Today I’m sitting down with Joel Green. Joel is a professional sound designer, helping to generate amazing audio for game titles such as Need for Speed: Undercover, Mass Effect 2 and 3, Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition, and is currently the Producer / Audio Director at Cloudhead Games working on the VR title The Gallery: Six Elements.

From there got hired onto Bioware’s team to work on Mass Effect and Dragon Age titles

Took time off to learn C# and Unity

Found position at Cloudhead Studios on Vancouver Island

Rural Living + High Technology

We don’t need to live in cities to work on games.

Be willing to start with big ideas and expectations that get whittled down to the core idea of what something is.

If you shoot for the stars — even if you fail — you’ll at least be in outer space.

Bioware’s employees have an extensive collection of larping gear, weaponry, and armor.

Mass Effect 2 was a highlight experience in Joel’s career

Seeing a game come to fruition is incredibly rewarding

Virtual Reality is so new that every step into the technology is defining the medium

Everything being done in VR is breaking new ground

Audio in VR has a number of new considerations to take in such as Binaural listening

We have a huge discussion on Binaural recording

The Dark Crystal was freakin’ terrifying

Implementing orchestral music is a challenge in VR

Getting the player to look where you want them to is a challenge within VR — you have to figure out how to draw attention naturally

VR won’t only change the gaming world. It’s going to be a global shift in how we communicate

VR has the ability to create incredibly great things and incredibly dark things