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View, browse and sort the ever-growing list of sessions by day, time, pass type, topic, and format. With this Session Viewer, you can view session and speaker details for Game Developers Conference 2024.

You will be able to build your schedule with the GDC Mobile App. The GDC 2024 app will be available for download in Apple Apps and Google Play late February 2024.

Sessions do fill up and seating is first come, first serve, so arrive early to sessions that you would like to attend. Adding a session to your schedule does not guarantee you a seat.

In Your Head: Audio-Driven Everything in 'Alan Wake 2' and its Mind Place

Joshua Bell  (Senior Technical Audio Designer, Remedy Entertainment)

Location: Room 3006, West Hall

Date: Wednesday, March 20

Time: 11:30 am - 12:00 pm

Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Audio Pass - Get your pass now!

Topic: Audio

Format: Session

Vault Recording: Video

Audience Level: All

Alan Wake 2's profiling feature allows the player to delve into the minds and motivations of the game's characters, and access their thoughts and glimpses of past/future events. It exists inside the Mind Place, a 3D-space, immersive in-game user-interface, and hub to filter narrative elements and explore the story.

Navigating the wealth of content, the narrative importance, and the abstract essence of the Mind Place and Profiling module posed challenges for the team. However, it presented a great chance to enhance Alan Wake 2's narrative and collaborate closely with visual disciplines to craft a cohesive audio-visual experience.

We will go through the audio design for the "Profiling" feature, exploring how we concepted, overcame technical limitations, gave ourselves a framework to execute the large amount of content needed, and utilised an "audio-driven audio" and audio-driven visuals approach to craft a balanced and coherent experience.

Takeaway

Attendees will learn how an audio-driven approach resulted in a unique audio experience in Alan Wake 2. Attendees will find out how audio-driven approaches could be used in their work for driving visuals, or other SFX elements, and be inspired by the potential to craft a unique cross-disciplinary experience.

Intended Audience

This talk is for anyone involved in game audio at any level. It may be of particular benefit to those working on projects that have a large volume of narrative content to cover, or those who are interested in deeper cross-collaboration between audio and visual departments.



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