The Use of Voice in Portal 2

July 19, 2011 Kenneth Young 3

By Kenneth Young Portal 2 represents a real milestone for me. It’s the first game that, prior to even getting my grubby mitts on it, had me more excited about its prospective use of voice than any other aspect of the project. It’s a Valve game, so you trust that […]

Voice in Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins

May 16, 2010 Kenneth Young 16

I’m obsessed with the use of voice in games. I find it one of the most fascinating aspects of the medium. Most related discussions you might encounter, certainly as an audio practitioner, focus on processes relating to getting a good acting performance and how to best capture it – casting, […]

Interactive Audio Crimes in Heavy Rain

April 5, 2010 Kenneth Young 7

How OCD am I? I refused to fold the piece of card that came with Heavy Rain in to the intended origami figurine because I didn’t want to inflict any creases on it and, instead, recreated it, warts and all, using a blank piece of paper. That’s special :) Heavy […]

GDC 2010

March 14, 2010 Kenneth Young 3

It’s been a year since I posted anything here, and I haven’t been updating gamesound.org with the vim and vigour I aspire to. Sorry folks. I rather naively thought that after LittleBigPlanet had shipped I’d have a nice quiet year and be able to do a bit more writing – […]

Sackboy’s Voice – Full Of Eastern Promise

February 22, 2009 Kenneth Young 0

I’m back from a two week trip to Japan. It’s the longest and most far, far away holiday I’ve had for many years. There were lots of temples, photos, temples, walking, temples, eating, temples, a proposal of marriage and more temples. I even managed to make a few sound recordings; […]

The Music of LittleBigPlanet

February 17, 2009 Kenneth Young 0

An Eclectic Mix LittleBigPlanet is a physics based platformer for the PS3, featuring a built-in sandbox editor which allows players to build their own creations and then share them with the game’s community via the PlayStation Network. The game’s music was required to work in its Story Mode, that is the […]

Game Developers as Toilets

January 30, 2009 Kenneth Young 0

I haven’t been thinking about sound much this last week – been doing mainly music t’ings. In its place then, some silliness… At lunch yesterday the coders were discussing “what kind of programmer are you”: are you the kind of programmer that comes along and torpedoes the toilet lovingly constructed […]

Hypersensitivity to Repetition

January 18, 2009 Kenneth Young 6

I’ve been aware of it for a few years, but I’m becoming increasingly sensitive to sound repetition. Or, at least, my reaction to repetition has become more intense, usually resulting in me shouting at the TV and digging my nails into Mrs. Kenny’s leg with much gnashing of teeth and […]

Eraserhead and Library SFX

January 11, 2009 Kenneth Young 0

I finally got around to framing my Eraserhead poster; after 3 years of neglect it now has pride of place in our spare bedroom (which I have secret plans for as “Kenny’s Studio”, but don’t tell the Mrs). It’s questionable whether a bedroom is the best place for a disturbing […]