More GAC(k)!

Peter correctly points out that the hardware capabilities of today's machines far exceeds anything the industry is doing with it. I think the reason is two fold: 1) lack of confidence by producers and executives that investment in audio will result in more units sold; 2) the lack of integrated tools to give engineers and audio guys access to all that power.

Producer/Executive confidence is the hardest one. You can quote Spielberg all you want, but they'll go to their marketing and sales guy and say "show me a sales report where audio made a difference" and the sales guy will shrug and that will be the end of it. ROI, baby. It's a hard one, since this is primarily a follower market right now. Until someone does it, no one wants to do it. But once someone DOES do it - everyone wants to do it. So, we're going to continue to have "theatrical" orchestral scores that all sound the same, and licensed music playing in the background with little or no connection to the game. Yes, this is the way people play - they turn off their music and play their ripped playlist - but is that because it's what they WANT? Or because they've never really had music and/or a sound score compelling enough, and connected to the action enough, to make them want to listen to it more than once?

In order to make this happen, audio has to be a part of the game design plan from the very first meeting. It has to be an integrated part of the whole game design, not something that's brought in at first playable or later. These beefy audio systems require a well thought out implementation scheme to utilize - and that means code. You have to plan what events and actions you are going to need, and what you need your audio system to do for this game. That way, there is engineer time built into the schedule to accomplish the task (even if it's integrating a third party audio system). If this doesn't happen, the audio designer will rarely get the chance to get any code/implementation choices actually implemented.

Also - you will have to convince everyone that running 200 channels at once won't affect their framerate. Difficult at best.

Tools: We need them. XBOX and Playstation have great tools, which are unfortunately for us, platform specific. This means they are of little use to cross-platform developers, which is most of the development community. There are a few third party tool sets out there that do a reasonable job of covering the basics. Event driven, scripted, dynamic effects. This is all good stuff. But, it has to integrate with whatever code the team is using, and then events need to be written and implemented with the game - all requiring engineer time. (And if you want really good car engines, you're going to have to come up with your own technology) Yes, this is not that different from your basic "play sound here" coding, but since it's someone else's code, there's more that can (and will) go wrong. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I'm saying it's not foolproof. Installing FMOD doesn't solve your problems. You need to know what you're going to have it do, and be able to have allocated engineer time to do it.

Of course, on top of all this is the standard audio 5% rule of processor time and memory - which can kill even a modest sound design plan.

So, I agree with Peter, actually... but we have to understand WHY this is happening in our industry in order to be able to formulate a plan to do anything about it. We are at a point now where higher sample rates and surround sound are not going to add any more value to our games. What we need is complex integration, with designer accessible controls so that the designer can actually design. You know, like those video guys do.