From April 18th to 21st, the 2022 N.Game NetEase Game Developer Summit (hereinafter referred to as the Summit) was held online. The summit lasted for 4 days, divided into four forums: creative trends, technology-driven, artistic polishing and value exploration, through sharing NetEase's research and development experience and research results, discussing the industrialization of games, new formats of high-quality products, and discussing the process of industrial globalization and future development trends.
At the art polishing forum on the 20th, Chen Baihan, audio designer of NetEase Game Art Design Center, brought a speech entitled "Creating a 3A Game Audio Experience in the Mobile Game Field", taking his team's six years of audio development experience as an example to explore how to create a 3A audio experience in the mobile game field.
The following is the full text of the speech compiled by the mobile game, which has been abridged to improve the reading experience:
Hello everyone, I am Chen Baihan, an audio designer from The NetEase Game Art Design Center, and the topic I want to share with you today is: how to create AAA audio effects in the field of mobile games.
First of all, what is the essence of 3A? It can be understood in three parts: high investment, high quality, and high return.
Relatively speaking, high investment and high return are relatively objective indicators, which can be measured through numbers and reports, but high quality is very subjective.
Therefore, the quality of game audio (especially mobile game audio) is very important. In fact, I think that after the mobile game audio reaches 60 points, its quality is very subjective, so it seems that there is nothing to discuss, right? (Laughs) But in fact, our pursuit of the AAA of mobile game audio is more like pursuing a goal than the result of the pursuit of the AAA.
So I'd like to share some of my journey and reflections over the past six years from Yin and Yang to Harry Potter: Magical Awakening, and through this reflection, we are exploring whether we are moving towards the goal of mobile game AAA.
01
Stage 1: Seeing the mountain is the mountain
At the beginning, I thought it was a process of "seeing a mountain is a mountain", what does it mean? To create a mobile game audio, we must have explored at the beginning what mobile game audio should pursue?
You can say that mobile game audio should pursue a sense of percussion, or pursue a well-known composer, or that it should ensure its audio quality through traffic singers, high-quality orchestral recordings, or even through complex interactive settings and the latest engine technology to create it.
In fact, no matter which link we pursue, are we seeking a sense of security? Through these iconic pursuits to achieve a sense of "mobile game audio is good" a sense of security.
Therefore, when I first climbed this AAA audio target mountain, it was the first stage of "seeing the mountain is a mountain", which was a modern mobile game audio development process.
First, it is what you see is what you get, and wherever it should be made, it must be sounded. Then there's the fluidity, integration, and highly industrialized division of labor that sound engines use. I think it's a solid industrial process and the first step in the development of audio to reach 60.
02
Stage 2: Seeing the mountain is not a mountain
Next, halfway up the mountain, it is the second stage of "seeing the mountain is not a mountain". The most important thing at this stage is the stylization of mobile game audio, but the stylization is more abstract, specifically what the game should convey. Therefore, in this stage, we are more about the pursuit of freehand.
For example, take the Yin-Yang Master. In the early days of the design of "Yin and Yang Division", we intended to create an extremely stylized game, so from the pursuit of realism to the pursuit of freehand, whether it is the design of the gods, characters, and scenes, we are more concerned about the setting behind it, the story and the feelings it wants to convey to the player.
Therefore, we use foley, recording, resampling of many traditional Japanese instruments, and fuse them into the sound effects, and even into the field sounds.
We've also reinterpreted the battle. For normal RPG combat, I think it's a concept of "characters coming out and going in and out", so we guide the sound to this stylized concept.
Below is a look at Yin Yang Shi's use of traditional Japanese instruments to fuse sound effects on the UI. We integrate the sound effects of many traditional music and the music of instruments into the sound effects, as well as into the scene, which makes the whole game's hearing more holistic and more in line with its stylized core.
And just mentioned, we translate the appearance of each character into a concept of "appearance", so we also add a lot of formally non-realistic sounds to the normal character sound effects. At the same time, in the skills, we also integrate the music into it to make the character more three-dimensional.
In addition, in the discussion of the sense of percussion, in fact, we do not necessarily have to use a consistent sound standard to measure the quality of the percussion. So in this example video, we use a small percussion instrument to represent percussion.
From the above examples, it can be seen that we are trying to create a highly stylized game with a consistent style - the player knows that it is "Yin and Yang Division" as soon as they hear it.
03
The third stage: seeing the mountain is a mountain again
After the highly stylized game of "Yin and Yang Division", there have been many great and stylized games appearing one after another, all of which are very good works, and we are constantly thinking about what we should pursue next. Specifically, we are thinking about whether, in addition to pursuing stylization, can we think about the essence of game audio from a more holistic perspective.
So, in Harry Potter: Magical Awakening, we try to do something called "intrinsicalization of audio" to rethink our direction and goals.
Here's an audio clip from Harry Potter: Magical Awakening.
Through the above video, in fact, I think it is the third stage of "seeing the mountain and the mountain", that is, the internalization of the essence of audio. In my opinion, this stage is also divided into two parts: pursuit and landing.
