We’re excited to be back on the Expo floor at GDC 2024, taking place March 20-22 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco! We have some exciting presentations happening at our booth space & an incredible team for you to meet on the ground.

Visit us at Expo booth S1541 to discover how Wwise 2023.1 and Strata simplify the work of programmers and empower audio teams to deliver superior immersive experiences. In addition to members of the Audiokinetic team, we’ll also be joined by Robert Brock of the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences (CRAS) who will be demoing Wwise education and certifications. 

Audio Theatre Presentations

You’ll also want to take the opportunity to tune into the talks at our booth's Audio Theatre, where presenters will be lifting the hood on the audio work that goes into a project. All you need is an Expo pass to attend! The schedule for these talks is as follows:

Wednesday, March 20th

10:30am | Baldur’s Gate 3: An Audio Technical Deep Dive

Stefan Randelshofer (Audio Director, Larian Studios)

Baldur’s Gate 3 Audio Director Stefan Randelshofer does a deep dive into the technical audio implementation for this hit RPG set in the D&D universe. He’ll cover various systems implemented in Wwise, and the process and impetus behind adding support for Dolby Atmos in the final six months of development.

1:30pm | In Your Head: Audio-Driven Everything in 'Alan Wake 2' and its Mind Place

Josh Bell (Senior Technical Audio Designer, Remedy Entertainment)

Alan Wake 2's profiling feature allows the player to delve into the minds and motivations of the game's characters, and access their thoughts and glimpses of past/future events. It exists inside the Mind Place, a 3D-space, immersive in-game user-interface, and hub to filter narrative elements and explore the story.

Navigating the wealth of content, the narrative importance, and the abstract essence of the Mind Place and Profiling module posed challenges for the team. However, it presented a great chance to enhance Alan Wake 2's narrative and collaborate closely with visual disciplines to craft a cohesive audio-visual experience.

We will go through the audio design for the "Profiling" feature, exploring how we concepted, overcame technical limitations, gave ourselves a framework to execute the large amount of content needed, and utilised an "audio-driven audio" and audio-driven visuals approach to craft a balanced and coherent experience.

2:30pm | Troubleshooting with Wwise

Guillaume Renaud (Technical Customer Support Lead, Audiokinetic)

Using the Wwise Profiler to understand the Voice Pipeline.

3:30pm | Haptic Feedback 101 & Practical Applications in Wwise

Rodrigo Robinet (Sound Designer, PlayStation)
Tyler Hoffman (Sound Designer, Insomniac Games)

What is haptic feedback? How are haptics created? Is it possible to author, manage, and mix haptics within Wwise? Haptic feedback is an important feature in video games and new technology is changing the way players feel and connect with gaming experiences. Sound designers Rodrigo Robinet and Tyler Hoffman will provide a high-level overview of haptic feedback and how this content is designed, implemented, and mixed in Wwise.

Thursday, March 21st

10:30am | The Audio of XDefiant

Nicholas Bonardi (Audio Director, Ubisoft San Francisco)
Brian DiDomenico (Lead Audio Designer, Ubisoft San Francisco)

This talk will focus on the architecture, systems, and challenges creating all the Audio, Music, and VO for Ubisoft's XDefiant. We'll be looking through the actual (Wwise) audio session, breaking down various audio systems, talking design decisions, and ultimately answering how and why things are setup the way they are. The talk will lean more technical, but still intends to be approachable so that anyone with an interest in Audio can follow along and learn!

XDefiant is a 6v6 first person arena shooter, with classic multiplayer modes, drawing on characters and factions from the Ubisoft universe.

11:30am | How to Voice Dynamic Content Using ReadSpeaker's On-Device Text-To-Speech Solution Through Wwise

Pontus Melin (Product Manager, ReadSpeaker)

This talk will explore how you can integrate ReadSpeaker's upcoming Text-To-Speech(TTS) plugin for Wwise. Discover how easily you can customize TTS Voices in the Authoring tool, and then send text from the game that is converted into speech at runtime. All running locally on the device, with cross-platform support.

