mix. Professional sound design therefore depends less upon the quantity of material than upon the quality of the decisions shaping it.

    A particularly memorable example came from a sequence in which the player escapes across a glass roof before an ally destroys the structure beneath pursuing enemies. The obvious solution might appear to involve recording increasingly dramatic glass impacts before combining them into one spectacular crash. Caisley approached the problem very differently. The event was divided into a sequence of distinct dramatic stages. Initial bullet impacts, subtle structural weakening, growing instability and the final collapse each received their own carefully judged sonic treatment. Texture, pacing and silence changed gradually as the scene unfolded, allowing players to follow the progression of the collapse as a connected series of events rather than experiencing a single overwhelming burst of noise. The sequence derived its dramatic impact from the way the sound evolved over time, allowing the narrative of the scene to unfold naturally through listening as well as through the visuals.

    The same attention to dramatic pacing shaped Caisley’s approach to synchronisation. Students often assume that every visible action should be matched precisely by an accompanying sound. Professional practice, he suggested, is considerably more nuanced. Delaying one sound slightly, allowing another to emerge first or simplifying an otherwise crowded moment can produce a stronger dramatic effect than strict synchronisation alone. Rhythm, pacing, expectation and contrast all become compositional tools that guide the player’s attention. Instead of following every visual event mechanically, sound design helps determine what players notice, what they anticipate and how they interpret the unfolding action. Games therefore rely upon many of the same principles of dramatic storytelling found in music and cinema, while remaining responsive to player interaction.

    Equally revealing was Caisley’s discussion of realism. Throughout the lecture, he challenged the assumption that authentic sound must originate from authentic sources. Recording larger explosions does not necessarily produce better explosions, nor does striking more metal automatically create more convincing mechanical impacts. Professional sound designers routinely combine recordings whose original sources bear little resemblance to the finished result. Environmental ambiences, machinery, organic textures and countless unexpected recordings may all contribute qualities that literal recording alone cannot provide. What ultimately matters is not the origin of the sound, but whether it supports the player’s perception of the world. Believability depends upon the finished experience rather than literal accuracy.

    Technical processing formed part of this broader creative process rather than existing as an end in itself. Equalisation, compression, distortion and other processing tools undoubtedly shape the final soundtrack, though Caisley resisted presenting them as universal recipes. Every adjustment served a specific purpose within the wider composition. Heavy compression might transform an otherwise unremarkable recording into the perfect supporting layer. Subtle timing adjustments could reveal details previously hidden within the mix. Equalisation often preserved recordings that might otherwise have been discarded. Considered individually, many processed sounds appeared incomplete or even unattractive. Their value emerged only through their relationship with every other element. As throughout the lecture, the emphasis remained firmly upon systems rather than isolated sounds.

    Towards the end of the session, Caisley reflected upon the qualities that distinguish successful sound designers from merely competent technicians. Technical expertise undoubtedly matters, though he argued that curiosity, collaboration and the willingness to accept constructive criticism exert a far greater influence over long-term professional development. Working alongside experienced colleagues continually challenges assumptions and exposes designers to alternative ways of thinking. Equally valuable is the habit of listening analytically to other people’s work. Rather than deciding whether an entire game succeeds or fails, Caisley encouraged students to identify individual moments that demonstrate particularly thoughtful creative decisions. Examining one successful interaction in depth often teaches far more than making broad judgements about an entire soundtrack. Developing as a sound designer therefore depends as much upon careful listening as upon creating new sounds.

    Taken together, Caisley’s presentation revealed that blockbuster game audio is built as much through judgement as through technology. Recording, editing, implementation and mixing undoubtedly provide the necessary tools, though those tools acquire meaning only through the decisions that shape them. Every sound exists in relation to every other sound, every moment contributes to a larger dramatic experience and every creative choice influences how players understand the world around them. Sound design is not the art of creating more sound, but of making better decisions. Technology provides the tools. Careful listening, thoughtful judgement and an understanding of human perception transform those tools into interactive experiences that players instinctively accept as real.

  • How Much Sound Does a Game Really Need? Gaetan Troutet on Casual Games, Creative Restraint, and Designing for the Real World

    Gaetan Troutet

    How much sound does a game really need?

    Most players never notice the sounds that have been deliberately left out of a game. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, Gaetan Troutet suggested that this is often the hallmark of successful sound design. Creating an effective soundtrack is rarely about filling every moment with audio. It is about deciding what genuinely deserves to be heard. Drawing upon his work developing casual games for Global Eagle Entertainment, he demonstrated how technical limitations, player behaviour and careful editorial judgement shape almost every creative decision. A single principle underpinned the discussion. Successful sound design depends as much upon restraint as invention.

    The environment in which Troutet’s games are played makes these decisions particularly demanding. Unlike many commercial titles developed for dedicated gaming hardware, his work must function across a diverse collection of in-flight entertainment systems installed on aircraft across the world. Some platforms provide comparatively modern hardware with generous storage and processing resources. Others continue to rely upon considerably older systems whose limited memory and bandwidth require soundtracks to be simplified before they can be deployed. The same game may therefore exist in several different technical versions, each shaped by the capabilities of the hardware on which it will eventually run. Even then, the hardware represents only part of the challenge. Every passenger experiences the soundtrack differently. Some use the headphones supplied by the airline, others connect their own, while many later encounter the same games on mobile devices with entirely different loudspeakers. Unlike a cinema or recording studio, there is no single reference listening environment. Troutet suggested that professional sound designers should accept this uncertainty rather than attempting to eliminate it. The objective is not to produce a soundtrack that sounds perfect under ideal conditions. It is to create one that continues to communicate effectively wherever it is heard.

    Although the lecture centred upon casual games, the questions Troutet raised apply to sound design far more generally. Every project exists within practical constraints, whether they involve memory budgets, processing power, production schedules or playback systems. Rather than viewing these restrictions as obstacles to creativity, Troutet argued that they often encourage clearer thinking. Once every sound occupies valuable storage, competes for the listener’s attention and requires implementation within a functioning game, designers become far more selective about what truly matters. Working as the sole audio practitioner within his development team reinforces that perspective. Troutet moves continually between creating sound effects, composing music, recording dialogue, implementing assets and collaborating with programmers and designers. Rather than treating these activities as separate disciplines, he presented them as interconnected parts of a single design process. Creative decisions influence implementation, technical limitations shape artistic choices and production realities affect every stage of development. Sound design therefore becomes inseparable from the wider process of building the game itself.

    One of the most thought-provoking moments in the lecture centred upon what appears to be a deceptively simple question. When a player performs an action, should that action always produce a sound? Many beginning designers instinctively answer yes. Buttons receive clicks. Menus receive confirmation tones. Every movement, selection, reward and transition appears to justify another layer of feedback. Troutet challenged this assumption directly. Rather than asking which sounds could be added, he encouraged students to ask which sounds genuinely improved the experience. Every additional sound competes for the listener’s attention. Every new cue alters the perceived importance of those surrounding it. Audio that initially appears informative can rapidly become repetitive, distracting or simply exhausting when heard hundreds of times during repeated play. Casual games make this question particularly important. Players often return to them repeatedly in relatively short sessions. Sounds that seem satisfying during the first few minutes may become irritating after dozens of repetitions. Troutet therefore described restraint as an active design decision rather than the absence of creativity. Silence is not an empty space waiting to be filled. It forms part of the overall balance of the soundtrack. Choosing not to add a sound may ultimately improve clarity far more than creating another effect.

