Introduction

We helped/mentored more than 15 indie studios in the past year via PressStart (German funding program), and the question was always the same: How do I start with the audio part of my game?

While some of the developers wanted to do the music and sound design on their own, others wanted to seek help of a freelancer or outsourcer. Nevertheless both variants require the indie devs to create an audio scope first to identify their needs, direction and also to calculate the budget. And in special cases, the audio scope is also needed in order to apply for funding, so it's a very important part of indie game development.

What is an Audio Scope?

An audio scope can be seen as the guideline for the audio production of your game. If this is set up correctly you save tons of time and money, level up your quality and make the collaboration with a potential composer or sound designer as smooth as possible.

Key questions you want to answer with your audio scope are: 

• Feature List: What are the core features of your game, and which features are less important?
• Tech Stack: What tools and specific solutions does my game need?
• Audio Direction: What's my game's style and character? What makes it unique?
• Budget: What is the complete development budget, and how much can I allocate for audio? Should we hire an outsourcer? What is possible within the budget?
• Timeline: How much time do we need/have for the audio production, and do we need to set up Milestones?

Step 01 | Audio Direction

This establishes the foundation for all decisions you make when setting up your audio scope.

• Find examples and inspirations and collect them in a mood board.
• Similar to a game premise, you want to come up with an audio premise.
  • Example: Dark and brutal combat sounds with a demonic sounding atmosphere.
  • Example: Organic and friendly sounding atmosphere with focus on crafting, looting and base building.

Step 02 | Feature List

Now take a closer look at your game features and sort them by importance. 

Here is a list of typical features and what they usually require when it comes to audio.

Step 03 | Tech Stack

This is very different from game to game, but there are a couple of common tools we can talk about. 

Unity Engine

For Unity we highly recommend using an audio middleware to simplify the development. FMOD is free for games with a budget less than $600 000, and it keeps the implementation work as low as possible while keeping the audio system functionality complex. With FMOD you have easy access to attenuation behaviour, reverbs, optimization, game states, parameters, randomization, profiling, and it makes the management of audio files super easy. The only thing is, FMOD is missing a Binauralizer or real-sounding reverbs. If your game needs this, the more expensive solution Wwise is your pick.

Most game audio freelancer are familiar with FMOD and it saves expensive time. So this is a big plus when you think about collaborating with an audio studio or freelancer.

Unreal Engine

Unreal's Meta Sound has way more capabilities for handling audio compared than Unity's native audio functionality. It's a very nice built-in solution for smaller games and prototypes. The problem of Meta Sound is it not well optimized for handling/organizing many audio assets, optimizing and profiling the audio to identify performance bottlenecks, and the built-in audio processing (compressor, delay...) is also lacking features. For more complex 3D games we highly recommend Wwise, since it's a powerhouse when it comes to immersive Audio. It is a bit more difficult to use than FMOD, but has way better features for acoustic systems, collision, performance optimization, asset management, and more. It's an advanced tool, but a must-have for high quality games.

Wwise and Unreal are definitely on the more advanced side of tech, so make sure that any freelancer or developer you're interested in collaborating with can use this technology efficiently!

Godot Engine

Godot's audio capabilities lie somewhere between Unity and Unreal when it comes to complexity. It's very easy to add more complex behaviour than "play sound" or "stop loop", but it's also very easy to overcomplicate and spaghettify the game's scripts if not handled properly. If your game needs special audio behaviour, make sure you abstract your functionality! Audio lives best when handled by a separate system or environment, as it's easier to debug and troubleshoot, rather than having audio live in many individual scenes and nodes.

Beyond this, Godot does offer some audio processing like reverbs and other effects, but they are fairly simple, and can behave differently when exporting to HTML5. There are integration options for FMOD and Wwise with Godot, but none of them are official. When working with externals like freelancers and codevs, make sure they know how Godot works, and that they have a plan for audio scripts!

