GameSoundCon this year was great! I was working the event as part of Pyramind's floor team and got to sit in on many of the presentations. While they were all useful in terms of information, they strove towards the loftier goal of predicting a fundamental shift in the direction of the industry. Brian Schmidt set the pace in his early talks on game audio technology by suggesting that the terminology of "gamer" and the "gaming" industry is already antiquated in a day where games are ubiquitous.
Everyone, not just some niche teen male market, is playing games. Everyone has games and even a gaming platform with them at all times in their smartphone, ipad, Kindle, or other mobile device. Essentially, culture is absorbing games into the more broadly defined "entertainment" industry. Children grow up with games and even use them as learning tools in school. The "Digital Natives" can be frighteningly adept with technology.
Other talks I was able to hear included Paul Lipson's talks on interactive game scoring and several hours of FMOD tutorials by Stephan Shutze, who also pointed the way to the future of the industry with examples of "generative" game music that will be designed so that it is never heard the same way twice.
The functionality of FMOD has a ways to go yet, but the future of game music is not a static block of sound that triggers or loops, but a tapestry of interwoven musical fragments designed to play nicely together and compose themselves on the spot to match player interaction. We can already see elements of this style of implementation today in many releases, but the ideal has not yet been reached and the tools get better every year.
In short, I was very excited to attend and I'm fired up to get out there and implement many of the techniques and strategies that were discussed.
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