    These same principles become particularly apparent in interface design, where audio functions less as decoration than as communication. Troutet encouraged students to think of interface sounds as messages directed towards the player rather than ornamental additions to menus and buttons. A confirmation tone, warning signal or navigation sound should communicate its purpose immediately, allowing players to understand what has happened without continually consulting the screen. One particularly memorable suggestion involved imagining the interface without any graphics at all. If a player were blindfolded and heard only the sounds, could they still distinguish success from failure, confirmation from cancellation, or navigation from selection? If the answer is yes, then the sounds are performing a genuine communicative role. If not, making them louder or more elaborate is unlikely to solve the underlying problem. Rather than treating interface sounds as decorative clicks or beeps, Troutet encouraged students to think of them almost as a spoken language. Every sound should communicate intention. Players should recognise whether an action has succeeded, failed or requires further input without consciously analysing what they have heard. Well-designed interface audio reduces cognitive effort. The player understands first and reflects afterwards. In this sense, interface sounds become part of the conversation between the game and the player rather than simply another layer of feedback.

    The same philosophy shaped Troutet’s approach to creating collections of related sounds. Rather than treating every effect as an independent recording selected from unrelated libraries, he described building what he called families of sounds. Interface elements, gameplay feedback and recurring actions share common characteristics, creating a recognisable sonic vocabulary throughout the game. Individual sounds may differ substantially in pitch, duration or function, though they continue to feel as though they belong together. Players may never consciously analyse these relationships, yet they often perceive the overall soundtrack as more coherent and easier to understand. Creating these relationships frequently meant recording original material rather than relying exclusively upon commercial sound libraries. Library recordings remain valuable resources, though bespoke recordings provide greater flexibility when developing a consistent sonic identity. Variations can be created from common source material, preserving subtle similarities that would be difficult to achieve using unrelated recordings gathered from multiple collections. The objective is not originality for its own sake. It is to ensure that every sound contributes towards a coherent listening experience rather than drawing attention to itself as an isolated event.

    Troutet consistently returned to the relationship between player experience and design judgement. Recording equipment, software and implementation techniques remained important, though they were never presented as ends in themselves. Every technical decision ultimately served the same objective: helping players understand, navigate and enjoy the game. Sound design therefore became an exercise in editorial judgement rather than accumulation. The important question was no longer how another sound might be added, but whether that moment genuinely deserved sound at all. Once that decision becomes the starting point, implementation, iteration and refinement begin to look rather different, forming the focus of the remainder of the lecture.

    Implementation forms the natural continuation of Troutet’s argument. Once the decision has been made that a sound genuinely deserves to exist, another set of questions immediately follows. When should it play? Under what conditions should it remain silent? How should it respond when players behave in unexpected ways? Troutet encouraged students to recognise that creating an individual sound is only one stage of the design process. A carefully recorded asset can still fail if it appears at the wrong moment, masks more important information or becomes repetitive through excessive triggering. Implementation therefore becomes an extension of sound design rather than a separate technical activity. Decisions about timing, variation and behaviour shape the player’s experience just as profoundly as the recordings themselves. Very few sounds remain unchanged after their first implementation. Once assets begin interacting with graphics, gameplay and player behaviour, weaknesses quickly become apparent. Sounds that worked well in isolation may feel intrusive within the finished game. Others disappear beneath music or gameplay effects, while some simply occur too frequently. Rather than treating these discoveries as failures, Troutet presented them as an expected part of development. Every implementation reveals more about how players actually experience the game, allowing successive revisions to refine the soundtrack until it supports interaction naturally.

    This willingness to revise also requires a particular creative mindset. Troutet observed that sound designers often invest considerable effort in creating individual recordings, making it tempting to defend them once they have been completed. Professional practice frequently demands the opposite approach. If a sound distracts players, interrupts the pacing of the game or simply fails to communicate effectively, attachment to the recording itself becomes irrelevant. During the lecture he summarised this philosophy with a familiar expression from creative practice: kill your babies. The phrase may sound severe, though the principle behind it is straightforward. The success of the overall experience matters more than preserving individual ideas. Removing or replacing a favourite sound is sometimes the decision that allows the remainder of the soundtrack to function more effectively. The willingness to edit critically therefore becomes every bit as important as the ability to create new material.

    The same philosophy extends beyond individual recordings into collaboration with the wider development team. Troutet repeatedly emphasised that sound design does not develop independently from programming, art or game design. Audio practitioners inherit decisions made elsewhere while simultaneously influencing the work of others. Effective collaboration therefore depends upon communicating design decisions in terms of the player’s experience rather than purely technical language. Requests for additional implementation features, changes to interface behaviour or modifications to gameplay become far easier to justify when they are framed around what players will understand, notice or enjoy. Communication, in this sense, becomes another aspect of sound design rather than an administrative task surrounding it. Professional organisation supports that collaboration in equally practical ways. Clear file names, consistent project structures and carefully maintained asset libraries rarely receive the same attention as recording or mixing, yet they influence every subsequent stage of production. Projects evolve over months or years, assets require continual revision and other members of the team must be able to locate the correct material quickly. Well organised sessions reduce confusion, simplify implementation and ultimately create more opportunities for genuinely creative work.

    Troutet also cautioned against becoming overly attached to particular software, plug-ins or recording equipment. Digital audio workstations continue to evolve, new tools appear regularly and production techniques inevitably change across a career. These developments undoubtedly influence professional practice, though they remain only means of achieving a larger objective. The more important questions concern what the player should hear, what information deserves emphasis and how audio contributes to the overall experience of the game. The same perspective shaped his comments on sources of inspiration. Commercial sound libraries, films and existing games all provide valuable references, though they should never replace careful design thinking. A distinctive soundtrack emerges through the relationships between sounds, the pacing of interaction and a clear understanding of the audience rather than through the novelty of any individual recording. Troutet consistently returned to the idea that sound design is fundamentally a process of making informed decisions rather than collecting techniques.

    Troutet repeatedly argued that sound should guide interaction rather than compete with it. Audio may reward success, reinforce important actions or draw attention towards changing events, though it should rarely distract players from the activity itself. This philosophy connects directly to the earlier discussions of restraint, interface communication and coherent families of sounds. Every element of the soundtrack exists to support understanding. Once a sound begins attracting attention to itself rather than to the player’s experience, its purpose deserves to be questioned. The measure of successful sound design is therefore not how much audio has been added to a game, but whether every element continues to justify its presence through the experience it creates for the player.

    The lecture concluded by returning, implicitly, to the same deceptively simple question that had shaped the discussion from the beginning. How much sound does a game really need? Troutet offered no universal formula. Different genres, audiences and platforms inevitably require different solutions. Instead, he encouraged students to replace assumptions with judgement. Does this sound communicate something important? Does it improve the player’s understanding? Does it strengthen the overall experience? If the answer is no, then adding more audio is unlikely to solve the problem. Careful omission often represents a stronger design decision than continual addition. Across examples ranging from airline entertainment systems to interface design, implementation and professional collaboration, Troutet consistently presented sound design as an exercise in thoughtful selection. The defining characteristic is judgement. Choosing which sounds deserve to exist, how they relate to one another and when they should remain silent requires an understanding of perception, interaction and communication that extends far beyond recording individual effects. Successful sound design is therefore measured not by the quantity of sounds within a project, but by how effectively those sounds help players understand, navigate and enjoy the worlds they inhabit.

  • How Do You Design Great Sound for Terrible Speakers? Tracy Bush on Creative Constraints, Game Audio, and Designing for the Real World

    Tracy Bush

    How do you design great sound for terrible speakers?