Step 04 | Budget & Timeline

The earlier the audio team gets involved in the development the better. Ideally you have a trusted audio partner right from the beginning of your first prototype & announcement trailer, all the way to full release. The audio experts can identify bottlenecks of later development, make sure the audio setup is clean, and keep the production as streamlined as possible. Otherwise, you could run into avoidable issues like re-tagging materials to make sure the footsteps play accordingly, or re-assigning sound effects to different mix buses to keep a clean mix.

The easiest way to organize development is to set up a timeline with milestones. Milestones can be linked to specific invoices and payouts, which helps to organize the budget, especially if there are big gaps between development steps (Vertical Slice, Prototype, Trailer, Early Access or Full Release) or if you have different payout dates of your funding and publisher. 

The usual budget for audio is 7-15% of the complete development budget. The bigger the game, the bigger the audio needs. In general, you can count with $350-$650 day rate for a sound designer, and $450-$800 for a tech designer. A minute of music will cost around 600-$1500, depending on the music style.

Step 05 | Collaboration

If you decide to work with a freelancer or studio, there a couple of things to prepare for.

• Background check
  
  • Research the company, check out their portfolio and services
  • Only trust in "real" recommendations. A single "you should work that person, they can design everything!" is too vague to confirm if they really understand their craft and isn't overselling. 
• Prepare specific questions
  • Prepared questions like "How would you set up a footstep system in Unity?" are great touchpoints to check if the potential freelancer isn't fake-talking or trying to oversell their services
• Be ready to provide access to the project
  • The potential outsourcer needs to scope out the game, test game features and get a good overview of the game. For that they usually need access to a game build, engine or any sort of game design document. Make sure to have them sign an NDA beforehand!

If you found a fitting freelancer or studio, you now have 4 different ways to collaborate.

Co-Dev

This is the ultimate solution. It’s not offered by every studio, and you really have to trust the team you choose.

The external partner gets access to the project and co-develops the game on the audio side. At the beginning, you define an overall budget and scope, and the co-dev studio makes sure to stay within both while delivering all the needed features.

This is the most efficient and agile option, as the budget can be allocated wherever it's needed most, helping you avoid multiple invoices and extra costs. The biggest risk is if the freelancer or studio doesn't deliver what they promised, so be sure to only work with true professionals, otherwise it ends in a mess.

50/50

This is a very balanced, budget-friendly solution.

Usually, the outsourcer takes over one specific part of development, either supporting the tech side (setting up FMOD, implementing features, etc.) or designing assets that the developer then implements. The biggest risk of this approach is that even if the designer delivers awesome audio assets, it doesn't mean they will sound good in-game if they've been implemented poorly.

However, it saves costs, and it's easier to replace a freelancer if the delivered results aren't as expected. Plus, you can always mix and match: mostly design with a bit of tech support, or full implementation alongside design for the most important features. Whatever works for you.

Design Assets

This is a very straightforward solution, especially for small projects.

The designer delivers the requested assets at a per-asset price. For huge productions, this would be very pricey, but for smaller productions, it’s a very simple way to collaborate. It doesn't require any special setups or access to the game, so no advanced onboarding or anything.

And the good thing is, this can always evolve into a bigger production. The downside is that every extra service gets charged, so scalability is very limited.

Mentoring

Especially for indie games, this is super valuable. It's a great power to be able to do audio on your own. A mentor can help get things going, find great sound effects, or support with the final polishing pass. And it's a great chance to get an early game tester! (:

Conclusion

Finding the right audio solution and external resource to work with is difficult. With this cheatsheet in hand, you'll have a better outlook on finding the right fit for your current (and future) projects!

If you have any questions you can always drop Eric, our indie game expert, a message and ask for help! contact@gcradix.com or via LinkedIn Eric

At GCRadix, we also developed specific indie audio services that target common bottlenecks, like a Marketing Push for Gamescom, Prototype Push or an Early-Access Push. Indie Services

Thank you for reading and good luck with your development!