LittleBigPlanet 2 was 10 last week! Boy does that make me feel oooooooold! To mark the anniversary, as with the first game, I thought it’d be fun to revisit the licensed soundtrack and put together a few playlists that feature some of the music we evaluated that didn’t make the final cut. There’s also a bit of musing on the subject after that but, again, to keep things focused I’ve...

I've spent quite a bit of time recently giving GameSound.org some love after a couple of years of neglect. I've never been particularly good at keeping the articles bang up to date with any kind of regularity, but that hasn't really mattered because the primary focus has always been for the site to act as a starting point for folks who are new to game audio. The links page has...

Holy moly – today is the 10th anniversary of LittleBigPlanet coming out in the UK! Where on earth has the last decade gone?! Oh yeah… The launch of LBP is always a somewhat bittersweet memory – the game had gone gold and shipped out to retailers worldwide but was then delayed and subsequently recalled due to a problem with the soundtrack that I had put together (doh!) but, once rectified, it went on to become one of the...

Tethered is an immersive VR strategy game in which you take on the role of a god-like spirit tasked with looking after your flock of ‘Peeps’, the cute but simple-minded inhabitants of the beautiful, floating archipelagos that you gaze down upon from your lofty seat amongst the clouds. This disembodied third person perspective sets the experience apart from the embodied, or implied-embodied, first person perspective employed by most other VR games and had...

It’s been so amazing to see people get excited by Knights And Bikes, and show their support and commitment by backing its Kickstarter campaign, that I felt compelled to make something which shows just how excited and passionate I am about it too! So, here’s a wee video I’ve put together about the work I did for the Kickstarter trailer – it will give you a bit more insight into what...

Using Wwise with Unity? Need doppler? You’re welcome! Those of you using Wwise with Unity may have noticed that there is no support for doppler shift. This is pretty mental given that Unity’s basic audio system offers doppler straight out of the box, so there’s obviously some kind of shenanigans afoot which prevents Wwise from getting hold of the information it needs from Unity. Fear not – I’ve spent a...

I was saddened to hear that Ralph Baer, creator of the first video game console, passed away yesterday. Baer was already 50 years old when the Magnavox Odyssey was released to the public in 1972, so I was somewhat surprised in 2009 to find that he was not only alive and kicking but that he had a website through which he made himself available. So, I mailed Ralph to ask...

Introducing a character can be a tricky business. This is especially true of those characters present throughout the gameplay experience – player characters, buddies, guides, narrators and their ilk. Game teams exposed to such characters over months and years of development become so familiar with them that evaluating their introduction, the final implementation of which is often conceived of and added to the game nearer the end of development, can...

GANG IESD co-chair Kenny Young speaks to Naughty Dog’s Phillip Kovats and Jonathan Lanier about the GANG award winning mix in The Last of Us. KY: Hi guys, thanks for agreeing to do this. Could you introduce yourselves for the record? PK: I’m Phil Kovats the audio lead here at Naughty Dog for The Last of Us. JL: I’m Jonathan Lanier, and I’m the audio programmer here at Naughty Dog....

Tearaway is an adventure game exclusive to the Sony PlayStation Vita handheld system. The player is tasked with guiding their little paper messenger buddy on a mission to deliver the message that is trapped inside their envelope head by escaping the paper world and reaching the player out in the real world. 4thwall-breaking madness ensues. Here’s a trailer to help get your head around that! httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0oxBviRGlU I was fortunate enough to...