Notice how Sound Design isnt even mentioned on the meme. That’s how far down that is in everyone’s minds.
But it should because we’ve been suffering for over a decade of flat non surround or abysmal volume mixing. Dialog that is just too quiet while everything else is loud. But I guess as long as we have separate volume sliders in game that’ll fix it. If only every game came with em.
Also we’ve been pushing graphics all the time but Sound has basically tanked since the invention of the Sound Blaster AWE64 or something. What’s a sound blaster? Well kids we used to buy sound Cards for our computers much like you do GPU cards. That’s how much sound tech has stagnated. We had 5/7.1 setups in the late 90s had games with EAX support now everything is just whatever, play sound.wav. I guess Dolby Atmos is a thing but it’s a thing with a subscription fee.
There was a point I used to turn down SFX because I wanted to listen to the music. At some pointed I started to turn down the music so SFX was more punchy like it used to be.
5.1 and 7.1 systems aren’t all that widespread, even in the music industry. Surround kinda sits in the same place vr does for me. It’s immensely cool, but it’ll never become standard due to hassle and lack of support.
Most of the recent innovation in sound has been trickled down from the music and film industries. Just a general increase in the capabilities of soft synths and a better understanding of foley, alongside dedicated in house recording studios have raised the bar of audio.
To be honest I agree with you that sound is overlooked, sound engineers truly are unsung heroes. I mean even when people point out the sound in a game, it’s usually directed at the composer.
Notice how Sound Design isnt even mentioned on the meme. That’s how far down that is in everyone’s minds.
But it should because we’ve been suffering for over a decade of flat non surround or abysmal volume mixing. Dialog that is just too quiet while everything else is loud. But I guess as long as we have separate volume sliders in game that’ll fix it. If only every game came with em.
Also we’ve been pushing graphics all the time but Sound has basically tanked since the invention of the Sound Blaster AWE64 or something. What’s a sound blaster? Well kids we used to buy sound Cards for our computers much like you do GPU cards. That’s how much sound tech has stagnated. We had 5/7.1 setups in the late 90s had games with EAX support now everything is just whatever, play sound.wav. I guess Dolby Atmos is a thing but it’s a thing with a subscription fee.
TLDR: what about sound
If the game requires you to use the volume sliders to have a decent sound design, then it’s kind of a “mix it yourself” game.
There was a point I used to turn down SFX because I wanted to listen to the music. At some pointed I started to turn down the music so SFX was more punchy like it used to be.
5.1 and 7.1 systems aren’t all that widespread, even in the music industry. Surround kinda sits in the same place vr does for me. It’s immensely cool, but it’ll never become standard due to hassle and lack of support.
Most of the recent innovation in sound has been trickled down from the music and film industries. Just a general increase in the capabilities of soft synths and a better understanding of foley, alongside dedicated in house recording studios have raised the bar of audio.
To be honest I agree with you that sound is overlooked, sound engineers truly are unsung heroes. I mean even when people point out the sound in a game, it’s usually directed at the composer.