Music in games article

For all the talk of graphics cards and processors these days you tend to forget the dear old sound card. Its very easy to get thrown into a pile of talk about Full Screen Anti Aliasing and Texture mapping, and how many polygons it can process, or what its stats for floating point calculations are. A factor that can be easily forgotten in the games world is the place of sound. Its no mistake that when I see some get their head chopped off in the movie Gladiator I got this urge to shout 'Headshot!', like they do in Unreal Tournament. Just like in the movies, sound is something that can be forgotten, but if it is done badly it will have people staying away in droves.

Today GameSpy have had a chat with Anvil Chorus about working for Weapons Factory Software and about the world of sound in games. Anvil began working with games by working in the MOD community. He did the sound for the popular Weapons Factory mod for Quake 2. Its an interesting insight into the world of making music, and indeed making music for games, and tells us interesting story's and interesting lessons, "Communicate with your peers[sic]. Find out what they think works best. It will always be "the other persons'" taste that you want to cater to. If it appeals to them and to you, then you have reached goal number 1"