You should read The Media Equation by Reeves and Nass. In their research they found that people are far influenced by poor quality audio than poor quality video. It seems countintuitive, but the researched showed it to be true.
Everyone from the top down constantly talks about how important audio is. They talk about how it's 30-50% of the experience and how good audio can make or break a game. However, when the rubber hits the road it's the first thing to be cut, it has the lowest portion of the budget, the least amount of people per project, and little to no programming time allocated (why reinvent the wheel right?). Eye candy makes great review fodder and box art. It's time devs stopped paying lip service and actually allocated the resources needed to make audio on par with other elements in games. The excuse that everyone is listening on $10 PC speakers or mono TV speakers is a pile of BS.
They need to get audio folks in on projects at the same time as everyone else. It makes no sense to cram all things audio (planning, design, creation, and implementation) into the last 6 months of a 3 year dev cycle.
They make some outstanding hardware, but they are far from infallable. Of course anti-MS/pro-Apple forces are slamming this player when Apple doesn't even make a portable video device.
A Slashdot thread bashing Microsoft and Creative Labs. What next dogs sleeping dogs, water falling from the sky, gravity pulling things towards the earth? Yes, we all know Apple is the king of cool and never makes any shitty hardware... that Newton thing worked out real well.
No other film has come close to bringing sci-fi to life for me. Star Wars is a soap opera in space, including the "dead father" that comes back to life as an unexpected character. The Matrix was pretty cool (the first one, the last 2 were lame), but it didn't have the strength of character, story and acting that Blade Runner has. It's one of my favorite flms of all time.
Is Dvorak even relevant any more? In the last year any of his articles I have come across are rants based on his own preferences with conclusions that have no basis in reality. Maybe he had a clue 10 years ago, but not now.
If anyone goes after Apple they are the bad guy, but if they go after anything MS does and crack it it's fair game. Sometimes the hypocrisy on this site is astounding. If you are going to cry foul over Real then you have to cry foul over anyone that does this type of thing.
This thing just read as another "things were better when" piece. Music is music and how it's created is secondary to the results. I don't see all the constraints that he is talking about and I have worked in game audio for 6 years. Games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights were made better with orchestral sounding tracks. Synth sounding tracks would have made the experience less in my opinion.
He cites the example of "Citizen Kane" like a lot of people do when they want to invoke the idea that older is often better. Now, I may get flamed for this, but I didn't think "Citizen Kane" was the best movie of all time. I can see in the context of when it was made how ground breaking it was and how so many films have stood on it's shoulders since then. On the other hand people have gone beyond Kane in writing, acting and cinematography. Just as we have gone beyond the limitations of the SID chip and it's ilk. If I want an electronic sounding track I have that option. If I want a lush orchestral score I have that option. It's about choice and saying that trying to imitate an orchestra with a computer is a bad thing is narrow minded. Just because you can make weird sounds on a SID chip doesn't mean that it's more "innovative". The music from that era used standard structures and harmonies just as game music does today. It's just that sometimes it was hard to tell because the sounds were so primitive.
How many people could listen to the score for Hordes of the Underdark and say it was all synths? No many because the music stands on it's own. It's like saying that we shouldn't bother trying to create realistic lighting in games because it will never be like reality. When he says, "It's cheaper to use live orchestra than synthesizers." he betrayed his ignorance. I've worked with both Jeremy Soule and Jack Wall that he quotes in the piece and I can assure you they would both dispute that statement heartily. It's based on one composers ability and that's far from a good sampling.
Lastly, he is talking to people that for the most part made music when the entire codebase for a game could be in a persons head. These days it's extemely difficult to find people that are both good composers AND good programmers. Those that are rarely have to look for work in games, it usually comes to them. Systems are far more complex now and to be a master in two worlds is a rare talent. Chip tunes are cool in a retro kind of way, but even when they were the latest and greatest I felt they were inadequate. They always felt to me like the composers were doing the best they could with a toy piano.
P.S. - I know it's nit picking, but he also flings terms around like channels and voice without actually knowing what they mean. He might have done a bit more research first.
