Gaming Audio Engineer
Careers Explorer:
Create the sounds and audio to bring a video game to life.
Overview
The Gaming Audio Engineer plays an integral role in game design. From characters’ voices, sound effects and music, you’re responsible for the game’s soundtrack, which needs to encapsulate the game’s essence.
Your creative skills in sound will be used create the appropriate atmosphere, tempo and overall effect of the game.
You may need to audition voice actors or compose and engineer your own music, and you’ll be working alongside other sound professionals including sound technicians, composers and musicians.
Once the sound effects are in place, you’ll set to work editing, mixing and mastering all the different elements to make a seamless soundtrack, and ultimately help create the atmosphere desired by the game producer.
Technological aptitude of audio software is essential in order to produce the best effects, and you’ll need to communicate your vision effectively to the rest of your team. You’ll need to be ultra-aware of the everyday noises happening around you and to incorporate these in your work.
Top 5 Tasks
- Create, update, maintain and add to sample and sound libraries
- Develop the sound concept for a project
- Assist in post-production
- Record, layer and produce sounds and sound effects for a desired impact
- Compose and engineer music.
Salary
At entry level you could expect to earn around £18,000 per year, while the average salary for someone with more than five years’ experience is around £23,000. Experienced audio engineers can command around £40,000.
Am I Suited?
- Team player
- Good communicator
- Technically-minded
- Creative
- Music lover
The audio industry is dominated by males with only about 5% being female. The Audio Engineering Society (AES) has tried to address this by sponsoring female students to attend conferences and initiating company schemes.
Qualifications
Although formal qualifications aren’t essential, a strong background in audio engineering, music mixing, music technology or sound design is beneficial.
As competition for entry into sound design is getting higher, it’s becoming increasingly common for new entrants to have HNDs, foundation degrees and honours degrees in subjects including music, sound/audio engineering and sound design.
Progression