1:30pm | Somerville Audio Deep-Dive

Matteo Cerquone (Audio Director, Jumpship)
Jay Steen (Tech Director, SweejTech)

In this talk, Somerville's Audio Director and Audio Programmer discuss the creative and technical challenges of the game's sound and how they overcame them. They cover the cinematic, storytelling mix and creating Somerville's brooding sonic atmosphere, how the alien elements of the game's sound were created and implemented, how sound was used to ground the player in an interactable environment, and how its otherworldly soundtrack brought the experience together.

2:30pm | Dialogue Innovation in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2: Breaking Down the Breathing System in Wwise

Matthew Strasser (Advanced Dialogue Coordinator, Insomniac Games)

What does it take to create a compelling and immersive AAA breathing system within Wwise? Join us step-by-step as we deconstruct the Breathing System in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 piece by piece, and container by container. This presentation will provide a new understanding of the music system, showcasing its potential for breathing while shedding light on our meticulously-crafted series of states and “breath intensities” that elevated the system to AAA shippable quality.

3:30pm | Wwhat's New & Wwhat's Next with Wwise

Damian Kastbauer (Product Manager, Audiokinetic)

Wwise 2023.1 continues to grow in the direction of interactive audio workflows across the industry. Increasing the number of effects per-object, Reverb Zones and improvements to Spatial Audio: Acoustics, along with additional features that expand on the ability to create compelling and immersive audio experiences with Wwise. Meanwhile, work is already underway to improve real-time iteration between the game and Wwise, along with exciting new features and updates for 2024.1. This presentation will cover the high-level features of Wwise 2023.1 and look to the future of what's planned for Wwise 2024.1

4:30pm | Wwise Spatial Audio: Acoustics

Thalie Keklikian (Software Developer, Audiokinetic)

The Wwise Spatial Audio: Acoustics product is a family of features allowing users to create realistic and interesting sound propagation in virtual environments. At Audiokinetic, we are constantly growing our Wwise Acoustics solution, so join developer Thalie to learn more about the current iteration of its features. We'll look into Rooms, Portals and Reverb Zones in a small demo map using the Unreal game engine.

Friday, March 22nd

10:30am | It Takes Two - Inhouse Music with Collaboration

Gustaf Grefberg (Music Designer, Hazelight Studios)

Exploring the Snowglobe level from “It Takes Two” and how Gustaf Grefberg and Kristofer Eng collaborated to come up with the final product. Diving into how Wwise was used to make music that was both dynamic and fit into a linear story. Q&A session to follow the presentation.

1:15pm | Finding Space For Sound: Acoustics in 'Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora'

Robert Bantin (Snowdrop Audio Architect, Massive Entertainment)

It’s been 5 years since we showed how the Snowdrop Engine delivered high-fidelity environmental acoustic effects for "Tom Clancy's The Division 2". With "Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora" these technologies had to be adapted or re-designed to a planetary scale, while also maintaining their fidelity at a city scale. Not only was this achieved, but the quality bar was significantly raised to deliver ever more detailed acoustic effects such as: Physically accurate early and late reflections; and more elegant direct field estimation.

2:15pm | Haptics Design and Workflow Presentation and Hands-On Session

Kristian Svane Rømer (Senior Sound Designer, IO-Interactive)

This session will be centered around the design, tools, implementation and workflows involved with creating audio-driven controller vibrations. As with auditory feedback, I believe good haptics shouldn’t draw the player’s attention, but work on a subconscious level, not breaking the illusion of the experience. This talk showcases examples from Hitman III, with a chance to debate haptics design and 'feel' controller vibrations.

Please keep an eye out for any schedule changes in the “Presentations” tab here: https://info.audiokinetic.com/gdc-2024 

The Imaginary Guide to Game Audio at GDC 2024

Product Manager Damian Kastbauer has also written a guide to the conference if you’re interested in going deeper into what’s happening on the ground. You can find that over on the A Sound Effect Blog: The Imaginary Guide to Game Audio at GDC 2024