It's going to take a lot more than a UI for a music program to make people "switch". Also, running iTunes does not make you at home with the Mac style interface if all you've ever used is a PC.
Agreed, it's way too much for an old game. Nintendo is cashing in on nostalgia. Can't believe they have the balls to chastise the industry for the state of games when they live on remakes and re-releases.
This isn't like the old days where there was one mast copy. You can dub a dupe of the final mix any time, it's nothing and if it's on DAT then it's at 48K at most, not a big difference.
How do you come to that conclusion? Are you assuming that the "master tapes" are recorded at a higher bitrate and sample rate? When I or anyone I know records they record at 48K(or higher) and maybe 24 bit, but when we do a final mix we convert to 44K and 16 bit to go directly to CD.
It's a different world over there game wise. In that context it probably makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the Japanese fanboys that think that wacky +Japanese = awesome. Sometimes it just ends up being stupid.
That's BS. Almost every card out there supports at least EAX 2.0. It's a matter of choice and most devs put more money and time into eye candy because it gets the quick results and the good box shots. It's all about choice and since a lot of people haven't bothered to sit down and listen to a game in proper surround they have no idea what they are missing.
As a game audio guy I read that article with both a "hell yeah!" and a pissed off feeling. I'm so sick of people saying how important audio is, but not giving it the time and resources it deserves.
He didn't want to. He stated that and knowing how bitchy and whiney people get when they pay for something I can see why. Hell, they're usually bitchy and whiney when they get a service for free.
If it wasn't for MS we have no idea where Halo or Bungie would be today. I doubt very much they would have got the support they needed from Take 2. They could have been another gaming footnote if it wasn't for the infusion of resources from MS.
Slashdot Mirror
Audigy supports 5.1 in gaming, but not DVDA because part of the spec for consumer DVDA is that digital out is disabled to prevent copying.
Hey smartass I missed a word, I guess the end of the world is.
You should read The Media Equation by Reeves and Nass. In their research they found that people are far influenced by poor quality audio than poor quality video. It seems countintuitive, but the researched showed it to be true.
Everyone from the top down constantly talks about how important audio is. They talk about how it's 30-50% of the experience and how good audio can make or break a game. However, when the rubber hits the road it's the first thing to be cut, it has the lowest portion of the budget, the least amount of people per project, and little to no programming time allocated (why reinvent the wheel right?). Eye candy makes great review fodder and box art. It's time devs stopped paying lip service and actually allocated the resources needed to make audio on par with other elements in games. The excuse that everyone is listening on $10 PC speakers or mono TV speakers is a pile of BS.
They need to get audio folks in on projects at the same time as everyone else. It makes no sense to cram all things audio (planning, design, creation, and implementation) into the last 6 months of a 3 year dev cycle.
You are the best programmer in the world. No, I'm serious you should run the NSA or something. Man, I wish I was you.
They make some outstanding hardware, but they are far from infallable. Of course anti-MS/pro-Apple forces are slamming this player when Apple doesn't even make a portable video device.
A Slashdot thread bashing Microsoft and Creative Labs. What next dogs sleeping dogs, water falling from the sky, gravity pulling things towards the earth? Yes, we all know Apple is the king of cool and never makes any shitty hardware... that Newton thing worked out real well.
No other film has come close to bringing sci-fi to life for me. Star Wars is a soap opera in space, including the "dead father" that comes back to life as an unexpected character. The Matrix was pretty cool (the first one, the last 2 were lame), but it didn't have the strength of character, story and acting that Blade Runner has. It's one of my favorite flms of all time.
Is Dvorak even relevant any more? In the last year any of his articles I have come across are rants based on his own preferences with conclusions that have no basis in reality. Maybe he had a clue 10 years ago, but not now.
If anyone goes after Apple they are the bad guy, but if they go after anything MS does and crack it it's fair game. Sometimes the hypocrisy on this site is astounding. If you are going to cry foul over Real then you have to cry foul over anyone that does this type of thing.
This thing just read as another "things were better when" piece. Music is music and how it's created is secondary to the results. I don't see all the constraints that he is talking about and I have worked in game audio for 6 years. Games like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights were made better with orchestral sounding tracks. Synth sounding tracks would have made the experience less in my opinion.
