3 Tips for Working with Game Audio Professionals

Effective game sound and music come from a deep understanding of the game’s design pillars. Audio can help to direct the player, provide important information, enhance gameplay feel, reinforce narrative beats, and connect the player emotionally to characters and locations. Here are some considerations to keep in mind when choosing and onboarding an audio professional:

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Start Audio Hiring and Planning Early

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Many teams wait until their game is nearing release to start searching for a sound designer or composer, but it’s far better to include your sound and music team as early as possible. Audio is intricately tied to every feature in the game, so giving your audio team time to fully understand the intentions and inner workings of your game is essential. Understanding the most important aspects of the game helps the team prioritize effectively. And of course, more time can mean more complete and interesting audio coverage for the game!

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Include the Audio Team

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Because all game audio is tied to other features, the status of those features is extremely important to the audio team. Changes, additions, and cuts all impact audio needs and priorities. You don’t want your audio team to spend a week designing sound for a character you plan to cut! Including the audio team in design meetings for various features helps ensure they know what to work on, leads to new ideas, and can help prevent future problems.

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Documentation is Key

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There are so many moving parts within each discipline’s work, and audio needs to keep track of them. A lack of documentation can lead to unnecessary questions that take up valuable time. Out-of-date documentation can lead to even more time wasted working on the wrong things. Accurate, well-maintained documentation and status tracking are essential to make sure audio is working on the right things at the right time, and that they have a good understanding of what the sound and music need to accomplish.