Implementation IS Design

I just went back to SCAD to talk to students in game audio and noticed that a few folks had this disconnect between sound design and implementation—that they are completely separate things and designing sound is the fun part and putting it in game is this rote tedious 2nd step.

Implementation IS PART of designing the sound! Your vision for that sonic experience isn’t done until it’s actually in the game! Even in the most simple of circumstances, the way something sounds in your DAW is never how it’s going to sound in engine.

Often you just have an idea and bits and pieces of assets that don’t make sense until you crack open the game engine and build out the system that will make sense of all those elements to create a rad sonic experience.

These were intro classes, and they were just getting their feet wet with Unreal and Wwise, but I wanted to get them excited about using the tools. Implementation IS design. From DAW to engine, having that knowledge will let them bring whatever vision they have to life.