- Have you noticed that everything
sounds better in video games?
Chopping down trees, (chopping)
(thud)
drinking wine, (glass clinks)
ripping paintings off walls.
(tearing sound)
In the Outer Worlds,
looting the entire inventory off a corpse
can sound like this.
(rustling)
Oh ho, we're gonna call that
The Sound from now on.
It is viscerally satisfying to me.
Listening to it makes me want to know
how did Obsidian create The Sound,
and can I make a sound
of my own? (clicking)
We'll get there.
First, let's talk about what
The Sound is actually doing in the game.
It's a gathering sound,
and a gathering sound's job is to say,
"Hey, you completed an interaction with a virtual world,
"and you have been rewarded."
Imagine if you tried to loot a body
and it sounded like (blows raspberry).
That ain't right.
In games where looting is a central mechanic,
as it is in The Outer Worlds or Monster Hunter,
the sound needs to be juicy.
Can I say juicy?
- [woman off screen] Absolutely not.
- Shit.
- So even if it's subconscious,
(cloth rustling)
the sound designer and the developer
want you to really enjoy gathering things
and putting them in your inventory.
- This is Hallie Boyd.
She is a sound design grad student,
and she says that sound design
is one of the ways that developers
can emphasize what's important in a game
and what should feel important to you, the player.
That's why in a loot shooter like Borderlands,
when you open a locker (hiss, creak, metal clanking),
it sounds like a big, gosh darn deal.
Sound effects also need to fit the game's aesthetic.
That's why Stardew Valley (pop)
uses gentle popping sounds (pop)
to represent picking vegetables,
instead of the sound of me literally
wrenching a carrot from the earth.
Outer Worlds, on the other hand,
is striving for a stylish kind of realism.
(fire crackling)
So, if I want to make my own
video game sound effects,
I've gotta figure out what's important to me.
Well, let's take something
that I do everyday at work,
opening my laptop.
(BLARING NOISE)
I want opening my laptop to invoke the feeling
of opening a chest in Zelda, (Zelda chest jingle)
but I also want it to be semi-realistic,
(clap) like that, that was a good sound.
It should be exciting and juicy, again.
While opening a laptop in real life
is a near soundless and depressing experience,
this is fiction now,
so I have a license to exaggerate.
The sound is my inspiration (clanking),
so let's figure out how the sound was made.
- Most video games start with foley,
just like in movies, right.
(ding)
You sit in a recording studio
and you hit stuff against stuff
for a really long time.
Everything starts with that,
no matter what you're gonna end up with.
- Basically, what you're looking for
are objects that have sort of
some dynamicism to them, so...
- This is Justin Bell, (doorbell dings)
the audio director at Obsidian.
I spoke with him and his colleague Renzo Heredia
and got them to spill the beans
on what makes good sounds good,
assuming there are beans involved at all.
- Name any item and we probably
have some sort of variation of it.
- It's junk, that's what it is.
- Basically junk.
It's the stuff you throw away
that you're like, "I don't need this."
Talk to an audio person, and they're probably like,
"Simone, actually, can we grab that?"
- But all of this junk is valuable,
because sound engineers like Renzo can use it
to evoke a gun, (gun chamber clicking)
or a bottle of pills or a rattling spaceship.
- And then, you're also looking
for things that are sort of resonant.
You know, if I tap on this (tapping),
you could tell that it's a cardboard box.
So, when you're going around your house,
or your office or whatever, looking for objects,
tap them, shake them, rattle them,
and if they make a sound
that seems pleasing, go for those.
- So what stuff was Obsidian using
when they made the sound?
I asked Hallie to make an educated guess
as to what's in the sound,
and then I brought her ideas
to Justin and Renzo to confirm.
- What you were hearing was sort of a mix of
the sounds that were contained within the
marauder dead body container,
as well as the initial looting sound
of grabbing the body and then rifling through the clothes.
(thud)
(rifling)
There's different components to the sound.
If I were to sort of break down
grabbing this mint box in slow motion,
there's the moment that your hand touches the thing.
That's sort of the initial part of the sound.
This is kind of,
It's kinda dark, but if you imagine
that there's a body there, (laughing)
and you're going through their stuff,
you're gonna be rifling through their clothes,
so that's what that would be.
- There was material used that was sharp.
(blade scraping) I don't know
how close it is to a real sword,
but we have a metal sword as part of our objects,
and that was one of the things I used.
I had a drawer shelf and a sword
and then like other things.
I brought a metal spatula.
I would drag all three and just try and get,
like ching (metal scraping),
something like that to happen.
It was a lot of door materials,
like door hinges, knobs.
I took out chains, cause chains were a little,
they're a little too high-pitched.
But anything metal that was a good little
satisfying shake, I brought that for ammo.
- All of these components correspond
to different things that you can loot
from this poor, dead marauder.
They need to sound satisfying on their own,
but also when they're all played together,
and that comes down to the mix.
Sound designers manipulate these recordings
to get their desired effect.
They also balance the volume levels of each sound,
so that your eardrums don't get blasted
when you're trying to have (ding)
a Satisfying Gaming Experience.
- When you play that sound, you want people
to crave hearing that sound some more.
- But, there's something else
that makes these individual sounds
really nice to hear together.
