Ever caught yourself playing a video game and wondered how the sound effects were made? Today, you’re going to find out. 

Sound effects in video games have come a long way since the 8-bit era of the 1980s. Today, gamers can experience ‘Hollywood sound’ from the comfort of their home; experiencing high-quality dialogue, music and sound effects.

Here at dBs Institute, educating our students to create high-quality audio is our bread and butter. While it’s an art form we teach across all our audio courses, it’s our BA (Hons) Music and Sound for Film & TV that truly exposes students to the techniques and cutting-edge equipment needed to understand and master the creation of sound effects for media.

To understand how sound effects for video games are made, we’re going to walk you through the entire creative process. We will be talking extensively about the role of a sound designer throughout, and highly recommend reading our feature on ‘What is sound design?’ if you’re unfamiliar with the practice and would like more detail.

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How sound effects for video games are made

1. Who makes the sound effects for video games?
2. ‘Spotting’ - The art of identifying what sound effects are needed
3. How to source and create sound effects for video games
4. How to make professional sound effects for video games
5. How sound effects are implemented into a video game
6. How can I make my own sound effects for video games? 

1. Who makes the sound effects for video games?

A video game can be made by a team of one to a team of hundreds of people. For this feature, let’s assume we’re talking about a game studio with a modest number of employees. 

In this game studio, the audio department is made up of three individuals; the composer, sound designer and audio implementer/programmer. The composer is responsible for the creation of the score that will accompany the game; the sound designer is responsible for creating the game’s sound effects and the audio implementer/programmer for adding those sound effects to the game. 

Sound effects are a distinctive element of a video game. They refer to the sounds being made by the character(s), objects, environments and vehicles that may form a part of the experience. They also refer to the sounds of the game’s user interface, such as the menu screens and inventory. 

What sound effects are required will be dictated entirely by the type of game being made, e.g. a first-person shooter, open-world RPG, racing sim, etc. It’s the sound designer’s job to identify what sound effects will be needed and this process is called ‘spotting’.

2. ‘Spotting’ - The art of identifying what sound effects are needed

The term spotting is used across many forms of media and relates to making a list of all the necessary sounds that will need to be created for any given project. 

Audio is a big part of how we immerse ourselves in media, especially video games. Every sound needs to make sense in the context of the world being presented or else it will break the immersion for the player. 

In the pre-production phase of a game, the art and design teams will produce concepts for the look and feel of a game. These elements, along with discussions about the overall aesthetic for the game will help inform the sound designer on what sound effects will be needed. 

As an example, let’s say a studio is creating a first-person shooter set in the future. What kind of sounds would you expect from a game with that setting and those gameplay mechanics? 

• The main mechanic is gun-based combat, so you will need weapon sounds. It’s set in the future, so the arsenal of weapons may be purely fictitious and need bespoke sound design. 
• What kind of environments will the game take place in and how will you create an authentic sonic atmosphere for those environments? 
• Will there be vehicles included in this game, and if so, what kind? Are they based on real-world vehicles or something that doesn’t currently exist? 

There are also considerations to be made about the sound effects that are equally important, but not quite as obvious. 

• The sounds of the character’s footsteps and the different types of surfaces they will run on. 
• What sound does the equipment you’re carrying make when you move? Will the sounds emitted by the character(s) correspond with how they look? 
• What noises are made by objects that the character(s) can interact with? What sounds will you make for the menu and/or inventory screens? 

These are just some of a long list of considerations when making sound effects for video games. Once a sound designer has built a list of what sounds are needed, it’s time to make them. 

3. How to source and create sound effects for video games

Equipped with their list of audio assets, the sound designer is ready to start creating. Everyone’s approach is different when it comes to creating sound effects for video games, so let’s look at some of the most common approaches.

Creating sound effects with field recordings

Field recording is when you go out into the world to record sounds that naturally occur in any given environment. The types of sounds you capture in this way will often, but not always, be determined by the game’s aesthetic and theme. 

For example, the game may feature a forest or city environment, and so you would aim to capture sounds from those types of settings to create an authentic and believable audio atmosphere. Wind in the trees, bird song, traffic noises, a thrum of people, etc. 

Alternatively, there might be a sound that you notice in a certain area or being emitted from a certain object that you think would provide a great foundation to create a wholly new sound. 

Building on this foundation will usually be done in a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). The techniques behind sound design are vast, with many different approaches and tools for the job. 

Layering is one of the most common and effective ways to transform a sound. By combining a mixture of different sound sources, something entirely new can be created. Monster roars like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park are a great example of how effective layering can be. 

Sound effects can also be created by taking a sound source and processing it using synthesisers and effects such as EQ, distortion and modulation. It’s a highly experimental process which can generate some amazing results.  

Creating sound effects with Foley

Foley is at the heart of sound for video games - not to mention film, television, theatre and radio. The practice involves recreating a sound effect in a studio environment. Having control over the quality of your sounds is paramount and sometimes Foley is the only way to have that level of control. 

In our Bristol campus, we have a dedicated suite for Foley sound creation. In it, you will find a crazy assortment of things, from stone pebbles and concrete blocks to metal chains and plastic bags. More often than not, these sounds are not used to replicate their namesake in media, they are an element to create a wholly different sound. 

