Spring Blog, Part IV - Attack of the Games

Over the last couple of months, Tapeworks has been involved in recording and editing audio for two major video game companies.  
The size and scale of these projects shows just just how far the video gaming industry has come from its relatively modest beginnings. With all due respect to the great pioneers in game score composing for classic systems like SEGA and Nintendo; these definitely aren't your 8- or 16-bit audio projects of the 80s and early 90s!

In late March, engineer Chris Lennie worked with an audio director from EA Sports and ESPN personality Trey Wingo to record and edit Trey's voiceover audio for one of EA's main franchise games: the latest installment in the Madden football series.  In Madden '13, coming out in late August, they have introduced a series of backstories for the players selected in the NFL draft portion of the game. Trey lent the game his voice for this part, which consists of 900 4-to-6 sentence segments that we captured over the course of 5 days.  Between the meticulous attention to details, extensive scripts, and sheer sales of the game in recent years (Madden '12 has sold well over 5 million copies to date), its clear that these things have really become large-scale projects on par with what one might see from a Hollywood blockbuster film.  

Not long after the final whistle blew on our involvement with EA Sports, we received a call from another well-known game audio company to record and edit voiceover with Sportscenter and Wipeout host John Anderson.  John brought some of his trademark wit and insight to the studio for a three-day series of sessions with Chief Engineer Bill Ahearn.  

With the E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) occurring right now in Los Angeles, we're definitely keeping our ears to the ground for any new and exciting innovations in the video game community.  The production in gaming just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and we're always looking forward to seeing what comes next!!