By Benjamin Wallen

I attended the G.A.N.G. Summer Summit at Pyramind in San Francisco featuring the sound guys from Valve. This event was put sponsored by DTS and Pyramind but charged a $20 entrance fee unless you were a GANG member.

A little bit of why I went to this was not just for my love of Valve and their games but my passion lies within sound. I graduated from film school with an emphasis on Sound Editing. Game sound has always been of great interest to me but there is little documentation or book written on the art/science.  When I got this email I got very excited about attending.

I first heard about Pyramind when trying to get my official pro tools certification. I took some courses at the Bay Area Video Coalition until they dropped there certification program. I then looked elsewhere and found Pyramind. After trying to transfer my continuing education funds from my current job to the new location failed, I placed the certification on the back burner. I stayed on the mailing list for the school and am very glad I did. This talk was just pure awesome. 

I arrived at the studio and found it a rather calm place for what I thought would be a packed house. It turns out there are two locations for pyramind and I was a few storefronts away from the actual location. Luckily, as I walked to the wrong door a gentleman was leaving. I asked him if he knew where to go for the summit and he directed me to follow him. We chatted for a brief few minutes and he was a really nice guy. Turns out he was the CEO of the place, I found out later that evening. It really tells you something about a place where the CEO can talk to a random stranger/non-student and be cool and open about the place and not sitting on a mountain above you. In inflated ego world of gaming this is a nice change of pace.

Entering the facilities was something I was really looking forward too. I had spent weeks awake in my old college studio but a new studio in SF devoted to pure sounds was something I was itching to see. It was like I expected industrial office like look with modern colors and posters on the wall for games and audio products like pro tools. And wood cases and desks everywhere, I'm a sucker for wood grain and anything wood really. Like a nice cedar box, the smell, mmmmm.

The event took place in what looked like a band recording area. (I found out later it started as a music-recording studio and eventually adapted other media formats as the culture of entertainment changed and grew) They had some killer protools set ups as well. Valve brought in 3 imacs for playable steam demos of Left 4 Dead 2 for after the talk and to launch some videos they rendered out to showcase some of the sound design and game elements. 

On a funny side note, being a Mac guy, it was a kick to see these super powered Dells with Mac adapters converting DVI to VGA. A few people got a chuckle out of that. When they tried to get Steam to run on Bootcamp or VMware on the iMacs, XP was acting up and crashed often. As all good tech heads do, they got it all sorted out in time and got it up and running. Even after a mid-video crash where the computer tech tossed the mouse and blessed the room with a familiar line "this is why I hate Windows" the show went on. As a technician who deals with a lot of the same issues they were facing it was nice to know that no matter what the level of "the game" you are in, you still deal with the same BS everyone else does.

The talk was a fresh one Valve created for this event. We got the Power Point start with sound clips and some video images to go with it. A short history of the company and a brief overview of how they run. Which seemed to me like a commune-style place. Everyone exchanges ideas, there are titles but there is rarely a moment of "you go make me this sound". They are all somewhat familiar with programming and lots of them are old film/music guys. They mentioned they ran like a team of people striving to make the best game possible and really just trial and error. What causes the error? US, the gamer, the playtests of course.

It was amazing to here how much the community influences the direction of the game. How when a patch would come out for Counter-Strike a few years back when it was the dominating force of the FPS world, within hours they'd have flooded email boxes of anything they missed in the patch or things that were off. They would provide feedback of gun sound not doing the weapon justice or saying the music did not work in this part or that part. The L4D games were essentially created by all the Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, and Day of Defeat die-hard players. To me this was an eye opening and inspiring thing to here. It was very fitting and staying true to the mod world that spawned CS valve team up.

Valve used playtesters to help allow the MUSIC and SOUND to craft gameplay. At first I thought ok these are sound guys just trying to stress the importance of what they did for the game. As many folks in big projects who have pivotal but more often then not small or unnoticed roles in games/films do.  But after the event I was standing around hearing conversations with other viewers who worked for other big companies who make game sound and the panelists were not joking. The company really allowed for sound to be a much more important role in a game then compared to much, much larger studios. 

The talk showcased gun noises, dialog, atmosphere ambience, theatrical cues and much more. Each panelist seemed to have a specialty and spoke at great length about each section of the soundscape. This ultimately led to a long talk, much longer then planned. They ended with some Q&A that had its most obvious first question. Which somewhat bashed the sound as being OVER compressed and highly noticeable. The guys took it in stride and made a good case as to why they were pushed to the max. Just one of those things I saw every lecture in film school, the too cool for teacher attitude. 

After the show there was food and beer to be had. Yes, I said beer. It was a nice treat to grab a free Newcastle and chat with fellow gamer sound guys. The first guy I met graduated from my Alma Mater and worked with people I had once worked with or knew through the school. I was glad to see fellow graduates working in games so shortly after graduating. As with all nerds many were quiet and spoke very little. I tried to start as many convos as I could and met some interesting folk. A young kid couldn't have been older then 16 and an older rocker chick were a team of "game designers" trying to learn the craft. There were also older men with grey hair and some really cute girls. It was a very diverse group. 

They put out a ton of posters, full size ones, of the movie posters of the chapters of the L4D games 1 and 2. I scored me one from the second. It's waiting to be framed, of course! I hung out for a while and talked to the most "leader-ish" guy at the panel. He talked a lot more open about his roots in film and music. His progression into games, or the random trip into it I should say. 

I ended my night by interrupting a dumb noob question to chime in about the music in the game. There is a level in which you start on the water in New Orleans and walk up the boat dock ramp to a gate. The distant hum of New Orleans jazz is spooky and reminds us of the world that was once there, pre zombie. It gave me chills hearing it in the demo in amazing 5.1. I complemented him on the choice of that music as he stated earlier he was proud of it. And mentioned it wasn't very exciting or filled with sound, but it was perfect. 

I quoted Miles Davis by saying that "Don't play what's there, play what's not there." He smiled big when I said that and I felt this "same vibe" with him. That or my fanboy nerves were faking it. Nevertheless he really appreciated the comparison and I could see that. I shook his hand and said, "keep doing what you are doing, you inspire a lot of us to do great things. Thanks."

As I walked to my car I was on cloud nine. It was almost mid night, I had been in there for almost five hours and loved every minute of it. Valve appears to me to be a true team heading in the right direction. They made some of the greatest games of the last 15 years and I feel will continue to do so. I mean come on, they are hardcore gamers who make games for us, edited by us, and loved by all where no idea is a bad idea. Now tell me that ain't art Mr. Ebert.  

Cheers to Valve for keeping it real.