Since you will not be continuing the featured sound designers, will the section still stay up and be available?

that way you get multiple points of view on the one topic.

and thanks to sticking to your guns re: advertising :)

Thanks for the feedback, David. We’ll keep that in mind.

There are a few fundamental flaws in your critique of the state of sound design, Constantine. First and foremost is the idea that something has to be BIG to have an impact on the work that others do. There’s a diverse world of approaches and aesthetics out there, and judging the state of the industry based on the practices of the “blockbuster” pieces is a bad idea. Another thing to keep in mind is that game audio is extremely young when compared to film. It should be growing in leaps and bounds. One day it will slow down and fall into a pattern of subtle development and aesthetic growth, just as film sound has. If nothing else, think of it this way…if the things you are paying attention to no longer inspire you, then it’s time to expand your palette.

I don’t know, maybe I am getting older or it’s just my (I hope provisional) pessimistic condition, or maybe because I am working alone as a freelancer and I have a lack of communication with pro colleagues… but for some past time I often notice, that there is so little things happening in the audio post production world. I mean, can you remember some big things which could shake our community like Avatar in graphics, Unreal or Cry engine in game development or Oculus Rift in tech zone?

I personally have only one example in the last years, it’s the sound in Battlefield 3. I have never heard anything like that in games before and for me it is an indisputable breakthrough in the game sound. But I can’t say the same about movies and I can’t say anything about audio software or hardware section.

So, therefore in my (supposedly stupid) head I have two version of what is going on:

1) Positive one
In this case everything is fine with sound. People create great works and sound design is just another form of art like painting, music or literature. Nobody will say that music or literature have some kind of crisis in the development, because it’s stupid.

2) Negative one
There is some kind of stagnation in the audio post production sphere. Nobody invents something really new, nobody cares about it, nobody wants to discuss it (or maybe wants but apparently in some small personal live conversations).

If it is the first case, then there is only one problem – my (now for sure) stupid head and I just have to stop working alone and get some in-house job.

But, if, somehow, the second one is more correct then somebody, presumably, have to do something. I don’t know, maybe a small audio community is the problem, or because nobody cares about sound just like about graphics, or there is something else.

My personal opinion, both of the aforementioned cases have right to live. I very much like the current status of sound as an art. A lot of movies have amazing sound, they sound naturally and truthfully, because we are using recordings of real sounds. Games, imho, still have a lot of problems with the implementation and believability, but projects like BF3 create right courses for the improvement. I have a big list of claims for technical sphere though, like a DAW for sound designers with completely different working structure or new processing software, I am not a technical geek but I feel that there is a huge room for the improvement.

I understand that it is not quite suitable place for such a topic and my “excellent” English, but Designingsound is a very special resource for me and I thought that maybe somebody will want to write some ideas or suggestions.

I don’t know who you could get to do it, but I’d love to see a guy like mark lampert from Skyrim or someone in that area just sitting with stuff, watching how they get there. Or even just to get an important sound from the game and watch the production of it. It’s tough, but it would be a lot less time intensive than a month’s worth of content. 

That’s still off the table for now. It needs the perfect alignment of some widely disparate circumstances, and they’re just not there at the moment. If the alignment ever happens, you can be sure it will pop up here.