    Modern games present players with remarkably convincing sonic worlds. Dialogue responds naturally to changing situations, environments feel alive with movement and atmosphere, interfaces communicate information almost instinctively, and music adapts to the pace of play. Looking at contemporary productions, it is easy to imagine that these achievements are primarily the result of increasingly powerful technology. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, Tracy Bush suggested something rather different. Drawing upon a career that has included Blizzard Entertainment, Sony Online Entertainment, NCSoft and Sphero, he described how some of the most effective sound design emerges when technology imposes severe limitations. Small memories, limited processors, unpredictable playback systems and tiny loudspeakers do not simply restrict creativity. They force designers to think more carefully about what listeners genuinely need to hear.

    Bush’s own career reflected the rapid evolution of the games industry itself. Music had always formed an important part of his life, though his professional background began in information technology rather than audio. While working during the day, he spent evenings performing as a pianist in bars around San Francisco. After relocating to southern California, he joined Blizzard Entertainment in an IT role. His musical interests gradually became known throughout the company, leading colleagues to involve him in audio work whenever opportunities arose. Rather than following a carefully planned route into game sound, his career developed through a willingness to solve unfamiliar problems wherever they appeared. Looking back, Bush suggested that many people entered the industry in much the same way. Studios were small, responsibilities overlapped, and individuals frequently discovered new specialisms simply by becoming the person willing to tackle the next challenge.

    The games industry of the late 1990s differed substantially from the one students encounter today. Development teams were comparatively small, production pipelines remained fluid and many working practices were still evolving. Audio departments often worked alongside programmers, artists and designers in highly collaborative environments where formal boundaries between disciplines were less rigid than they later became. Bush described an atmosphere in which experimentation emerged naturally from everyday work. New hardware appeared rapidly, production tools changed continuously and every project seemed to introduce another set of technical problems that required fresh solutions. Experience remained valuable, though it rarely eliminated uncertainty.

    The computers on which players experienced those games introduced another level of unpredictability. Audio hardware varied enormously between systems, making consistent playback almost impossible to guarantee. Different sound cards reproduced music in noticeably different ways, while MIDI playback depended heavily upon whichever synthesis hardware happened to be installed inside an individual computer. A carefully balanced piece of music created inside the studio might sound dramatically different once it reached somebody else’s machine. Sound designers could control what left the studio. They could not control how it would ultimately be heard.

    This uncertainty extended well beyond music. Dialogue, sound effects and ambience all passed through hardware whose behaviour remained largely outside the control of the development team. Rather than designing for one predictable playback system, audio professionals found themselves designing for thousands of possible listening environments. Bush described this as one of the defining characteristics of early game audio. The question was rarely how a soundtrack sounded under ideal conditions. Instead, designers learned to ask whether it continued to communicate effectively when reproduced by equipment they had never encountered. The playback system itself became part of the design problem.

    Although contemporary technology has advanced enormously, the underlying challenge remains surprisingly familiar. Players now experience games through televisions, headphones, laptops, handheld consoles, mobile phones and increasingly varied listening environments, each introducing its own acoustic character. Perfect consistency remains elusive. The responsibility of the sound designer therefore extends beyond producing interesting sounds. It includes anticipating how those sounds will survive the journey from the studio to the listener.

    Bush also reflected upon the rapid transformation of production tools during this period. Early editing systems offered comparatively limited support for assembling large projects, requiring significant manual organisation and making complex revisions both time-consuming and potentially destructive. The arrival of Pro Tools transformed those workflows, allowing audio teams to edit non-destructively, manage increasingly complex sessions and collaborate more effectively. At much the same time, improvements in virtual sampling gave composers access to increasingly expressive orchestral sounds without requiring every revision to involve live performers. These developments expanded what small audio teams could realistically achieve while allowing creative ideas to evolve throughout production rather than becoming fixed at an early stage.

    The tools available to sound designers evolved just as quickly. Bush described middleware as another important step in that development. As implementation systems became more sophisticated, audio teams gradually assumed greater responsibility for how sounds behaved inside games rather than simply supplying recordings for programmers to trigger. Interactive playback, transitions and behavioural logic increasingly became part of the sound designer’s creative role. Technology expanded the possibilities available to audio departments, though it also broadened their responsibilities. Understanding implementation became almost as important as creating the sounds themselves.

    One observation from Bush’s time at Blizzard challenged another common assumption about technological progress. Greater technical capability did not necessarily encourage increasingly elaborate soundtracks. He reflected upon how musical direction gradually changed across successive projects, with later productions often favouring greater restraint rather than greater complexity. Earlier scores frequently relied upon dense orchestral textures intended to create scale and spectacle. Later work often achieved stronger dramatic results through simpler arrangements that allowed individual musical ideas greater space to breathe. Rather than filling every available moment with sound, composers became increasingly selective about where music should lead the player’s attention and where silence or restraint could prove more effective.

    The same principle appeared throughout sound design more generally. Memory budgets restricted how many sounds could be stored. Processor limitations reduced the number that could play simultaneously. Dialogue budgets limited the amount of recorded speech available to designers. Every technical restriction demanded choices. Which sounds genuinely communicated useful information? Which could be simplified without affecting the player’s experience? Which details would most influence the way a moment was perceived? Bush’s examples repeatedly suggested that successful sound design depends less upon including everything that is technically possible than upon identifying what is genuinely important for the listener.

    By this stage of the lecture, the discussion had established a way of thinking that extended well beyond the technology of any particular decade. New hardware, new software and new production methods continually alter the practical challenges facing sound designers, yet they rarely change the underlying task. Every project begins with a listener, a playback system and a collection of technical constraints that cannot simply be ignored. The role of the sound designer is to understand those conditions and create the most convincing experience possible within them.

    The relationship between creativity and constraint became considerably more tangible during Bush’s work with Sphero, where many of the assumptions underlying conventional game audio no longer applied. Working on licensed products featuring characters such as R2-D2, BB-8 and Lightning McQueen involved far more than transferring familiar techniques onto a different platform. Every sound would eventually emerge from a miniature loudspeaker housed inside a compact plastic enclosure containing motors, batteries, gears and electronic components. The finished product would be heard in kitchens, classrooms, living rooms and gardens rather than through carefully positioned studio monitors or high-quality headphones. Under those conditions, many established production practices simply ceased to be useful. The question was no longer how a sound performed inside the studio. It became how that sound survived once it reached the device for which it had actually been designed.

    Bush described changing his workflow to reflect that reality. Rather than completing the sound design and then testing it on the finished hardware, he monitored much of his work directly through the loudspeaker installed inside the product itself. Equalisation, dynamics, tonal balance and overall character were judged using exactly the same hardware that customers would eventually hear. The acoustic behaviour of the enclosure, the resonances introduced by the plastic casing and even the mechanical sounds generated by the internal motors became part of the design process. Instead of treating these characteristics as defects to be corrected afterwards, they became factors that shaped creative decisions from the beginning.

    The approach illustrates an important principle that extends well beyond embedded devices. Playback systems are never neutral. Every loudspeaker, pair of headphones, television or mobile phone colours the material passing through it. Sound designers often devote considerable attention to recording, editing and mixing, though the listening environment ultimately contributes just as much to the audience’s experience. Bush repeatedly returned to the importance of understanding where sounds will actually be heard. A design that performs beautifully on large studio monitors may communicate surprisingly little through the hardware used by most listeners. Successful sound design therefore depends not only upon creating interesting sounds, but also upon understanding the conditions under which those sounds will be experienced.