- Each of those sounds that I laid our for you,
they each occupy a different place
on the audible spectrum.
The bodily impact (punch) is very low-end.
The cloth movement (rustling)
is a little more mid-range.
The knife against metal (metal scraping)
is more high-mid,
so sort of in that little in-between zone.
The metal jingling (jingling)
is very much is the high end.
Something you may notice about that
is that's exactly how we mix music.
We carve out a place for the drums,
and for the bass, and for the guitar
and for the vocals, when we EQ music.
- So, let's break down what I want to happen
when I open my laptop in this video game of life.
Just like looting the body,
the first layer of the sound is
my hand touching the laptop.
Maybe there's some kind of creak
to indicate the hinges working,
and I think like a hiss of air
when the laptop opens, and something to indicate
that it's an electronic object,
like clicking sound, or keys or something digital.
To make this fun slash hard for me,
I'm going to try to make this sound
only with stuff I can find in my office,
which is sort of what Justin and Renzo did,
except they have a huge junk room.
- I could give you some suggestions
for when you do your foley pass.
- The first rule of sound design
is to get a completely soundless room
and a really good mic,
but Justin had some final advice.
- Think about the relationship
of your ear to the object,
and that should sort of be the relationship
of the microphone to your object, because
if you go right up to the mic (loud crackling),
versus (quiet crackling),
sounds different, right?
- [Host] Yeah.
- What you're hearing and what
drew you to this object is
how you were listening to it initially,
so you wanna record that same perspective,
that same distance from your ear,
if that makes sense.
- Okay, now it's time to use everything I've learned
to make a sound of my own.
We are going to run all over the offices of Vox Media
to look for dynamic and resonant objects
that I can use to make
a new sound for opening my laptop.
So, as we discussed, we are looking for
a contact sound,
an electronic or key tapping sound
to evoke what you do with a laptop,
a creak for the hinges,
and then maybe some kind of bwam or hiss
for when the laptop opens.
So, that's what I'm looking for.
Okay.
(gasps)
You know I love this.
Can I take these?
- [Pat] Yeah. (click)
- Here's my bag.
Got any questions, Brian,
from your elders, your wise elders
who are doing hard work here?
(grunts)
(whirring)
Ooh, wait, oh.
Try it again.
(whirring)
(unsticking noise)
Ew.
(sticky noise)
I kind of like that.
Is that a good contact sound?
(creaking)
That's real good. (creaking)
I could kind of see this being clicky,
if I manipulate it.
(rattles)
You're making a face that's like, no.
(fizzing)
All right, I'm gonna chug the rest of this,
and then we're gonna go to the VO room.
(pluck) - Ooh.
(laughing)
(pluck) - Uh.
Wow, you hear that noise?
- Yeah, I heard it.
(peeling)
(tapping)
This is actually probably,
somebody just vomited and turned off the video,
because I'm grabbing a hairy lint roller (laughs).
I'm gonna take this. (clicking)
Is there anyone in here?
Oh, hell yeah, okay.
(whooshing)
- [Pat} What does it sound Like if you drag that?
(squeaking)
- Really, fucking good!
(banging)
Hmm.
(banging)
I said I was going to record all of these sounds
in our VO room with the good mic,
some of these I'm probably just gonna have to use
what I record with this.
- [Pat] Simone, you look like you're
absolutely rolling right now. (clanking)
(laughing)
- I am. (rumbling)
(spray)
(click)
I'm gonna take this.
(spray) (click)
So I think if I (spray)
take a couple of those (spray)
and then layer them on top of each other,
I can get a prolongated,
prolongated, elongated hiss.
Okay, so we have a hiss now,
which is the cleaner.
We've got some different rattly things
and some things that I think might be clicky.
We've got the creaky chair.
There's gotta be,
Oh my God, how does that happen?
- We need something to sort of say that
the OS is alive, some sort of chime.
(bong)
- If you don't listen to the bang,
but just listen to the (bang).
(blows raspberry)
(strumming)
- I don't know.
It's your video.
(laughing)
- Sound design is so, so important to video games,
and it's also quite literally invisible,
(echo-y) because it's sounds.
Going through this process of picking objects,
and recording them and thinking about them
makes me appreciate experts like Justin and Renzo
even more than I already did,
because just one second of sound
takes so much thought.
I had an excellent time making the sound today.
I hope it turns out okay.
I think it will.
I don't know yet, but it doesn't matter,
because even though I don't have Renzo's experience
or Hallie's sound design education,
what I did have was a lot of fun.
(peeling & creaking)
(distorted guitar)
(clicking)
(faint laughing)
Wow.
That was powerful.
So, I think if you would like to go out
and make a sound of your own,
you absolutely should.
The best way to learn something
is to practice doing it.
Maybe don't show anyone what you've done
on your YouTube channel. (laughing)
Thanks everyone for watching.
Go out, make noise, have fun.
(jazz music)
- For all we know, maybe, Simone,
you'll decide to be a sound designer,
and you will kick so much butt at it.
- [Simone] Gonna quit my job (laughing),
after I make this video.
- It sounds like you're stepping on tiny mice.
(laughing)
- Give me some direction.
(popping)
(laughing)