After finally submitting my bachelor thesis with the topic "Concepts and methods of musical composition for digital games, considering the effects on sound design" (it was written in german, so the original title is "Konzepte und Methoden der Musikgestaltung in digitalen Spielen unter Betrachtung der Auswirkungen auf das Sounddesign"), I often was asked on where I got the information I needed. So here are the resources that I used and which I highly recommend you to take a look at, if you are interested in Game Audio.
Websites:
gamasutra.com provides loads of articles on every aspect of game development, including audio and it also has an own job-board for jobs in the games industry. If you are specialized on audio you will be rewarded with interesting posts e.g. by Rob Bridgett about Mixing Games and describing the development and production process of several AAA-Games. If you want to learn more about the other departments you will find a lot of interesting posts there as well.
develop-online.net is the website of the correspondent Magazine and contains articles, interviews and Job-offerings. Similar to gamasutra it covers every aspect of game creation and therefore has great articles on game audio.
designingsound.org is all about sound and music for different media, as the name suggests. The articles are therefore detailed and there are interesting features and interviews to contemporary AAA games.
The Website of the Game Audio Network Guild www.audiogang.org is a helpful resource as well, as also non-members have access on some of the blog-posts, e.g. by Jesse Harlin.
On www.game-ost.com/ and www.squareenixmusic.com/ there are lots of interviews with famous game composers. Some articles on one website are similar to the other, but not all of them. In those interviews composers give insights on their personal background and career, their projects and their evaluations on current and upcoming changes in the industry.
Another Website with its focus on game sound design is gamesounddesign.com where you can find articles on interesting topics that are also hands-on, e.g. how to overcome a creative block or how you can improve your skills as a sound designer.
gamesound.org offers some older articles on game audio, as well as links to current posts on other websites - which can help as a good overview too.
On www.gamedev.net you can find various tutorials on many aspects of game creation, even for complete newbies and also audio.
www.originalsoundversion.com is all about music composition for games and offers interesting features and interviews. The fastest way to navigate through the site is looking for certain composers or games.
On the website www.mycrisis.com the team of Crytek publishes their development diaries and talks about their departments and what their individual tasks are. Furthermore there are interviews with their employees, who are also always asked what they would recommend people to get a foothold in the games industry. And on www.crydev.net you can find detailed tutorials on working with middleware tool FMOD in the Cryengine.
Books:
"Game Sound: An Introduction to History, Theory, and Practice of Video
Game Music and Sound Design" (2008) by Karen Collins is a true classic by now, offering a substantial theoretical overview on audio in games. You will find the history of game audio as well as analyses on the singularities and social repercussions of the medium game. Technical aspects are not part of the book and as it was written in 2008, current games and methods are not mentioned.
"The Game Audio Tutorial: A practical Guide to Sound and Music for interactive Games" (2011) written by Dave Raybould and Richard Stevens illuminates the whole audio level of games theoretically and practically teaches implementation working in Unreals UDK. They offer the reader lots of different tutorial levels and downloadable additional content. This book is not only informative but also entertaining, due to their writing-style.
"The complete guide to Game Audio" by Aaron Marks offers a great overview on game audio. There are two things that make this book unique: 1. It contains lots of interviews with industry "celebrities" with lists of their gear and questions about their way of working, and 2. It has a chapter on contracts with examples and prices.
A book that I unfortunately read after finishing my thesis was Winifred Phillips awesome "A Composer's Guide to Game Music" which I highly recommend you, if you are looking for game music specific material. She covers really everything you need to know about game music on the one hand and you can read how much it matters to her on the other, what made it really inspiring to read this book. Everytime I read in it I received a hint to improve the music I was working on at that time. If you did not read it yet, go now and buy it. You won't regret it.
A book that I unfortunately read after finishing my thesis was Winifred Phillips awesome "A Composer's Guide to Game Music" which I highly recommend you, if you are looking for game music specific material. She covers really everything you need to know about game music on the one hand and you can read how much it matters to her on the other, what made it really inspiring to read this book. Everytime I read in it I received a hint to improve the music I was working on at that time. If you did not read it yet, go now and buy it. You won't regret it.
You did not have enough? Go to gamessound.com for even more links.
Best regards
Marie
