Hey, I would like to know whether all composers and sound designers expected to accept programming duties, or is that itself a specific role within game audio? I understand that in the graphics department there is typically a distinction between the artists and programmers, is that true of audio too? Perhaps a more suitable question would be, once you can call yourself a 'general' composer, producer and sound designer, what else do you need to be able to do in order to work with video games? There doesn't seem to be much advice on the internet about this, and I'm guessing it's something that others are wondering about too. Thanks

Quote: Perhaps a more suitable question would be, once you can call yourself a 'general' composer, producer and sound designer, what else do you need to be able to do in order to work with video games?

Making decent music. :D

As far as I was involved in projects, I never had to do any programming myself and I do not believe a composer needs those. Making good, believable mockups and decent mixes of music is already a big task, so I don't really think so. But then I don't have that much experience in the gaming industry.

Cheers,
Michal

It's useful and some companies will be looking for designers also with programming experience.

It's not essential though, if you are looking for an in-house game audio position it's more important that you have a knowledge of audio implementation & sound design. If you can show you can use one or more of popular middleware, such as FMOD designer or WWise then that will do the job.

I don't know of any in-house sound designers who don't do audio implementation. Most people do 50/50 audio assets & implementation. Music skills is sometimes a requirement, but it is more often a 'bonus' skill for getting an in-house game audio job.

The reason why programming is an added bonus is you can tweak the audio engine yourself as it's required for audio. Focus on sound design & implementation (which are requirements) first though before programming (which is a bonus skill).

Except for the really large game companies, most game studios will only have ONE AUDIO GUY. That's right, so think about what you would need to know to be the only audio guy for hte company.