    Tiny loudspeakers presented another unavoidable challenge. Their physical dimensions simply prevented them from reproducing deep bass with any real authority. Attempting to force low frequencies through such hardware produced distortion long before it created convincing weight. Rather than attempting to overcome those physical limitations directly, Bush exploited the way listeners perceive sound. By introducing carefully controlled upper harmonics, he encouraged the auditory system to infer the presence of frequencies that the loudspeaker itself could not reproduce. The hardware remained unchanged, though the listening experience became noticeably richer.

    The solution depended upon psychoacoustics rather than brute force. Human hearing does not operate as a simple measuring device. Listeners continually reconstruct incomplete information, using harmonic relationships, timing cues and previous experience to build coherent auditory impressions. Bush’s work demonstrated how understanding those perceptual processes can prove more valuable than pursuing technically impossible specifications. The objective was never to reproduce frequencies that the loudspeaker could not generate. It was to create a convincing impression of fullness using the resources that remained available. Throughout the lecture, this distinction emerged repeatedly. Good sound design often depends less upon reproducing reality perfectly than upon understanding how listeners interpret what they hear.

    Sampling rates introduced another practical compromise. Embedded devices offered only a fraction of the storage and processing power available to contemporary games, requiring careful management of bandwidth and memory. Bush explained that these restrictions became particularly noticeable when working with robotic characters such as R2-D2, whose personality depends upon bright electronic vocalisations occupying the upper regions of the frequency spectrum. Lower sampling rates inevitably reduced the highest frequencies that could be reproduced accurately, making filtering and careful spectral management essential parts of the design process. Concepts that students often encounter as digital audio theory became everyday creative decisions affecting how expressive and recognisable the finished character would become.

    The material supplied by Lucasfilm also revealed how much organisation underpins apparently effortless performances. Bush did not receive complete scenes or finished sequences ready to be inserted into the product. Instead, he worked with an extensive collection of individual R2-D2 vocalisations drawn from the films. These recordings were not simply organised according to pitch or duration. Their emotional character proved considerably more important. Expressions of curiosity, excitement, concern, frustration and amusement were grouped together so that the robot’s responses could reflect changing situations while remaining faithful to the personality audiences already recognised.

    Randomisation played an important role, though not in the simplistic sense of allowing any sound to play at any time. Bush described carefully controlled systems that introduced variation without sacrificing recognisability. Human listeners identify repeated patterns remarkably quickly, yet behaviour that appears completely unpredictable can feel equally artificial. Convincing interactive audio therefore occupies a position between repetition and randomness. Familiar vocalisations return often enough to establish character, while subtle variations prevent those repetitions from becoming mechanical. The objective is not to surprise the listener continually, but to create the impression of a responsive and expressive personality.

    The same balance appears throughout interactive sound design. Footsteps, interface sounds, environmental ambiences and weapon effects all benefit from controlled variation rather than unlimited randomness. Collections of related recordings, small differences in pitch or timing and carefully managed playback logic often produce more convincing results than vast libraries of unrelated sounds. Bush’s examples demonstrated that believable behaviour frequently depends upon the relationships between sounds rather than the number of sounds available.

    As the lecture broadened beyond embedded devices, Bush argued that creating individual sounds represents only one part of a modern sound designer’s role. Interactive media introduces challenges that simply do not exist in linear forms such as film or television. A film editor knows exactly when every line of dialogue will be heard and how every scene will unfold. Games surrender much of that control to the player. Conversations may begin unexpectedly, be interrupted, or never occur at all. Players may spend hours exploring one environment while another moves through it in minutes. The soundtrack therefore cannot be constructed as a fixed sequence of events. It has to respond continuously to changing circumstances.

    Middleware transformed this aspect of production. Earlier generations of game development relied heavily upon programmers to implement even relatively modest audio behaviour. As middleware matured, sound designers gained much greater control over how sounds responded to events within the game itself. Playback logic, transitions, priorities and interactive behaviours increasingly became part of the sound designer’s creative responsibility. Recording remained an important part of the job, though implementation became equally significant. Designing how sounds behave proved just as important as designing the sounds themselves.

    This shift also changed the relationship between audio departments and the wider development team. Bush repeatedly emphasised that sound design does not exist in isolation. Programmers determine what information becomes available. Designers establish the systems that govern player behaviour. Writers shape dialogue, animators influence timing and movement, while artists define the visual environments within which sounds operate. Audio departments respond to all of these decisions while contributing their own expertise in return. Successful interactive soundtracks emerge through continual collaboration rather than from any single discipline working independently.

    One discussion during the lecture addressed the way sound professionals are perceived within development teams. Bush reflected on labels such as “the sound guy” or “the noise boy”, expressions that dramatically underestimate the breadth of contemporary audio practice. Modern sound designers contribute far beyond the creation of individual sound effects. They solve technical problems, shape interactive behaviour, collaborate across disciplines and influence how players ultimately experience the game. Titles such as Audio Director acknowledge that broader creative and technical responsibility.

    Questions from students later turned towards virtual reality, where many of these relationships become even more apparent. Convincing virtual environments depend upon much more than visual realism. Sound provides continuous information about distance, movement, scale and spatial relationships, allowing users to build coherent mental models of spaces extending beyond their immediate field of view. Carefully designed spatial audio therefore contributes directly to presence, orientation and immersion rather than acting as a decorative addition to the visual experience.

    Across subjects as varied as desktop games, embedded devices, robotic toys and virtual reality, Bush repeatedly returned to the same way of thinking. Every project began with an understanding of the available technology, the listening conditions and the perceptual abilities of the audience. The hardware changed dramatically throughout his career, though the questions facing the sound designer remained remarkably consistent. Rather than asking how to exploit every available technical capability, Bush continually asked what listeners actually needed to hear and how the available technology could communicate that experience most effectively.

    Across projects as different as Blizzard’s games, Sphero’s robotic products and emerging virtual reality systems, Bush consistently returned to the same set of design questions. Technology continued to change throughout his career, introducing new platforms, workflows and constraints, yet the underlying task remained remarkably stable. Successful sound design depended upon understanding how people listen, how technology behaves and how creative decisions bridge the gap between the two. Whether working with a full orchestral score, an interactive dialogue system or a miniature loudspeaker inside a robotic toy, the objective was never simply to produce impressive sounds. It was to create listening experiences that remained convincing under the conditions in which they would actually be heard.

  • How Do Mobile Games Sound Bigger Than They Are? George Vlad on Game Audio, Field Recording, and Creative Constraints

    George Vlad

    How do mobile games sound bigger than they are?

    Many people associate game audio with large development studios, lengthy production schedules, and vast teams of specialists. The image is often one of blockbuster productions involving hundreds of developers working over several years. During his online guest lecture for Edinburgh Napier University, sound designer, field recordist, and Edinburgh Napier alumnus George Vlad offered a rather different perspective. Drawing on a career that has included audio for hundreds of mobile games, Vlad described a world in which sound designers are frequently asked to achieve ambitious creative goals under severe practical constraints. Development schedules may last only weeks. Budgets are often limited. Storage space can be measured in megabytes rather than gigabytes. Yet players still expect games to feel rich, engaging, and alive.

    Across the lecture, Vlad repeatedly demonstrated that successful audio design is rarely about having unlimited resources. More often, it is about learning how to achieve more with less.

    Vlad’s own route into the industry reflects this philosophy. Long before he entered formal education, he was fascinated by sound itself. Childhood memories centred on listening to objects resonate, experimenting with makeshift instruments, and becoming absorbed by the sonic characteristics of everyday materials. At the same time, video games became an equally important influence. These parallel interests eventually converged after several years spent working across Europe, saving money to build a small studio and gradually developing the skills needed to pursue audio professionally.