“For the recent BBC series Earth's Tropical Islands, everything was shot in mute so we had to recreate every sound that was appearing on screen. There are several libraries containing recordings of animal calls that we'll use, but there are some sounds that just aren't possible to capture such as small animals and insects. So anytime you see those kinds of animals or an animal interacting with its environment, those sounds are created by us.” - David Cherry, Foley Artist and Dubbing Mixer

However, Foley isn’t restricted to these types of objects and many sound designers will record vocals and instruments, such as synthesisers to build the sound effects they need. 

Foley gives sound designers the potential to create a library of sounds that are either ready to use or provide the bedrock for bespoke sound effects to be made. 

Creating sound effects using libraries

The final technique for creating video game sound effects is using libraries. Much like samples for music production, sound libraries are a great tool for sound designers to work more efficiently, but also get access to sounds that may otherwise be impossible to capture. 

Tom Smart, Audio Designer at Expression Games and dBs alumnus, spoke to us about his work creating the sounds for World War II multiplayer shooter, ‘Hell Let Loose’. Tom is one of two people that make up the entire audio team. Couple that with the game’s emphasis on realism, and the ability to create the sheer volume of sounds needed becomes a problem. 

“It’s a mixture of bespoke sound design and utilising existing samples,” says Tom when we asked him how he crafts realistic sound effects. “We use AudioKinetic Strata, as they have a lot of gun sounds from the era as well as environmental audio. For example, we have night maps and with Strata, we can use their Western Wildlife libraries which means we don’t have to stand in a field recording owls for hours at a time or digging around multiple websites for good samples. 

“It’s important to us that we don’t just take the gun sounds from Strata and drop them straight into the game. We want to manipulate it in our way with audio we’ve recorded, or samples that we’ve found online. Our goal is to be as good as, if not better, than Dice’s sound department which is a big ask for a team of two, but you know, shoot for the stars, aim for the moon. ‘Hell Let Loose’ already gets a lot of compliments for its sound design online, so we’re doing something right.” 

4. How to make professional sound effects for video games

It’s not enough to build a library of sound effects for a video game, they need to sound the part and have variation. If you love sound and play enough video games, you will start to recognise sound effects that come from the same libraries. 

That’s fairly common practice, but sometimes you will encounter a game where only one audio clip plays every time you perform an action, such as jumping or attacking an enemy. This can cause listener fatigue and is a big immersion breaker. 

A good sound designer will avoid this unless there’s an aesthetic reason behind it. Hearing the same footstep sample gets old pretty quickly, so it’s important that multiple variations are made for any given sound effect. 

This can be achieved in both the creation and editing process. If we continue using footsteps as our example, the sound designer will record various takes with different levels of pressure and velocity on different surfaces. But they can also edit those audio files after the fact using post-processing effects.  

The editing process is truly a make-or-break moment for a video game’s sound effects. The tools will vary depending on the sound designer, but as we mentioned earlier, they will likely be using a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). While any DAW can be used, Reaper is the unofficial software for sound and game audio designers. 

Reaper allows you to export multiple audio files in a single render, each with their own filename - an absolute godsend when working with so many audio files. It also integrates with middleware softwares Wwise and FMOD, which leads us nicely into our final section of this feature.

5. How sound effects are implemented into a video game

We’ve spotted our sounds, sourced them and edited them to sound as good as possible. The final step is actually getting them into the game. 

This step is often referred to as ‘audio implementation’ and is where the game audio implementer/programmer may take over while working closely with the sound designer. In smaller studios, the sound designer will likely be the creator and implementer. 

There are a lot of contextual considerations when implementing sound effects into a video game. It’s a complex process and one that requires a conduit between the audio assets and the game engine where the game is being created. That conduit is middleware. 

There are several middleware programs out there, and some AAA studios will have their own game engine and middleware. However, what we’re focusing on are the two industry standard programs, Wwise and FMOD. 

Wwise and FMOD integrate seamlessly with game engines like Unity and Unreal. Each has a suite of tools that allow you to attach sounds to objects, creating systems for multiple variations of a single audio asset (footsteps) or defining where and when certain sounds trigger, e.g. when entering a new area, moving from indoors to outdoors etc. 

For more advanced audio systems, the sound designer and/or audio programmer may also employ some coding to achieve the desired effect. 

As well as considering how sound changes based on the environment the player is in, there may also be changes based on the game state, e.g. exploration, combat, etc. 

A hack-and-slash game that utilises a combo system may call for the sound effects to morph as the player builds their combo. A horror game may utilise an increased intensity in certain sound effects when the player has low health or is in danger of being spotted. 

It takes time to perfect the sounds of a video game, and the implementation process will see multiple iterations of systems and audio files before the final version is approved. 

6. How can I make my own sound effects for video games? 

The barrier to entry is pretty low for creating your own video game sound effects. As long as you have a fairly modern phone, you can use that to record any sounds you want. 

We recommend checking out our guide to free music production tools, many of which can be used for sound effects creation. Wwise, FMOD, Unity and Unreal Engine are all free to download and use, too. 

We also have several helpful videos on the topic of game audio from both guest speakers and dBs graduates who now work as professional game audio programmers and audio designers. 

• Bjørn Jacobsen - Working in game audio and sound design
• Matthew Owen - How audio programmers operate in the gaming industry
• Giorgio Cortiana - How we made the interactive audio for ‘The Kraken Wakes’ game