He cites the example of "Citizen Kane" like a lot of people do when they want to invoke the idea that older is often better. Now, I may get flamed for this, but I didn't think "Citizen Kane" was the best movie of all time. I can see in the context of when it was made how ground breaking it was and how so many films have stood on it's shoulders since then. On the other hand people have gone beyond Kane in writing, acting and cinematography. Just as we have gone beyond the limitations of the SID chip and it's ilk. If I want an electronic sounding track I have that option. If I want a lush orchestral score I have that option. It's about choice and saying that trying to imitate an orchestra with a computer is a bad thing is narrow minded. Just because you can make weird sounds on a SID chip doesn't mean that it's more "innovative". The music from that era used standard structures and harmonies just as game music does today. It's just that sometimes it was hard to tell because the sounds were so primitive.
How many people could listen to the score for Hordes of the Underdark and say it was all synths? No many because the music stands on it's own. It's like saying that we shouldn't bother trying to create realistic lighting in games because it will never be like reality. When he says, "It's cheaper to use live orchestra than synthesizers." he betrayed his ignorance. I've worked with both Jeremy Soule and Jack Wall that he quotes in the piece and I can assure you they would both dispute that statement heartily. It's based on one composers ability and that's far from a good sampling.
Lastly, he is talking to people that for the most part made music when the entire codebase for a game could be in a persons head. These days it's extemely difficult to find people that are both good composers AND good programmers. Those that are rarely have to look for work in games, it usually comes to them. Systems are far more complex now and to be a master in two worlds is a rare talent. Chip tunes are cool in a retro kind of way, but even when they were the latest and greatest I felt they were inadequate. They always felt to me like the composers were doing the best they could with a toy piano.
P.S. - I know it's nit picking, but he also flings terms around like channels and voice without actually knowing what they mean. He might have done a bit more research first.
That's a huge load of crap. If you want to point to anecdotal evidence I can say out of 50 people that I know that have Xboxes only one has it modded.
PS3 does not play PS1 games, only PS2. So if you want to play PS1 games you'll have to keep your PS2.
It's going to take a lot more than a UI for a music program to make people "switch". Also, running iTunes does not make you at home with the Mac style interface if all you've ever used is a PC.
Agreed, it's way too much for an old game. Nintendo is cashing in on nostalgia. Can't believe they have the balls to chastise the industry for the state of games when they live on remakes and re-releases.
This isn't like the old days where there was one mast copy. You can dub a dupe of the final mix any time, it's nothing and if it's on DAT then it's at 48K at most, not a big difference.
Someone says a tech cannot be hacked it creates a challenge. I think you are better off not trying to say you have the ultimate encryption.
How do you come to that conclusion? Are you assuming that the "master tapes" are recorded at a higher bitrate and sample rate? When I or anyone I know records they record at 48K(or higher) and maybe 24 bit, but when we do a final mix we convert to 44K and 16 bit to go directly to CD.
And it won't play on my car CD player. So, it's going back to Futureshop and I am going to demand my money back.
It's a different world over there game wise. In that context it probably makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the Japanese fanboys that think that wacky +Japanese = awesome. Sometimes it just ends up being stupid.
That's BS. Almost every card out there supports at least EAX 2.0. It's a matter of choice and most devs put more money and time into eye candy because it gets the quick results and the good box shots. It's all about choice and since a lot of people haven't bothered to sit down and listen to a game in proper surround they have no idea what they are missing.
Creative didn't put them out of business. They bought their IP after they were done. My Audigy 2 ZS is great, I have no problems with it at all.
As a game audio guy I read that article with both a "hell yeah!" and a pissed off feeling. I'm so sick of people saying how important audio is, but not giving it the time and resources it deserves.
He didn't want to. He stated that and knowing how bitchy and whiney people get when they pay for something I can see why. Hell, they're usually bitchy and whiney when they get a service for free.
If it wasn't for MS we have no idea where Halo or Bungie would be today. I doubt very much they would have got the support they needed from Take 2. They could have been another gaming footnote if it wasn't for the infusion of resources from MS.