    The path was far from conventional. Without immediate access to formal training, Vlad relied heavily upon experimentation, books, online communities, and practical experience. Early work editing podcasts and audiobooks gradually led to opportunities in games, particularly during the rapid growth of smartphone applications in the early 2010s. Later, after moving to Edinburgh in 2013, he enrolled on Edinburgh Napier University’s Sound Design programme, where formal study helped fill many of the gaps he had identified in his own knowledge. Rather than describing graduation as the end of a learning process, however, Vlad suggested that education had mainly revealed how much more there remained to learn.

    Looking back, many of these experiences involved similar challenges. Whether teaching himself new skills, building a freelance business, or learning how to work within the realities of mobile development, progress depended less upon ideal circumstances than upon adaptability. This theme would recur throughout the lecture.

    The realities of mobile game development provide a particularly clear illustration of this challenge. Unlike major console or PC titles that may take years to complete, many mobile games operate on remarkably compressed schedules. A developer might contact a sound designer only days before release, requiring dozens of sound effects and music assets within a very short period. Under these circumstances, efficiency becomes essential.

    What emerged from Vlad’s description was a picture of sound design that differs considerably from popular perceptions of creative work. Inspiration certainly plays a role, though much of the process involves practical decision-making. Developers provide lists of required sounds, visual references, gameplay footage, or playable builds. From these materials, the sound designer develops an understanding of how the game should feel. This emphasis on feeling proved particularly important. Before focusing on individual sounds, Vlad explained that he first tries to understand the intended player experience. Should the game feel exciting, relaxing, humorous, energetic, or mysterious? These broader emotional goals help shape countless later decisions.

    This approach reflects an important aspect of game audio more generally. Sounds do not exist independently. Their purpose is to support gameplay, reinforce feedback, communicate information, and contribute to the overall experience. A technically impressive sound that conflicts with the desired mood may ultimately be less effective than a simpler alternative.

    Over the course of his career, Vlad has contributed audio to hundreds of games. Working at this scale demands a different way of thinking about sound design. Rather than approaching every project as a completely unique undertaking, practitioners develop workflows, libraries, recording practices, and decision-making strategies that allow them to work efficiently without sacrificing quality. Consistency, organisation, and adaptability become just as important as creativity.

    The lecture provided numerous examples of how these principles operate in practice. Casual mobile games aimed at younger audiences often require sounds that are immediately understandable and emotionally positive. Designers frequently request what they describe as “cartoony” sounds, a term that may initially appear vague but which often carries fairly specific expectations. Sounds should be simple, clear, playful, and easily interpreted. Complex or highly realistic effects may actually prove less effective if they distract from the intended experience.

    Such decisions become particularly important when working on long-term projects. Vlad described his involvement with Adventure Smash, a mobile title developed by PeopleFun, the studio founded by several of the developers behind Age of Empires. What began as a relatively modest project gradually expanded into a much larger undertaking involving thousands of individual sound assets.

    One of the most interesting aspects of this discussion concerned iteration. Many sounds were revised repeatedly as the game evolved. New characters appeared. Design priorities changed. Playtesting revealed unexpected problems. Audio that seemed appropriate at one stage later required substantial modification. Rather than treating this as a failure, Vlad presented iteration as a normal and essential part of development.

    Playtesting proved especially valuable. Watching players encounter a game for the first time often revealed issues that were invisible to the development team. After listening to the same sounds hundreds or even thousands of times, designers naturally become accustomed to them. New players bring fresh perspectives. Their reactions can highlight confusing feedback, excessive repetition, or sounds that no longer fit the overall direction of the game.

    Listening to these examples, it became clear that game audio involves much more than creating sounds. It requires understanding how those sounds function within a larger interactive system. The effectiveness of an audio asset depends not only upon its quality but also upon when it appears, how frequently it occurs, and how players interpret it.

    Technical constraints provide one of the clearest examples of this mindset. Mobile games often operate within strict memory limitations. Vlad described projects containing thousands of audio assets while occupying only a few dozen megabytes of storage. Achieving this requires more than compression. Designers must think carefully about how sounds are structured, reused, combined, and implemented. Rather than viewing constraints as obstacles, the lecture suggested that they often become catalysts for creativity. Limited resources encourage solutions that are more elegant, efficient, and flexible than those developed under less restrictive conditions.

    Alongside game audio, Vlad discussed another major aspect of his professional practice: field recording. Over the years he has become increasingly involved in recording natural environments, wildlife, ambiences, and unusual sound sources. Although these activities initially developed alongside his game work, they have gradually become an important creative outlet in their own right.

    Field recording might appear separate from game development, though the lecture revealed numerous connections between the two. Recording environments, wildlife, machinery, weather, and unusual sound sources continually expands the palette available for future projects. A recording captured for no particular purpose may later become the foundation of a game sound effect, a commercial sound library, or an entirely different creative project. Field recording therefore functions not only as a creative activity in its own right but also as a long-term investment in future possibilities. This relationship between recording and design reflects the broader philosophy running throughout Vlad’s work. Resources are rarely available precisely when they are needed. Building libraries, developing skills, and collecting recordings creates opportunities that may not become useful until years later. Much of professional audio involves preparing for problems that have not yet appeared.

    What was particularly striking was the way field recording complements game audio. Time spent outdoors often provides opportunities for reflection that are difficult to find within a studio environment. Vlad described discovering solutions to creative problems while sitting quietly in a car monitoring microphones placed hundreds of metres away. Distance from the immediate pressures of production sometimes creates the mental space necessary for new ideas to emerge. The discussion of recording techniques revealed another dimension of creativity. Recording is often presented as a technical process involving microphones, recorders, and acoustic environments. Vlad acknowledged the importance of these factors while emphasising that microphone placement, recording strategies, and listening perspectives can fundamentally alter the resulting material. Small changes in approach frequently produce dramatically different outcomes.

    Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the lecture was the way it challenged simplistic distinctions between technical and creative work. Audio professionals are sometimes portrayed as belonging to one category or the other. Vlad’s experiences suggest that the reality is considerably more complicated. Technical decisions influence creative outcomes. Creative ambitions depend upon technical understanding. Success often emerges through the interaction between both.

    Questions about freelancing reinforced this point. Building a sustainable career requires skills extending far beyond audio production. Client communication, project management, marketing, financial planning, networking, and professional development all become part of daily practice. Creative expertise alone is rarely sufficient.

    Freelancing introduced another form of constraint. Unlike permanent employment, freelance work rarely provides complete stability or predictability. Projects arrive unexpectedly. Workloads fluctuate. Technologies change. Client requirements evolve. Vlad spoke candidly about periods of uncertainty throughout his career, though these experiences reinforced the same lesson visible elsewhere in the lecture. Long-term success depends less upon avoiding change than upon learning how to respond to it effectively.

    Looking back across the lecture, what emerges most clearly is a picture of audio work defined by adaptability. Technologies change. Projects evolve. Clients revise their requirements. Storage limits impose restrictions. Budgets create compromises. Development schedules compress. Yet creative ambitions remain.

    Throughout his career, George Vlad has repeatedly encountered situations in which the available resources were smaller than the desired outcome. Mobile games needed to feel larger than their budgets suggested. Limited memory had to support rich sonic worlds. Tight schedules still demanded professional results. Field recordings gathered in remote locations eventually found new purposes years later. Again and again, progress emerged through resourcefulness rather than abundance.

    For students considering careers in game audio, this may be the lecture’s most valuable lesson. Technical knowledge matters. Creative ability matters. Yet neither guarantees success on its own. Professional practice involves solving problems, working within constraints, adapting to change, and finding opportunities where others might see limitations.

