For those of you who don’t know who G.A.N.G., the Game Audio Network Guild is, they are a group of people who meet every 3rd full moon, and do chanting and exchange mystic knowledge of the great plug-in. Actually, G.A.N.G. is a growing group of audio professionals that either work making video games, have some sort of other function in the gaming world or might be a business that sells goods and services that are consumed by members of the gaming industry.
Among other things, GANG works on open exchanges of information and education and they have a nifty awards program that is done in conjunction with the annual GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco. If you want to know more about the organization, drop me an email at jsgilbert@pacbell.net and I’ll make sure to put you in touch with the right person.
One of the cool things that GANG does is to have top industry people come and speak about projects and this past week at Pyramind Studios in San Francisco, we were thrilled to get to hear the audio team from Valve come and speak. Well, it wasn’t the whole audio team, because, as Bill Van Buren – Producer/ designer made mention several times during the presentation, Valve isn’t like other game developers and apparently, everyone that works at Valve in one fashion or another can be considered to be part of the audio team.
If you aren’t familiar with Valve, they’re so darn successful, it makes me choke on my Captain Crunch cereal I had this morning. Titles include the ubiquitous Half Life series, Portal, team Fortress, Counterstrike and every Zombie hunters favorite, Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead II. They’re located in Bellevue Washington. www.valvesoftware.com
Joining Van Buren on the Panel was Tim Larking – Composer/ Sound Designer, Mike Morasky – Composer and Kelly Thornton – Sound Engineer.
They mostly discussed and showed us movies from Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 
II. During which time we got to understand the making of these games through a very unique approach. It actually seems like Valve may not be suffering from the too many chiefs and not enough Indians syndrome or the bloated ego problem that tends to get in the way of so many decent creative efforts being great.
As someone who routinely does voices for games, often for producers who don’t recognize me 6 weeks later, I was pleased to see that these guys not only developed relationships with their actors, but also included as part of their slides things like “Get actors input” or “Trust actor”. They don’t just remember the actors, they remember their performances, their contributions and perhaps even their birthdays, favorite colors and spouses names.
But beyond the actors, these guys continually kept sharing credit for their accomplishments with musicians and musical directors, their testers and even going so far as to discuss how everyone’s input on the games was not only welcome but paid attention to. The only people they didn’t thank by name were the Valve janitorial staff. Although these guys were so humble and committed to what they do, I wouldn’t be surprised if they also cleaned up the joint too.
At first, one can feel a little jealous. They have great resources and tools and becuase of self-funding they don’t have to bow to the pressures that many game developers have of needing to rush to market or skimp on one or another design facet. It simply makes one long for the slightly less commercial days of gaming.
Back to the audio. Their attention to detail is amazing and because their goal is to not have players turn off the audio, they have taken so many things into account, including using musical cues throughout the game to give players hints as to what may be coming around the bend. There was even talk about having to map every single doorway and window to allow for infinite possibilities of the player changing environments and making sure the sound changed with them. This might even include somebody changing environments by blasting a hole in a building and then using said hoe to exit or enter the building.
Some of the scene mapping they showed was mind boggling, with individual scenarios that might encompass over 120 different sounds happening at once.
On top of a 2 hour presentation, the panel spoke one one one til past midnight and were as gracious as they come
My only complaint is that the folks at valve don’t cast their net for talent into San Francisco. It would sure be nice to audition for some of this great work. And I can tell you that there are some S.F. actors that I get to work with who would be highly deserved of this caliber of work. Although, if you’re listening guys, me and my friends would be happy to come up to Bellevue and howl with the big dogs.
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