So what is the pursuit? In Harry Potter: Magical Awakening, we pursue three points: 1. 2. Focus on the player's feelings; Intense magical immersion; 3. Details and IP of the game.
We pay more attention to the details of the sound that players feel in this game: do they feel the scream level? Do you feel the joy of easter eggs? Can you feel enough magic in the scene? Can you feel its connection to IP, hearing and IP in every detail?
Among them, the part for magic is the most worth exploring, what kind of sound sounds magical?
In fact, in the world of Harry Potter: Magical Awakening, it is through the conflict between reality and fiction to create a sense of magic. That is to say, if the whole game is full of magical sounds, the player will not feel that the game is full of magic. Therefore, the accumulation of reality and the sound of reality are the key to creating a sense of magic, and it is necessary to form a conflict between the two through the details of the overload of real sounds and the meaning behind each sound.
At the beginning of the audio design, we introduced concepts similar to the Art VI. First of all, there are three things that must be avoided: 1. 2. Avoid futuristic, modern and electronic sounds; 2. The two obvious elements of mechanical and electrical energy should be avoided at the same time; Avoid the sounds that often appear on the market, otherwise it is easy to make this style play.
At the same time, we made four self-limiting questions, which are actually the questions we have to ask ourselves when making each audio: 1. Is there a reason behind this sound? 2. What is the meaning behind this sound? 3. Does this sound have overload details and content? 4. Does this sound give the player anything?
The above restrictions and specifications are reflected in our UI sound.
In fact, as mentioned earlier, we create a sense of magic through the conflict between real sounds and magical unreal sounds. As a result, we do a lot of overloaded details on the sound of reality, creating a conflict between blurring its distance and vision (that is, these sounds are usually heard very close).
Considering how players feel when they hear these sounds, we have also added many Easter eggs, hoping to make the whole game more exciting and make the player's screaming level higher through the Easter eggs.
We also pay special attention to the chain of IP, which evokes the player's emotions about the IP through certain sounds. As mentioned earlier, mechanical sound and current cannot appear at the same time.
For the details of overload, we need to consider the meaning behind each sound, that is, different clicks, different actions, and even different copy descriptions should affect the expression of each sound.
Therefore, when most of the sound has a realistic element, as long as a small number of emphasis is used to create a sense of magic, the overall immersion will increase.
Even for the same operation, the same type of object, we will make some different designs for different copy settings (and even different style content).
We also put the player's point of view, designed a lot of interactions for players, and even designed to create a community for UGC.
Even in the simple UI operation, we have added a lot of Easter egg elements, such as each operation will be similar to the concept of a Roguelike game, through the player's operation to change the sound they hear.
There is also a more classic, the game map is 2D, but we use 3D to make the player feel that the map is full of magic: they can hear every detail in the flat map.
Therefore, for different buttons, different feedback, the sound must represent the meaning behind it, which can also strengthen the visual emotional rendering.
This is our most important first part, that is, the pursuit, the pursuit of "internalizing the audio essence" of "seeing the mountain and the mountain" is very important.
04
Landing of 3A mobile game audio targets
Again, I want to talk about landing.
In fact, game audio is a very complex digital audio industry. Therefore, to complete the AAA mobile game audio goals that we are chasing, there is no way to avoid the industrialized way of collaboration.
In fact, the cooperation between audio and planning, the cooperation of procedures, and the cooperation of copywriting, the focus is different.
Our cooperation with the planner must consider whether the gameplay has a good fit with the audio; the cooperation with the program should consider the feasibility of the integration of innovative sound functions; the cooperation with the copywriting needs to consider the meaning behind each copywriting, whether the audio can have a better way to interpret the text; the cooperation with the art, considering how to sublimate the static visual through sound; the cooperation with marketing includes the expansion of IP and the operation of the player circle; and the cooperation with QA, then consider the version capacity and scheduling control.
If there is no way to smoothly land these things, no amount of pursuit is useful. Therefore, this is a very important part of why game audio is a complex digital audio industry.
When we're done with the "see the mountain and the mountain again" phase, we actually have to continue to think about the expansion of audio capabilities and think about what game audio can do. The answer at this stage is: based on gameplay, expand to IP.
Taking "Yin and Yang Division" as an example, we make each character more three-dimensional through audio, so that its IP expansion is more extensive.
Next, I would like to share the integrated IP expansion we did in Yin Yang Division.
From the stylization of the game, to the pursuit of their own duties, to the final industrialization, in this process, the game audio does not exist independently.
When our mobile game audio goes in the direction of 3A, the most important thing is actually the connection between audio and games and users. Therefore, user orientation is a key factor in determining audio quality.
In fact, I think that games should be the ninth art, there should be something that the core wants to express, it should make people invest in emotions, and it should make people realize.
Some shortcuts are not necessarily the most perfect path, and some stops may be more for you to think about more and more. I hope that all partners who love games and love game audio can find their own mountain in this industry. Congratulations, thank you!