    George Vlad’s career demonstrates that there is no single route into professional audio. His journey has included self-directed learning, formal education, freelance practice, field recording, game development, experimentation, and continual adaptation. Across all these experiences, one principle remained remarkably consistent. Creative work is rarely about having unlimited resources. More often, it is about recognising possibilities that remain invisible until constraints force new ways of thinking.

  • Getting Closer: Watson Wu on Field Recording, Curiosity, and the Search for Authentic Sound

    Watson Wu

    What makes a great field recording?

    Many aspiring sound designers assume the answer begins with equipment. Better microphones, more expensive recorders, larger collections of accessories, or the latest recording technologies all seem like obvious places to start. Watson Wu has spent decades recording race cars, helicopters, weapons, sports crowds, military vehicles, steam trains, wilderness ambiences, and countless other sound sources for games, film, and television. Yet throughout his guest lecture at Edinburgh Napier University, he repeatedly returned to a very different conclusion. Great recordings rarely emerge from equipment alone. More often, they emerge from access, preparation, curiosity, and a willingness to get closer to the source than most people are prepared to go.

    Wu’s own journey into field recording began almost accidentally. Having studied music and worked extensively with recording equipment, he was asked by a client whether he could also provide sound effects for a project. The results proved successful enough to encourage him to continue. Looking back, what is striking is how quickly his attention shifted away from commercially available sound libraries and towards the sounds themselves. Existing libraries could certainly provide useful material, though they rarely offered complete creative control. If a designer records a skateboard personally, they can decide exactly where the microphone should be placed, which aspects of the sound should be emphasised, and which should be excluded. Rather than accepting someone else’s interpretation of an event, they can create their own. Recording therefore becomes more than acquisition. It becomes a way of understanding sound.

    That desire for direct engagement appears throughout Wu’s career. Again and again, he described situations in which recording personally provided opportunities that would have been impossible through library material alone. A Ferrari owner can be asked to accelerate, brake, idle, or corner in specific ways. A helicopter pilot can perform particular manoeuvres. A stadium crowd can be approached from multiple positions and perspectives. Rather than documenting a sound, the recordist begins exploring it. Questions emerge. What does the source sound like from the front? What changes when the microphone moves closer? Which details become audible when recording from inside rather than outside? The process becomes investigative. Recording is no longer merely collecting sounds. It becomes a way of learning how sounds behave.

    Perhaps surprisingly, this emphasis on source recording has also shaped Wu’s attitude towards technology. Early in his career, he assumed that only the most expensive microphones could produce professional results. Like many newcomers, he viewed prestigious manufacturers as essential components of successful recording practice. Experience gradually challenged this assumption. Expensive microphones certainly have their place, though many recording situations depend far more upon positioning, environment, and technique than upon cost alone. A moderately priced microphone placed correctly will often outperform a far more expensive microphone placed badly. Recording a gunshot, a racing vehicle, or a helicopter frequently requires practical decisions about durability, placement, weather resistance, and safety. In some situations, the most valuable microphone is not the most expensive one. It is the one that survives the session.

    This pragmatic attitude runs throughout Wu’s work. Rather than searching for a single perfect microphone, he has assembled a collection of tools suited to different purposes. Shotgun microphones provide focus and directionality. Ambisonic microphones capture complete acoustic environments. Lavalier microphones can be hidden inside vehicles and machinery. Dynamic microphones tolerate extreme sound pressure levels. Each offers a different perspective on the same event. Rather than asking which microphone is best, Wu encourages a different question: what exactly are you trying to hear?

    That question becomes particularly important when considering the different forms that field recording can take. Throughout the lecture, Wu repeatedly distinguished between focused recordings, environmental recordings, and combinations of both. A shotgun microphone pointed at a specific source allows unwanted sounds to be rejected. An ambisonic microphone captures the entire acoustic environment surrounding it. Many of the most useful recordings involve collecting both simultaneously. A racing vehicle, for example, may be recorded with a fixed stereo setup capturing the overall pass-by while another microphone actively follows the vehicle as it moves. Together, these perspectives provide far greater creative flexibility than either recording alone. The objective is not simply to obtain a sound. The objective is to gather options.

    This philosophy of collecting more than is immediately required appeared repeatedly throughout the lecture. If a client requests four recordings, Wu aims to deliver eight. If access is granted to a vehicle, he looks for every useful perspective that can be captured while the opportunity exists. The reasoning is practical. Recording opportunities are fragile. Weather changes. Locations become unavailable. Machines break down. Owners move away. Access disappears. A steam train hired for a day may never be available again. A military vehicle may only be accessible under tightly controlled conditions. A helicopter flight involves substantial planning, expense, and coordination. Throughout the lecture, Wu repeatedly encouraged students to think beyond the immediate request. Record the obvious sound, certainly, though record the unexpected sound as well. Capture the startup, the shutdown, the rattles, the controls, the mechanical details, and the surrounding environment. Future projects often benefit from recordings that initially appeared irrelevant. One of the advantages of personal recording is that it allows designers to build libraries that grow richer with every session.

    Several stories from the lecture illustrated this mindset particularly well. One involved the recording of a Huey helicopter, the distinctive aircraft familiar from countless war films and television programmes. For Wu, this represented a long-held ambition. Capturing the sound successfully required far more than simply arriving with a recorder. Multiple lavalier microphones were mounted inside the aircraft. Additional protection was added to cope with extreme airflow. Recorders were secured carefully to the airframe. Ground-based ambisonic and mid-side recording systems captured external perspectives. Wind protection had to be considered constantly. Safety procedures had to be followed. Every aspect of the session involved planning, experimentation, and adaptation. Yet what emerges most strongly from the story is not the equipment but the preparation. The quality of the recording depended upon decisions made long before the helicopter ever left the ground.

    A similarly revealing example involved the recording of a historic steam train. Rather than arriving, capturing a handful of pass-bys, and leaving, Wu approached the session as a rare opportunity to document an entire acoustic ecosystem. Exterior perspectives were recorded alongside onboard perspectives. Mechanical details were captured alongside broader environmental sounds. The objective was not simply to obtain a steam train recording. The objective was to understand how the train sounded from as many perspectives as possible. Such sessions reveal an important distinction between collecting sounds and collecting experiences. A library may contain a steam train. Spending a day with a steam train reveals how the machine breathes, rattles, resonates, and interacts with the world around it. Those observations often prove just as valuable as the recordings themselves.

    One of the more thought-provoking moments in the lecture concerned realism. Beginners often assume that accurate recording should be the ultimate goal. Professional practice is frequently more complicated. A racing car recorded exactly as it sounds may not feel sufficiently exciting inside a game. A weapon may require enhancement. An engine may need additional weight and aggression. Distortion, saturation, and other forms of processing are often introduced deliberately. Wu’s point was not that realism is unimportant. Rather, realism and believability are not always the same thing. The audience’s memory of an event may differ considerably from the event itself. Sound designers frequently work within that gap, creating experiences that feel authentic even when they depart from strict documentary accuracy. The objective is often emotional truth rather than literal accuracy.

    This willingness to adapt appears throughout Wu’s approach to problem-solving. Some of the lecture’s most memorable stories involved situations that failed to unfold as planned. During one recording session involving historic artillery, environmental conditions introduced an unexpected complication. Peacocks repeatedly vocalised at exactly the wrong moment, intruding into recordings that had required considerable effort to arrange. The story generated laughter, though it also illustrated an important reality of field recording. The world rarely cooperates completely. Animals, weather, traffic, aircraft, and countless other factors have a habit of appearing precisely when silence is required. Successful field recordists learn to work with uncertainty rather than imagining it can be eliminated entirely.

