    |
| |
Cutting edge technologies such as the internet and gaming have opened up areas of unprecedented growth in audio employment, which has in turn spilled over to other areas of the audio industry.
A Brave New World
The rise in music downloading, webcasting, and in-game popular music over the last few years has caused the touring business and its supporting industries to grow exponentially. Exposed to more new music, fans can't wait to see their favorite bands live and are attending shows in droves. Even musical instrument sales are up, as fans try to learn to play their favourite songs. Consider this: the least played soundtrack song on a Madden Football game enjoys more plays per year than the biggest worldwide radio hit!
Setting the Mood
The already gargantuan video game industry is predicting growth of 60% in the next ten years. Sound in video games isn't limited to songs playing in the background, though. In a video game, an entire interactive 3-dimensional world is created to follow every aspect of the game. Imagine designing sounds for a virtual creature. What might its footsteps sound like? Its breath? Its roar? What sound might it make when it crushes an SUV with one footstep? Or imagine a sports game. How do you capture the snap of the ball, a touchdown run, or a devastating mid-field collision? Actors not only appear in movies these days, you're just as likely to find an A-list Hollywood actor recording voices for a video game... and for that sports game, of course, you need the voices of the real sportscasters.
Developing a video game is a huge responsibility. Each department, including audio and graphics, work simultaneously on all aspects of the game and post their updates to a central server. As the various departments interact with each other, vying for data space so everyone's material will fit on the final disc, the game gradually takes shape. The audio component of the game itself is not premixed in advance like a CD or MP3. The mix happens in real time as you play the game at home. Not only does the game sound adapt itself specifically to your speaker setup, special effects are added by your game console as you play, responding to your every move. This "interactive" mixing is one of the most exciting innovations in the audio world today.
The Leading Edge of Innovation
Large gaming companies often have exclusive creation tools to create an entire world's worth of sounds. These exclusive tools are almost always subject to "nondisclosure agreements," which basically means no employees are allowed to discuss anything about them or what they do.
OIART is the first audio education program in North America to be registered as a game developer with Creative Labs, a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products for the personal computer and the Internet. Three full-time OIART faculty members have full access to these kinds of 3-D audio tools, and have already incorporated them into our program. The future of audio is exciting indeed and OIART, among the first to teach the industry standard Pro Tools(tm) software, continues to lead the way.
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
