GWJ Conference Call Episode 551

PlayerUnknown: Battlegrounds, FTL, Mothership (BG), Ballz, Telltale on Mobile, Sound Design in Games - Audible landscapes that tell a story, Your Emails and More!

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This week Amanda, Allen, Julian and Cory talk soundscapes!

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Show credits

Music credits: 

B3 - BoxCat Games - http://box-cat.com/ - 26:32

eCommerce - BoxCat Games - http://box-cat.com/ - 46:00

Comments

00:01:56 Heroes of the Storm
00:05:28 PlayerUnknown's: Battlegrounds
00:15:44 FTL
00:16:28 Mothership (boardgame)
00:19:44 Nier: Automata
00:22:30 Ballz (mobile)
00:24:01 Telltale Games on mobile
00:26:32 Sound Design in Games
00:46:00 Your Emails

Julian wants a pony! You heard it here first.

I know this isn't the thread for it, but I have a BOLD PRESICTION:

Playerunknown's Battleground is going to be GWJ's community game of the year.

I know this because it's multiplayer and both Rabbit and Amoebix love it, and ever since 2015 it's been impossible for anything but a multiplayer game that Rabbit and Amoebic love to be anything but game of the year (See also: Rocket League and Overwatch).

Congrats on being tastemakers!

EDIT:

Also, what button for clearing the bottom row in Ballz?

I wonder if anyone ever wrote Ken Levine to blame him for their spontaneous phobias about spiders and monkeys due to System Shock 2.

I'm baffled by the love for Ballz.

It has a *fatal* flaw, in that the precise moment when you lift your finger off the touchscreen often results in your aim shifting enough that you make a completely different shot than the one you intended.

It's like playing Peggle against someone who's constantly nudging your elbow.

Odd. I just reinstalled FTL for the first time in years.

The only real goal I have left in the game is to get a crew 100% composed of those guys who don't need oxygen and then just fight with my air locks open the whole time.

The bit of NieR Automata talk was delightful.

Hooray for Amoebic hosting again.
I'm only partway through listening so I don't know if it came up during the topic portion, but Inside has some of the best sounds design I've heard in a game. I think it's part of the monthly humble bundle currently as well.

Jonman wrote:

I'm baffled by the love for Ballz.

It has a *fatal* flaw, in that the precise moment when you lift your finger off the touchscreen often results in your aim shifting enough that you make a completely different shot than the one you intended.

It's like playing Peggle against someone who's constantly nudging your elbow.

I found this is solved by using a stylus.

Also, I've gotten 254 as my high score, but I had to use a continue so I'm not sure it counts.

Hooray for Amoebic having first seat again, watch out Shawn/Sean.
Sound has always been super important to me, because I'm hyper sensitive to sound and have a musical ear. I remember listening to a Bethesda podcast prior to the release of Skyrim in which one of the sound designers explained how he "engineered" sounds and it was absolutely fascinating. Amanda's right, as someone absolutely in love with games, I really enjoying knowing "how the sausage is made", even though I completely lack the talent for it.
It's not just the sound effects, it's also the music that makes it for me. Favorites of mine include Jeremy Soule, Mark Morgan, Austin Wintory, Ben Prunty (not just FTL, he did this great OST for a little gem of a game called Gravity Ghost).
Anyhow, loved the episode, see you all next week.

Anything big planned for episode 555?

Little Nightmares has some fantastic sound design. Just sayin'.

I do think foley artists go a little overboard sometimes. I can't watch romantic movies or TV shows-- comedic or otherwise-- because whenever two people kiss the foley artist make it sound like two snails being pulled out of their shells with a toilet plunger.

Also, I'd just like to add:

473 on Ballz! Yeah!

Sound design has to be one of the first emergent feature of games. Even the strictly linear Super Mario Brothers has context-sensitive sounds, and its sound design was stellar. That's one key difference between sound design in film and in games - in films you can focus on emotion and setting and character. In games, you have to have all of that, but it must also serve the game's design and gameplay. Especially in stereo or directional sound designs, the sound must not only be evocative, it must also place the source of the sound dynamically, as if you were "there." A gamer must be able to pinpoint rather exactly where a sound source is coming from, in a 360 degree arc around them. That sound must indicate what the sound source is doing or what its game state is, and it must be evocative of the situation.