Effective communication with your game audio team is essential for achieving the perfect audio experience for your game. As a project manager, knowing how to provide clear and constructive briefing and feedback is crucial for a smooth collaboration with your audio team. In this article, we’ll share valuable tips on mastering game audio communication to help you develop a strong relationship with your audio team and ensure the best results for your project.
Working on a game development project means that you’ll frequently interact with your music and audio team. Being able to offer descriptive and constructive briefing at the beginning of the relationship is key for building a solid partnership. Additionally, providing feedback on their work will help guide them towards creating music that best fits your game’s needs. In this article, we’ll explore steps to effectively communicate with your game audio team, from using reference tracks to offering positive reinforcement. Embrace these tips to become a fabulous client and achieve outstanding audio results for your game.
Are you working on a game development project? If so, briefing and giving feedback to a music/audio team will constantly be part of your routine.
Getting the team you’re working with to understand what you’re hoping for from them and their music may not be easy. Being able to offer descriptive and constructive briefing in the beginning of the relation is paramount for building up the partnership. Also, when the work is done, giving feedback on their work in order to help guide them towards creating music that fits your game needs the best is really important.
I’m Victor Hime, Lead Composer and Creative Art Director at Flutu Music. I love what I do and always spend some time working with my clients to understand as much as possible about their project and how the music would perfectly fit in it.
It’s quite normal that any game project needs a little bit of back and forth between the development team and the Game Audio team, and it is your job as the project manager to be the one to lead those communications. So, here are a few steps to help you communicate with your Game Audio Team:
- Use the Reference Tracks – Be specific when giving feedback
The clearer you are, the better your game will be. How does that work? Use reference tracks, present the Game Audio team with your game references. Know that it is part of our job to translate all your perspectives into musical ideas and sonic experiences.
Once the work is delivered use time-codes to pinpoint the parts you’re referring to and which parts you aren’t satisfied with. If you don’t like a track, specify what you don’t like about it – Don’t just say that you don’t like the track. That’s too general, and it would probably be demoralising to anyone hearing it, but the worst part is that it doesn’t really offer any specifics on what exactly doesn’t work for you or what is ‘wrong’ about it!
- Trust in your inner ear and share your thoughts
Only you know what you are aiming for in your game, so you need to guide the Audio Team to understand what comes to your mind. If a character sound or a song doesn’t match your goals, feel comfortable to explore your thoughts over it with us. For example, is it about the overall mood? The tempo? Provide the composer or sound designer with as many ways to understand what is going on as possible.
- Learn how to give positive reinforcement.
Learning positive reinforcement skills will build a stronger connection between you and the audio team. Both of you are deeply immersed in the game, so focus on what is already sounding good when giving your first feedback. Studies show that clients that use these kinds of communication tools can even get better prices on quotes, since everybody would be willing to work with you. Not only in music, but acknowledging what was done well and right nurtures confidence in the whole team when developing a game.
If you follow these instructions you will become our Fab client. Read more to know about what we consider a Fab Client.
Hey guys, thanks for reading the article. In my mind it is crucial to have a good communication between the teams in order to deliver great results.
As usual, I am always up for a chat about your game developing and how I can collaborate to add uniqueness and creativity to your project. Let me know more about what you have in mind by visiting the “Tell us More!” section of the website.
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Game Audio Communication
