6 month in video games

Hi everybody

After a silence of 5 months I’m back. I’ve started in February a mission at Ubisoft Paris for the game Just Dance 3 (and other versions…). First time in video game, with lots of surprises.
- THE open space : That’s for me the biggest and the worst surprise when you work in video game. You can sometimes work in separate studio but more often it’s in the open space. Specially on a musical game the average noise level is very high, some people play the game on TV or use speakers to do their reviews. At the end of the day you ears can be very tired. I’ve tried to always manage a good level to don’t destroy my ears but with 6 months with headphones several times I felt tinnitus/acouphenes. I think few of you have already thinking about what is the best « fast communication but with noise and difficulty to work sound » or vice versa.

- The workflow : I’ve learned very good technics that I’m sure will help me in my own project or with other team. Like submitting your work to the rest of the team, managing data without compromising data of your coworkers. I’ve also learned special meeting technics like Scrum from the Agile Method.

- Softwares : Ubisoft on this game use Lyn. An own made software used by all the team. Quite hard the 2 first month to learn Lyn,  software to manage data (Perforce), and all the other rules specific to the audio integration and management. Nice challenge, I like working on new software.

Conclusion

I’m sure that I’m going to publish other blog post about specific subjects in video games, because I have many things to say and normally I’m working again for Ubisoft soon. I know that I have to catch some informations about audio level and norm for example, if you have some, feel free to share it.

Before this job I’ve worked in animation as sound editor, recorder for dubbing… and when I arrived here I was quite surprised about the youth of the profession of sound designer. I finally found that it lacked organization despite by many technical implementation to settle the problem. We feel very much that is not as old as the cinema, animation.

I would be happy to know the techniques and working organization in other games producer in other countries because my opinion and point of view can’t be done on a single game (specially musical) on which I have worked only six months.

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Related posts:

1. Jean-Edouard Miclot – Field recording video – 2009

Tags: France, Sound, State, thinking, Ubisoft, Video Games