    What is perhaps most striking across all these examples is the extent to which recording depends upon people. Throughout the lecture, Wu repeatedly emphasised the importance of trust, professionalism, and respect. Vehicle owners are not simply providing sound sources. They are sharing something valuable. Pilots are not merely operating machinery. They are helping create recordings. Mechanics, assistants, safety personnel, and operators all contribute to the final outcome. Access depends upon relationships. Relationships depend upon how people are treated.

    This human dimension emerged repeatedly throughout the lecture. When discussing vehicle recording sessions, Wu described asking owners to tell him if a vehicle needs a break. During military recording sessions, he relies on guidance from experienced personnel regarding safe practice. Mechanics advise on microphone placement around engines and exhaust systems. Aircraft operators explain how equipment can be secured safely. Again and again, the quality of the recording depends upon collaboration rather than individual expertise alone.

    Such observations help explain why Wu devoted considerable attention to assistants and colleagues. Technical ability matters enormously, though professional success often depends just as much upon reliability, patience, and kindness. One assistant was praised for consistently anticipating what needed to be done before being asked. Equipment was packed away efficiently. Problems were solved calmly. Tasks were completed without drama. Such qualities may appear unrelated to sound design, though Wu clearly regards them as fundamental. People prefer working with those who make difficult jobs easier. Careers are often built as much through trust as through talent.

    Learning itself occupies a similarly important position within his philosophy. Throughout the lecture, Wu repeatedly described himself as a lifelong learner. New recording technologies are welcomed. New microphones are tested. New techniques are explored. Even after decades of professional work, he continues searching for improved approaches. The emergence of 32-bit float recording technology provided one example. Although enthusiastic about its possibilities, he discussed both its advantages and its limitations. Increased dynamic range solves certain problems, though it does not eliminate the need for careful microphone placement, thoughtful listening, or critical judgement. Technology changes. Core recording principles remain remarkably consistent.

    Listening, in fact, may be the most important skill of all. Wu frequently described removing one side of his headphones while recording in order to compare the microphone feed with the surrounding environment. The goal is not merely to record sounds. The goal is to understand what the microphones are actually capturing relative to lived experience. A recording may appear technically impressive while still failing to communicate what made the original event interesting. Conversely, unusual microphone positions or unconventional techniques sometimes reveal aspects of a sound that would otherwise remain hidden.

    This curiosity about sound extends well beyond the vehicles and weapons for which Wu is perhaps best known. Some of the lecture’s most engaging stories involved wilderness ambiences, rain, wind, and environmental soundscapes. While working on the television series The Underground Railroad, he travelled deep into remote areas of Florida in search of locations free from contemporary noise pollution. During a separate project in Iceland, he spent long periods experimenting with wind recordings around the Arctic Henge, exploring how subtle changes in microphone orientation transformed the resulting sound. Such examples reveal a practitioner who remains fascinated by listening itself. The technology matters. The environments matter. Yet underlying everything is a persistent curiosity about how the world sounds.

    Looking back across the lecture, what emerges most clearly is a conception of field recording rooted in curiosity. Microphones matter. Recorders matter. Ambisonics, 32-bit float recording, microphone placement, and technical expertise all matter. Yet none of these things create opportunities by themselves. Opportunities emerge through relationships, preparation, persistence, and a willingness to go where interesting sounds can be found. A helicopter recording begins with access to a helicopter. A vehicle recording begins with the trust of its owner. A remote ambience recording begins with a journey into an environment where that ambience still exists.

    Perhaps this is why Wu’s stories remain so memorable. They are never really stories about equipment. They are stories about people, places, and experiences. A helicopter with microphones attached to its frame. A steam train hired for an entire day. A military vehicle crossing rough terrain. A crowd erupting during a decisive sporting moment. Wind moving through an Icelandic landscape. Each recording represents a moment that had to be sought out deliberately.

    For aspiring sound designers, that may be the most valuable lesson of all. The next remarkable sound is unlikely to appear by accident inside a studio. It is probably waiting somewhere beyond the microphone case, attached to a person, a place, or an experience that has not yet been encountered.

    The challenge is getting close enough to hear it.

  • Why Game Sound Is Never Finished: Mariana Botero on Systems, Possibility, and Interactive Audio

    Mariana Botero

    What does a sound designer actually create?

    For much of the history of recorded media, the answer has seemed relatively straightforward. A sound designer creates sounds. Those sounds are edited, arranged, mixed, and eventually delivered to an audience in a finished form. Whether working in film, television, radio, or theatre, the result remains largely fixed. Every audience member encounters the same sequence of events in the same order. A soundtrack may be replayed thousands of times, though the sounds themselves do not change. Sound design, in this traditional sense, is largely concerned with creating and refining artefacts. The work may be extraordinarily complex, though the outcome is ultimately stable. Once completed, the audience receives the experience that the creators intended.

    Games operate according to a different logic. During her guest lecture at Edinburgh Napier University, Mariana Botero, Sound Designer at Criterion Games, repeatedly returned to a challenge that sits at the centre of interactive audio. Players are unpredictable. They may rush through environments that designers expected them to explore carefully. They may spend an hour in a location intended for a few minutes of gameplay. They may repeat actions endlessly, ignore carefully placed cues, or discover solutions that nobody anticipated. A sound designer may spend weeks refining a particular moment, only for players to experience it in a completely unexpected way. This unpredictability creates a fundamental difference between games and most other forms of media. Film sound designers can assume a degree of control over audience experience. A scene unfolds at a predetermined pace. Music enters at a precise moment. Dialogue arrives exactly when it is needed. Sound and image progress together through a carefully authored sequence. Games surrender much of that control. Designers can establish possibilities, though they cannot determine exactly how those possibilities will be experienced. Every player creates a slightly different path through the material.

    Botero illustrated this distinction through a deceptively simple analogy. Traditional sound design can resemble baking a cake. Once the ingredients have been combined and baked, they become a finished object. Individual components can no longer be separated. The audience receives the completed result exactly as intended. Interactive audio often works differently. The ingredients remain available. They can be rearranged, adjusted, recombined, and reshaped while the experience is unfolding. What players hear depends not only on what the designer created but also on what they choose to do. A player who rushes through an environment may hear one version of the experience. Another who explores every corner may encounter something quite different. Neither experience is incorrect. Both emerge from the same underlying system. At first glance, this may appear to be a technical distinction, though throughout the lecture it became clear that something more significant is taking place. Interactive audio challenges assumptions that have shaped sound practice for decades. Rather than creating a finished soundtrack, game audio designers increasingly create systems capable of generating many possible soundtracks. The question is no longer simply what a sound should be. The question becomes how a sound should behave.

    Implementation sits at the heart of this shift. Students often encounter implementation through software platforms such as Wwise and Unity, where attention naturally gravitates towards events, switches, parameters, states, and scripting. Botero encouraged a broader perspective. These tools are not merely technical requirements added after the creative work has been completed. They are part of the creative process itself. They provide mechanisms through which sound can respond to player actions, environmental conditions, narrative developments, and changing game states. Once audio becomes interactive, implementation ceases to be a final stage of production. It becomes one of the primary ways in which experiences are designed. Many of Botero’s examples reflected this movement from sounds to systems. Consider something as apparently mundane as footsteps. Few sounds occur more frequently in games. A footstep that appears a handful of times in a film may occur thousands of times during a single play session. What initially feels satisfying can quickly become repetitive. Players generate these sounds through their own behaviour, meaning designers cannot simply assume that repetition will remain unnoticed. Botero discussed several implementation strategies designed to address this issue. Different recordings can be selected randomly. Pitch and volume may vary subtly between repetitions. Heel and toe impacts can be separated and recombined dynamically. A relatively small collection of recordings suddenly produces a far wider range of perceived outcomes. Yet what makes these techniques interesting is not their technical sophistication. Their significance lies in how they reveal a different philosophy of authorship. Rather than crafting every individual event directly, designers create rules governing how events are generated. They design the behaviour of the system rather than the precise form of every outcome.

