Customer Reviews

The Complete Guide to Game Audio: For Composers, Musicians, Sound Designers, and Game Developers

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book on recommendation of a friend in the video game industry. Be away of what this book is and what it isn't. This is not a book on how to write audio for video games. This is an introductory book to audio and its role in the video game industry, and how to get into the industry. This book contains no technical information, as one might hope, about computer audio technologies such as Direct music or any others. If you already know how digital audio, MIDI, and mixers work then most of this book will bore you to tears.
I have no doubt that, if you are looking for the information which is in this book it is good. The presentation is longwinded and very centered around the author rather than the topic itself it seems. At times, the book seems to lose all relevance to the audio industry. The interview with established video game artists are interesting, however I didn't find in them anything that I hadn't learned by playing around for a hours with recording techniques.
In conclusion, there are better books on the market in all regards except for the video game audio industry notes. For that I have found no better source, however it is wrapped in information which I already know, and that I found nearly impossible to sit through.

The Complete Guide To Game Audio by digital audio expert and music composer Aaron Marks is a solid resource for all composers, musicians, sound designers, and game developers which covers everything from the essential skills for making a living in the exciting world of video and computer game audio, to searching for and landing a job in the field, to how much to charge, as well as a wealth of tips, tricks, and techniques for creating exciting and suitable music. An accompanying CD-ROM contains music and sound effect samples, demo versions of sound editing programs, interviews with composers and sound designers, and much, much more. The Complete Guide To Game Audio is confidently recommended, especially for neophyte musicians looking to make their mark in a growing and popular field.

This is a terrific book for all-around beginners, but if you are an advanced composer that's just lacking game industry experience-- this book is equally as valuable. I did skip past pages here-and-there, because I already knew about a particular subject-- but I still use this book to help me through a certain business procedure or to look up a sample entertainment contract. This was definitely worth the money.

Great book, and ignore that first review where it talks about lack of coverage of developer issues. The term developer is not used the same way in the game industry as it is in the more general software world. Developer does not mean programmer. Game programmers use the term programmer (imagine that!). A developer is someone who works in a broader role to get the game created (or developed), like say a producer or project manager or whatever. It is not the narrow term that we all have come to know and love in other areas of software development. Maybe those chapters on how to get into the industry might do you some good after all, eh?

I found this book an excellent resource for a composer like me. Not only does it addresses elementary issues, but takes readers into intermediate topics which are very useful for someone getting into gaming audio.

I've been working in the field of game audio on the content side for about 5 years. I got this book as I was starting out and I found it a quick, easy read that offered alot of helpful insight and pretty much everything Marks said has held true in my experience. There are people complaining here that this book doesn't offer deep technical information or insight on how to provide content or help with audio programming and that's true. Maybe the title could have been clearer - it's more an idea of what game audio is about and what it's like to work in that field. But if that's what you're looking for, it's a quite worth reading and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to know how to break into the industry on the audio side.

This book contains very good and valuable information for those wanting to get into the game industry, unfortunately it was written in 2000, so most of the information is completely old for today standards, specially in this field.

This book is very well written, its easy to go through it quickly. One of the features I really like is the different interviews with game music composers asking everything from equipment to techniques to inspiration.

This book gives a detailed look into the industry, don't expect to learn how to compose from buying this book. This book is for musicians that are beginning or are already working with computer games and need to know about the industry. Sorry but there will never be books around pretending to teach you how to compose music, composing like anything else is something that you learn by doing and not by reading books. But if you are a musician already, and love computer games, then you won't regret this book.

This is a great book for those composers and sound designers wanting to break into the gaming industry. I do not understand why many people read this book hoping to find technical audio information, but this is NOT a TECHNICAL AUDIO or ENGINEERING book. This book is in the same vein as Jeff Rona's Reelworld book or Richard Davis's Complete Guide to Filmscoring.

Invaluable industry advice and at preparing your audio demo reels, and making connections. Must have for any aspiring game music composer or sound designer.

Although an o.k. book, I have to agree with "mysticmusing" in his criticism. The industry advice is probably invaluable to professional or budding audio dudes, but it fills up half the book..!

There are very few specfic examples of actual techniques for composition, sound effect development or integration. There are no concrete examples of game audio as implemented within any game engine - be it by C+ or through e.g. DirectMusic.

All in all this book has very little to tell people that don't already master all the great techniques and tools. And if you do master those techniques and tools, I suspect half of this book would be old news.