AAA, Indie or Mobile — Which One to Pursue as a Game Audio Designer

One of the hard choices you have to make in the decision to become a audio designer is whether to do this for AAA , Indie or mobile games. Of course you could do audio designer for more than one or all of these but there’s a couple reasons why its good to pick a more specific area of the discipline. These are:

• Focus: Whilst it is not an impossible task to focus your efforts on more than one face of games it is hard to balance developing skills for one of them much less all or more than one of them. Having focus on one allows you to develop your skills deeper into that particular area and specialise more in that field. This will help to reduce you being spread thin due to trying to cover all the bases.
• Passion/Interest: Choosing a specific area of games to focus on can allow you to get look for a career in audio which will hopefully satisfy your interests more. If you are more interested in it you are more likely to be passionate about things and motivated/dedicated to forming a fulfilling career.
• Employability: Specialising in one area helps to make you more employable to jobs which are looking for people with what you specialise in. If there are two people who are applying for the same job and the same level of skills about but one is more of a generalist and the other specialises in exactly what they look for then I imagine the person who has most experience in what they are looking for will get the job. Of course being a generalist has the benefits if done well of making you available to apply for a wider variety of gigs but its a risk.

Now how do you choice you may ask? Well obviously you can develop your own criteria but here’s some factors I think would help in making that choice.

What Do You Enjoy Making?

This may seem plain and just simple but what content/sounds do you enjoy making? Of course not all AAA games have the same sound and like wise for indies and mobile however the overarching general sound demands can be similar within these types. Do you like hyperealistic grand larger than life sounds that characterises a lot of AAA games or do you have more fun creating super unique stylised sounds that tend to come with indie titles or do you like the more simplistic but satisfying sounds that mobile games provide. Look at what sounds you like making and how they align with these facets of Game Development.

Complexity

Again not every AAA game is the same but generally they will tend to be more complex than indies which tend to be more complex than mobile games. This means the audio will demand more complexity as well. If that is something you want then AAA may be for you.

Skillset

What’s your current skillset suited to? If you already have a lot ofg experience making indie games then you may be good to continue to develop in that field. However skills in any area can always be developed; it just takes time.

Responsibility

Each role has a different level of responsibility. For AAA studios there are usually more people employed so responsibilities are divided into more and especially as a junior you might be playing a small (but still important) role. Whereas on the otherside, most indies are made by very small teams where audio may only be done by one person… You. If you want to dip your had in every bit of the audio of the game then this may be for you. Likewise mobile games may have only one person responsible for the audio however the audio requirements may be less in a mobile game which means there may not be as much responsibility.

Facilities

This again will depend on the studio and game but In-House Audio Facilities are more likely to present in big budget larger AAA studios whereas for indie games you may have to have your own equipment.Looking at what equipment you have already and what equipment you can get can give a good idea into what capabilities you may have in providing audio for these games (even though gear is not the be all and end all to good audio; some amazing sounds can be made from phone recorders).

Availability

What’s your location? What’s in your area. Are the studios nearby you AAA, indie or mobile. Are your connections and network mostly in a specific game development space. Of course you can always move for a job as well as with remote working becoming increasingly popular these days among companies have the opportunity to work from the comfort of your own home.

What Games Do You Play?

If you’re not entirely sure about any of the above I mentioned well then look at what games you play. What games are you drawn in by and can would love to bring the worlds alive.

So Final Verdict — My Personal Choice

So what do I want to do and why? I’ve decided I wouldn’t mind doing either AAA or Indie games. I Know I don’t want to go into mobile games and this is due to not really enjoying the games or the making the audio for these types of games. I know doing both is converse to what has been mentioned in the this blog but I enjoy and would enjoy the challenges of either and really enjoy playing both types.

Made a decision yourself? Let me know?

Now go make some noise!