Sound in Videogames and Movies a Different “Mindset”

You might think that the work of a sound effects person or a voice actor or a film composer would be essentially the same when working on either a game or a movie. After all, they are trying to mostly accomplish the same goals on either format. But Kane Minkus and Nick Thomas of SomaTome, an audio production team that has worked in the music, film and game industries, claim there is a gap between film and videogame audio which makes the leap from films to videogames difficult for those working in audio.

“Audio is always audio to some degree. If you are going to bring an actor to a studio and record him, it is not like it is a whole different world completely,” Minkus told GamesIndustry.biz. “But there are mindsets, there are nuances, and there’s a lot of production choices that we find make a huge difference between films, videogames, casual games, mobile – you know, all the different platforms.”

“When we take on new composers, film composers who are really extraordinary in film, it really takes them 6 to 8 months to get their heads around games – the production mindset and the way you think about them and craft the audio and craft the music,” he continued.

Those working with sound effects also encounter this same issue.

“Same thing with sound effects. If we take a post-production guy from the film world and put him into games, it takes months of training his ear and getting him to notice what subtleties really make the difference between the character in those sounds and the audio in the game world.”

Thomas says that while sci-fi and fantasy movies are much closer to games, your average movie is based on reality. “You are dealing with a lot more synthetic material. Movies, for the most part, are based upon real content. You’re talking about humans interacting with organic materials. You aren’t talking about such a wide variation of possibilities.”

It’s an interesting topic, because while I appreciate good audio in a game, I rarely if ever think about the challenges when faced with an entirely fictional world that needs to have sound created for it.