why, hello! i'm meeting a young fella tomorrow who wants to "pick" my "brain" about how to get started in gamedev — i'm told he has a background in music/audio and wants to specialise in that area.
after i hit him with the usual "my path into professional game development was a series of insanely lucky circumstances that are in no way replicable or reproducible and you shouldn't expect to find anything like this from anyone" disclaimer, do you have any recommendations for game audio resources that might help him out? i've done a little bit of perfunctory googling but i'd be interested in hearing about any resources that you particularly recommend
oh boy, I'm literally having this talk with one of my younger siblings right now
unfortunately I also had a super weird and unintentional route getting into gamedev
My degree is in Theatre, I played music around town for tips at restaurants or at DIY spaces. started making games with my now spouse, met people at GDC after getting scholarships/stipends/ to go (GDC 2017 was my first time flying anywhere since 1998), started working on projects my friends made, and then just... started getting hired by people for things.
(IMPORTANTLY: me and my partner both lost our jobs in mid 2018 and moved into a guest bedroom with family which gave us a few months without having to pay rent while we worked on our own projects and looked for contracts to do, in hopes of starting to find work we could actually get paid to do. our families aren't rich but having the safety net of a guest room is not something we've taken for granted)
In early 2019 I applied for a sound design contract at Camouflaj and spent 9 months working on Iron Man VR, learned to use Wwise and Unity on the job. I learned a lot! I also learned I did not want to work in an office. I majorly, truly, lucked out when Superbrother's hired me just as my Camouflaj contract ended. I was initially just going to contribute one piece of music, but after writing lyrics for the song in a nonsense language, I was asked to develop that into the conlang the game uses, and to voice one of the characters (the scout Caro). Around that time I started picking up several additional contracts, and things have kind of just kept going, somehow. Truly the only reason this has had any kind of stability is that my partner has been working full time at studios since 2020. (resisting the urge to be cynical about the industry right about now, and how few studios had full time audio or music departments even before layoffageddon really kicked into gear)
I feel very lucky, but because I know how lucky I am, I never quite feel like I can trust the ground I stand on. I'm probably not the only person to feel this way!
I also have been enormously lucky to have had almost entirely positive experiences with most of the projects I've been on. I've worked for some of the nicest people I know, and got paid! I have heard horror stories from people all around me, close friends and peers, and I have now become SUSPICIOUS of the good luck I've had. Idk, I still feel like I am just a rando from Arkansas! Probably being stubborn helps?
tldr; make your own projects, meet people who make things you think are cool (preferably people in or around your own experience level!), be stubborn, and be lucky, and always be learning. Oh boy, the learning never stops (this is a good thing imo).