When I was given the opportunity to present the award for Best Audio at the Game Developers Choice Awards this year, I took the responsibility very seriously.
As a lifelong appreciator of art, music, and video games I knew I wanted to start off with a declaration, even if the argument is settled: video games are art. I also knew I wanted to recognize as many aspects of audio work as I reasonably could: game audio is such an incredibly vast discipline. Oftentimes, a single professional is skilled in varying amounts of music composition, recording arts, sound manipulation and sound design, programmatic thinking and actual programming, mixing, mastering, studio technologies, project management and production, software and hardware synthesis, performance across multiple instruments, and so on and so forth.
I still remember the time I saw a job post for an audio professional inside the traditional music industry that captured a realistic description of a game audio professional's skillset - it was lambasted across the internet for being utterly ridiculous, because anyone who possessed all of those skills that must be some kind of miracle worker.
I think I'd agree with that - game audio folk are remarkable. It was my honor to serve as a representative for such a talented group of people. Thank you again to GDC & Sam Maggs for the opportunity to speak on our behalf.