    Her observations about footsteps led naturally into a broader discussion about attention. Not every sound deserves equal prominence throughout an experience. Early in a game, clearly audible footsteps may help players understand movement and control. Later, those same sounds can begin to dominate the soundscape unnecessarily. As players become familiar with core mechanics, environmental details often become more valuable. A distant owl, subtle weather activity, a passing vehicle, or an unexpected environmental cue may contribute more to a sense of place than another clearly articulated footstep. This may seem like a relatively small design decision, though it reveals an important principle running throughout the lecture. Sound design is not simply about creating sounds. It is about shaping attention. Designers are constantly deciding what players should notice, what they should ignore, and how their awareness should be directed through an experience. Interactive audio therefore becomes inseparable from broader questions of perception.

    Several examples from Botero’s work on Star Wars Battlefront II illustrated this relationship particularly clearly. One challenge involved creating a convincing sensation of speed during space combat. Space provides surprisingly few visual reference points. Without roads, buildings, or passing landscapes, players can struggle to judge how fast they are moving. From a purely visual perspective, extraordinary speeds can sometimes feel unexpectedly slow. Audio therefore assumes a more active role. Changes in acceleration, orientation, proximity, and manoeuvring can all be reinforced through sound, encouraging players to feel faster than they actually are. Importantly, the objective is not deception. The objective is alignment between what players see, what they hear, and what they believe they are experiencing. Sound helps bridge the gap between game mechanics and player perception. A related challenge emerged around spatial awareness. Players navigating complex three-dimensional environments often need information that visual displays cannot always communicate efficiently. Botero described examples where reflections, pass-bys, and environmental responses helped players understand their relationship to surrounding structures. Those sounds functioned as navigational aids as much as sound effects. Players may never consciously notice them, though their absence would make environments feel less intelligible. Such examples reveal another important aspect of interactive audio. Sound is not simply representing the world. It is helping players interpret the world. A successful design often communicates information, directs attention, reinforces emotion, and supports decision-making simultaneously. The most effective implementation frequently becomes invisible. Players simply feel that the game responds naturally to their actions.

    The same principles appeared again in Botero’s discussion of interactive music. Traditional composition assumes a relatively stable structure. A beginning leads towards a middle before eventually reaching an ending. Although composers may create complex and highly sophisticated works, they generally retain control over the order in which events occur. Games rarely provide such certainty. Players may linger in one location, interrupt events unexpectedly, revisit spaces repeatedly, or trigger narrative developments in unusual orders. Music must therefore accommodate possibilities that cannot be fully predicted in advance. Rather than composing a single linear sequence, designers often create collections of musical elements capable of being reorganised dynamically while preserving coherence. Botero compared the process to building with Lego bricks. Individual pieces remain consistent, though their arrangement changes according to context. Introductory passages, transitions, loops, and endings can be connected in different ways while still feeling musically coherent. Once again, the designer is not creating a single outcome. The designer is creating a framework capable of supporting many outcomes. What matters is not only the material itself but also the relationships that determine how that material behaves under changing circumstances.

    This way of thinking extends beyond music. One particularly revealing example discussed during the lecture involved a student project built around a time-slowing mechanic. In a traditional medium, slowing time might simply involve applying predetermined processing at specific moments. Within an interactive environment, however, the relationship becomes dynamic. Real-time parameter controls allowed player actions to influence audio behaviour directly. As gameplay changed, the soundscape changed alongside it. The mechanic was not merely accompanied by sound. The mechanic became part of the sound design process itself. Audio no longer functioned as a layer added on top of gameplay. It became woven into the behaviour of the system. Examples such as these help explain why programming increasingly occupies an important place within contemporary game audio. Throughout the lecture, Botero described learning through experimentation, tutorials, practical projects, and professional experience. Programming was presented not as a replacement for creative thinking but as a means of expanding creative possibilities. The more deeply designers understand systems, the more effectively they can connect audio to player experience. Technical knowledge becomes valuable not for its own sake but for the opportunities it creates.

    One of the more interesting consequences of this shift is that game audio designers increasingly resemble system designers as much as traditional sound designers. Much of the language surrounding audio production still reflects assumptions inherited from film, television, and music. We often speak about creating sounds, mixing sounds, or arranging sounds. Botero’s examples repeatedly pointed towards a broader form of practice. Designers create relationships between sounds, player actions, environmental conditions, and game states. Their work involves determining how sounds respond, adapt, and evolve rather than simply deciding what those sounds should be. The resulting experience emerges through interaction between the player and the system. In this sense, implementation is not something that happens after sound design. Implementation is increasingly part of sound design itself.

    This spirit of exploration appeared throughout Botero’s account of her own development. Long before working professionally in games, she was already engaging deeply with sound through recording, listening, and experimentation. Growing up in Colombia, she developed a fascination with environmental sound that later evolved into a broader interest in audio design. Looking back across the lecture, one of the most striking aspects of her career trajectory is how consistently curiosity appears as a driving force. New tools, new techniques, and new technologies repeatedly emerge, though progress often begins with a simple willingness to investigate how things work. Throughout her account there was little sense of a fixed pathway into game audio. Instead, learning appeared as an ongoing process of exploration in which technical knowledge, creative practice, and experimentation continually informed one another.

    That same curiosity remains visible within professional practice. One of the most memorable examples came from Criterion’s “Sound Design Thursdays”. Team members temporarily step away from production work and undertake creative challenges built around unusual constraints. Designers exchange recordings, limit themselves to small collections of source material, or pass sounds between colleagues with each person applying a single transformation before handing them on. The outcomes can be surprising, humorous, and occasionally absurd. A camel recording may gradually evolve into something resembling a bird. Familiar sounds acquire entirely new identities. Yet beneath the humour lies a serious lesson about creativity. Unexpected results often emerge when designers deliberately create conditions that encourage experimentation. Limitations become opportunities. Constraints become creative tools. In many respects, these exercises mirror the philosophy underlying interactive audio itself. Both involve constructing systems, establishing rules, and allowing surprising outcomes to emerge from interactions between different elements. Neither depends upon complete control. Both depend upon creating environments in which interesting possibilities can arise.

    Looking back across the lecture, what emerges most clearly is a view of sound design that extends well beyond the creation of individual sounds. Footsteps, adaptive music, spatial cues, implementation systems, real-time parameters, and creative experiments all point towards the same conclusion. Interactive audio requires designers to think in terms of relationships rather than isolated assets. Sounds gain meaning through how they respond to players, environments, and changing circumstances. The challenge is no longer simply to create a soundtrack. The challenge is to create a framework capable of supporting many different soundtracks.

    Perhaps this is what makes game audio such a distinctive area of contemporary sound practice. Film sound designers craft experiences that audiences receive. Game sound designers craft possibilities that audiences help create. Every play session unfolds differently. Every player encounters a slightly different combination of events. Every interaction generates new relationships between sounds, systems, and behaviours. The sounds matter. What matters just as much are the rules that determine what those sounds might become.

    In game audio, the work is never truly finished. It simply waits for the player to decide what happens next.