Since my teenage years, I’ve been in touch with games. The first game I remember playing was Frogger 2 for Windows XP, a kid’s game where the main character is a frog, and the player has to help him get their sibling’s stollen by a crocodile. I quickly searched Wikipedia to read the storyline because I didn’t remember. However, I remember Frogger’s voice and some particular sound effects. It is interesting to see how can sound designers make iconic that will stick to your mind forever.
Later at 12 years old, I found out about Minecraft, a well-known game played massively worldwide. Minecraft is a unique game for me to this day. As I grow older, I look back on my game experiences and recognise how good the game is. As a sound art student, I realise how good the soundtrack is, and it triggers my nostalgic memory every time. It also seems like the game nowadays has more artistic appreciation than five years ago. For instance, the website Rate Your Music has made an official compilation of the Best Video Game Soundtrack, and Minecraft appears at the top and for the public’s rating and reviews.
When I got older, I started enjoying horror games, mainly because the gamer YouTuber Pewdiepie was making it popular. Outlast (2013) and Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010), and other games, were among my playlist, and even though my gameplays wouldn’t consider sound design, I acknowledge nowadays how important it is for the main experience. Amnesia established most horror games’ stereotypes, primarily through sound. Back then, I was so mesmerised by the game that I wanted to know everything about the development, and it was there where I first came across such thing as sound design. There was a video on youtube uploaded by the same company who made the game, Frictional Games, where it shows Tapio Liukkonen doing field recordings for the soundtrack. As a 14-year-old, I didn’t know what to think about all that. It took me four more years to understand sound as a creative and artistic practice.
My interest in sound design was born and nourished in Madrid, and even being very focused on cinematography and sound for film, I kept an eye on games. By that time, I was playing Alien: Isolation (2014), one of the best games I’ve ever played. This time I was already making questions about sound: How can sound be so terrifying? I can’t go through any corridor without having my heart pumping at 130bpms! The sound of the alien walking in the game is scarier than its appearance – this is a fantastic technique explored by Hitchcock as well – There is a distinct difference between “suspense” and “surprise”.
The world of video games was always of interest to me, especially concerning sound. Collaborations are not a new practice for me, but I was very excited to start this one because I’m gathering to make a VR interactive game sound with other people. It seems that I can also help the game developers tell stories with sound.