After a long and interesting 2022, the new year has given me the courage to push harder for my personal goals. Though, instead of a new year's resolution, I am committing myself to a plan I created around November of last year.
My goal throughout my game audio journey has always been to find employment within the industry. Though I have had opportunities and chances to reach this goal, ultimately, other life events and personal confidence issues are the excuses I have for not reaching it. Around the time of my belated graduation ceremony in November, I pushed myself to end my employment in a different industry so I could focus on the job I want.
From what my experience in job searching for junior sound design roles has taught me, my chances of gaining employment are (hopefully) going to increase with gaining a new skill. Game studios currently seem to be reluctant to create a new talent pool of sound designers and instead focus on senior and highly experienced candidates. This makes sense for wanting the best audio for your game. However, this leads to something I have seen far too often. When a company posts a listing for a junior game sound designer role, since this happens so little, hundreds of perfectly qualified young candidates jump to apply. Therefore, studios have to look through hundreds of applicants and their portfolios, making it harder for them to make a decision as well as it being less likely to be chosen.
However, there is one job role that I have seen listed far more. Audio programming abilities are highly sought after in the game design industry. In terms of my current capabilities, I do not consider myself a programmer, more of a sound designer. My knowledge is quite basic and I can just about handle the very simple blueprints in Unreal Engine. Therefore, a huge step towards my goal is going to be to develop those skills. This will include becoming better at blueprints, learning how to use Unity and becoming confident enough to call myself a junior audio programmer.
Through the use of online certified Unity and Unreal courses, I hope to become more of an appealing applicant to the industry. Maybe it'll lead to my name standing out within those hundreds of other candidates. Furthermore, I hope to be able to showcase my programming abilities with projects such as Unity games and even within game jams. So watch out on my blog for those.
Thanks for reading, I wish the best of luck to any other aspiring game sound designers and audio programmers. It is a tough road ahead but that's no reason to lose hope.
Nick Lee
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