Senior Audio Director & Music Director Rob Bridgett has worked on titles such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider - and has just released 100 Unusual, Novel and Surprising Ways to be a Better Sound Designer in Video Games, a handbook for game audio developers. Here, we're happy to share an excerpt from the book, the story behind the book + insights from Rob Bridgett on making the sound for Shadow of the Tomb Raider & more: Please share:







Sound Is Not A Service* (*Except when it needs to be)

– an excerpt from the book:





S hould you serve? Or dominate?

Before you try to choose or align yourself with one of these extreme positions, don’t bother, they are both the wrong place to be…

To begin, let’s start by thinking about this statement:

“Sound needs to be a principal collaborator in the creative vision of the entire game”

– GameAudioCulture

Many of you will take this as a rallying cry to storm the offices of upper management and demand equal space at the table. Perhaps rightly so. Sound has been relegated to the service end of the collaborative and creative industries for a long time now. The statement is indeed intended to help lift audio out of the service culture that it has more than occasionally become, but it isn’t intended to propel sound folks into the same seat as the creative director, or even worse, into a direct clash with your creative peers.

Yes, sound does need to be a principal collaborator in the creative process, but the work also needs to be executed on time and ideally within budget.

While it may be true that sound itself, at the creative and directorial-vision level isn’t a service, certain more practical parts and elements of sound production need to be a service.

There should ideally be members of the sound team who are sometimes principal collaborators, and at other times performing a service role. Context is everything. The ability to read the context and react accordingly to provide the right kind of sound ‘response’ in the right moment is the tricky stuff of human interaction. Certainly, trust and personality play the bigger role here. But this is the essential part of the role of sound on a creative team, and what I think is a strength in the kinds of people who generally tend to work in sound, is that they already seem to have this in-built- flexibility.

The role, approach and needs of sound are *fluid* throughout creation and execution, based on what is needed in that moment, and so must we be as sound professionals

It is important to really get your head around the fact that the role, approach and needs of sound are *fluid* throughout creation and execution, based on what is needed in that moment, and so must we be as sound professionals.

So, as I see it, two ‘stances’ of a sound creative may simultaneously exist.

1. Principal Collaborator Mode – a strong, directorial, visionary voice is necessary and required for working creatively to define and communicate the identity and vision of the sound. (Ideas)

2. Service Mode – no matter who or what is at fault, we’ll make it right and ensure you are happy with the results. We’ll get this thing out of the door. (Execution)

Two completely different modes that can absolutely, in fact must, co-exist, in order to create and execute the sound (and music and voice) in a game. This is a special tension that helps make the role more interesting (or at least that’s the way I like to see it).

There are also differing blends of these two modes than can often be adopted, whereby during the delivery of something on a deadline (service) a thoughtful comment or suggestion can be offered to improve whatever it is you are working on (collaborator). This may not be a ‘principal’ collaborator, but it is nonetheless a collaborative moment, and opportunity, that can be seized upon, and could eventually lead to more trust and more collaborative input in the future.

It’s never completely black and white. That is not to say there is no room to be creative on the service side, with lots of suggestions and ideas to improve, and similarly there can be room in the directorial visionary’s approach to listen, accommodate the ideas and thoughts of others, and to work to establish a vision that works for *everyone*.

The idea of taking a position (never begin with the extremes!), then leaning into the other position based on where the process dynamically goes, is at the heart of collaboration! Sometimes you will need to take an extreme position in extreme circumstances, but it’s not a healthy place to stay for long.

The idea of taking a position (never begin with the extremes!), then leaning into the other position based on where the process dynamically goes, is at the heart of collaboration

An enjoyable analogy can be found in this quote from clothing designer Errolson Hugh regarding the incorporation of an athletic stance in his design…

“We came up with this thing called an “all-conditions fit,” which was inspired by the way athletes stand and how they’re always in this sort of “ready” stance before they’re about to make a movement – flexing the limbs and coiling yourself together so that you can ultimately uncoil to move. So rather than drafting the patterns in a standard way, which would be a straight-standing still body, like how a suit is cut, we drafted them in motion. That gives this articulation about the range of motion and produces a really interesting silhouette.” – Errolson Hugh ACG interview 2016

In perhaps just the way that Errolson designed the clothing to accommodate a range of moves, from relaxed to high performance situations, the studio spaces, teams, cultures, tools and pipelines that we are responsible for should be similarly accommodating from that central ‘ready stance’ position – and not from the more rigid stances at each extreme. So, no matter where your day, week or year takes you, you’ll ideally always need to return to that central ‘ready’ stance position.

A vision without compromise is the vision of a single creator. However, the reality of a ‘vision’ in any multidisciplinary production environment is one of continual compromise and movement of ideas.



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More from Rob Bridgett:

The Sound of Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Rob Bridgett at GDC 2014: Better Sound Through Collaboration

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A big thanks to Rob Bridgett for the insights! You’ll find Bridgett on Twitter here

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