I'm currently studying Audio Production in San Francisco, and hope to get a Bachelor's Degree with an emphasis on Audio Production here. But from looking at the jobs postings here, at Gamasutra, and at CreativeHeads.net, there are almost no audio jobs available. I was hoping to make sound effects and other audio assets for games, but it doesn't seem to be a position in high demand. Edit: From reading Tom Sloper's webpage, most audio assets are gotten from freelance audio people or companies, and are not hired onto the staff of developers themselves. I guess similar to Bay Area Sound? (http://www.basound.com/pages/home.html) I guess this explains why audio jobs aren't posted on these sites very often, yeah? So my question is, is there a decent demand for game audio people? And where would I look for such jobs, if not on game job sites? [Edited by - Guardian Legend on April 13, 2006 7:26:50 AM]

I believe audio jobs are rare, smaller companies tend to outsource their audio, and even at a big company audio designers are in a very small minority. Still, I think it's more a question about the jobs not being posted. With so few inhouse positions for audio, and so many people "doing music", the best way for employers to find the right person is probably through connections rather than postings unless they want to get swarmed with tons of demo music from people who are not really serious about working with games.

My advice to you is to get to know the people who might give you the jobs. Profile yourself as "that guy/girl who does sound for games" and go to every event and meeting you can find. Do some free indie projects to have a portfolio, and sooner or later you might hear of someone in your network who is looking for a sound designer or composer for professional work.

Good luck!

Audio jobs are rare simply because you only need 1 or 2 audio people per project compared to 10+ programmers and 20+ artists. However there is constant demand for audio because every game needs audio.

Most smaller developers will outsource their audio work but bigger developers and those publishers with internal development teams have in-house audio.

Guard, I still stand by what I said on my site. You need to get your chops doing non-game audio work, then you can either get a game audio job (with a company that has such a position) or offer your services freelance. Good luck.

Looks like I'll be applying to a lot of QA Tester jobs then. :P