Sound Design Mercenaries, and the Conundrum of Self Promotion

This is the beginning of a (sporadic) project that aims at researching the Job Market for Sound Design. This post is going to focus on video-game sound design. I'm completing this (somewhat limited) survey because it's a passion of mine to someday be working within the field of video-games.

Why? Because I think that Games are the ultimate medium for storytelling, conveying emotion, and transmitting stimulation that humans have ever discovered, besides roller coasters, books, and real life. That being said, I've had a love/hate relationship with games: they're addicting. As a multimedia artist, I want to spend time making things, not always consuming things. So you could say that I intentionally fall behind the curve when it comes to keeping up with the cutting edge of whatever. But it has consistently kept me grounded, because it saves me the trouble of getting invested in things that age poorly. (Sometimes though, I jump back into gaming at the right time, like when Metal Gear Solid games are released).

Now that I've betrayed my inner desire to someday work on a game-development team, I'll get to my attempts at researching the Job market for Sound Design, and finish with my conclusions about the state of the business.

Reviewing some stats

After reading the Game Developer Salary Survey for 2013, conducted by Game Developer Magazing, I'm beginning to formulate a few basic ideas about the way Sound Designers are hired to work on games. It is pretty clear that the majority are brought in on a case-by-case basis. Game Developer's (GD) survey begins their salary assessment for Sound Designers with this statement:

Note that our response rate for salaried audio workers is always fairly low compared to other disciplines; there simply aren't that many audio jobs out there, and most of the available audio gigs are contract rather than full-time permanent positions. However, we did get about 15% more respondents from salaried audio devs this year over last year, and last year we saw 30% more audio respondents than the year before, so it looks like the industry is gradually adding more full-time audio jobs. Audio contractors averaged $110,500.

Before I comment on their stats, I just want to air a word of warning when it comes to survey bias. In this case it was a voluntary survey, so it's possible that it contains stats from passionate members on the game industry, who decided to select themselves for participation, and therefore don't adequately represent the whole group of game developers. That being said, this survey at least gives us something to work with, which for me is the idea that Sound Design is a vocation heavily based on contractual employment.

With this idea in mind, let's look at the first line of GD's article presenting this survey (written by Patrick Miller):

"An industry in flux." That's the main takeaway from the 12th annual Game Developer magazine Salary Survey. On one hand, we saw the industry explode with creativity and new tech; on the other hand, seeing several highprofile studio closures left many worrying about the long-term outlook for their career.

Big studios are going down (or just "bloodletting" talented employees by downsizing as one respondent mentioned), while grass-roots indies are pushing innovation but not taking in a lot of capital. Although this is disconcerting to anyone hoping to jump into the industry, it is later countered by a comment from a surveyed individual:

"There is an obvious and exciting increase in the number of opportunities for game developers on an individual and independent level. Anyone who wasn't working on a personal project in 2012 is falling behind."

 And with that I can go forward with my cherry-picked argument. Game Development has been pushed forward by grass-roots independent teams, making small and even casual games. Because of that, anyone hoping to work in game Sound Design in the near future is going to need to track these small bands of developers like wolves hunting wildebeest, as well as seeking contracts from larger, more substantial animals like Big Game Development firms (It also suggests that you might consider developing your own game from scratch).

So the first option (hunting down small teams) presents a challenge with Self-promotion and visibility, as well as being able to offer affordable service to cash-strapped Devs seeking music.

The second option (going after the big game) is a test in perseverance and patience, since according to Ariel Gross in this wonderful blog post, "your odds of actually [being hired] are very low." Mr. Gross calculated those odds at being around 3%, in regards to Team Audio at Volition. Although Gross may be specifically referring to being hired as an in-house sound designer, it still suggests that there are some 'camel through the eye of a needle' type bottle-neck situations when it comes to getting hired.

It might not be so bad

Now before I continue, I want to strongly admit that I could be wrong in this early appraisal. According to this (speculative) post by Game Sound Convention, music director and composition jobs have been rising since 2008, which they claim to be caused by the explosion of mobile games as well as games developed for social networking sites. But according to the graph, the increase leveled out around 2011:

That growth spike shows that those composers who were able to jump on the wave were able to get work, but the income they received was meager on average (see article).

So where am I going with this? I don't want to draw too many conclusions from these diverse sources, but what I can say is that it is clear to me that those seeking work are going to have to be visible to firms looking for Sound Design, all the while maintaining a cool and discrete presence. Nobody likes having to feed a hungry dog, so being present-but-not-annoying is going to be key here, folks.

That being said, Game Dev's are going to need to realize that Sound Designers are generally going to be contractually employed, and therefore, they are going to tend to solicit their service, whether you need them or not.

Harnessing Uncertainty

Sound Designers should not be scared by the prospect of having to face the uncertainty of contract-to-contract employment. In fact, getting good at it could prove more sustainable than being employed by a single firm. As Nassim Taleb argues in his (phenomenal) book Antifragile:

        Artisans, say, taxi drivers, prostitutes (a very, very old profession), carpenters, plumbers, tailors, and dentists, have some volatility in their income but they are rather robust to a minor professional Black Swan*, one that would bring their income to a complete halt. Their risks are visible. Not so with employees, who have no volatility, but can be surprised to see their income going to zero after a phone call from the personnel department. Employees' risks are hidden.

       Thanks to variability, these artisanal careers harbor a bit of antifragility: small variations make them adapt to change continuously by learning from the environment and being, sort of, continuously under pressure to be fit. Remember that stressors are information; these careers face a continuous supply of these stressors that make them adjust opportunistically (p 84, random house. 2012).

*[meaning an unforeseen consequential event, like getting fired.]

Taleb is telling us to take pride in the fact that we have to keep our noses to the ground. Sniffing out new contracts will be a skill in itself, as composers/sound designers are forced to seek their next meal, and ensure that they stay fit in the process, or end up hungry.

One such way of learning from the environment is to take Leon Willett's advice taken from this great blog-post, where he writes about his experience hunting down the development team for the game Dreamfall. I suggest you read it in its entirety, but Willett's point is to seek out projects that fit your personal style, ensuring that you'll enjoy the project and make better work in the process.

The End for now

I hope that this post might have helped anyone (life myself) who is interested in getting started in designing sound for video games, or anyone who has experience in the field but isn't yet comfortable with the idea of being a free agent.

Good luck, and Thanks for reading.