The Sound Architect speaks to Jacques Deveau, Vice-President, Sales & Business Development at Wwise about the software and it’s new build 2013.1. Read below as we ask Jacques about the new build and the history of Wwise.
Tell us some history behind Wwise, how did it all begin?
Audiokinetic was originally founded in 2000. The idea was originally formed by Martin H. Klein, Founder and CEO of Audiokinetic. Executive Audio Producer for a major developer at the time, he realized that the lack of audio tools was a common problem in the games industry. Working with sound designers and other audio experts for more than two years, they created the ideal audio pipeline solution; Wwise was born! The first commercial version of Wwise was released in 2006.
Over the years, Audiokinetic and Wwise has received several awards from the industry. With more than 350 AAA titles worldwide that are using Wwise, Audiokinetic has become the industry leader in audio middleware technology and has built the reputation of being the innovators.
For the benefit of the readers, what are some of the top modern games that have utilised Wwise software?
Wwise is being used in many small mobile games, online games and also on AAA console games all over the world. We are proud to be in all our games, but some of our showcase titles include:
- The Assassin’s Creed Franchise (Ubisoft)
- Bioshock Infinite (Irrational Games/2K Games)
- Total War: Rome II (The Creative Assembly/Sega)
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Platinum Games/Konami)
- Sleeping Dogs (United Front Games/ Square Enix)
- Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
- Deus Ex: The Fall (Eidos Montreal/N-Fusion Square Enix)
- Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time (Popcap/EA)
Also in case anyone hasn’t heard of Wwise before, what is it?
Wwise is a cross platform Audio Middleware solution. It allows Audio Designers to have total control over their artistic audio vision while reducing dependencies on programmers. We currently support 15 game platforms from mobile devices to game consoles.
What’s new in the 2013 build of Wwise?
This release was very big for us in many ways. First, from a company perspective, it marked having had over 20 major releases of Wwise. Our licensees appreciate our robustness and proven stability and performance. From a feature point of view, this release contains some amazing new features including:
- HDR Audio
- Meters – Loudness, True Peak, Peak and RMS
- New Voice Monitor View
- Limbo Game
- New Platform support:
- PlayStation®4
- Xbox One
- Windows 8
- Desktop
- Windows Store App on Intel devices and on ARM tablets
- Windows Phone
What makes Wwise unique?
There are many things, but we believe that the quality of our tools and the unique approach of our pipeline is what makes us unique. From day one, we wanted to put all of the audio tools in the hands of audio creators. This extends from the actual audio design implementation to cross platform support, simulation and the ability to monitor performance and troubleshoot using our remote profiling tools. This also frees up developers so they can also focus on other technical areas of the game. Feedback from our licensees often mentions how much they appreciated the quality of our Customer Support.
What’s next on the agenda for Wwise?
Our development plate is never empty. We have work remaining on platform support as well as the release of new plug-in technology from Genaudio (AstoundSound), REV (Crankcase Audio) and Auro-3D (Auro Technologies)
What opportunities do the next gen consoles provide with regards to Wwise?
The shear horsepower provided by the next gen platforms allows game developers to fully utilize the full Wwise feature set without having to worry about the traditional memory/CPU constraints imposed by the current hardware. This allows sound designers to experiment with things like HDR, and many instances of high quality effects such as McDSP, iZotope or even convolution reverb. The secondary outputs (speakers/headphones) found on some controllers can also provide some creative mixing opportunities for sound designers.
We’ve seen that there a couple of extra project file downloads including the fantastic LIMBO, how did that come about?
Yes indeed, we are very excited about this. Wwise is used as part of many educational programs that teach game audio. The limiting factor has often been the lack of a “real game” that students know and can use hands-on to explore how the game was built and even change the sound design themselves. Limbo seemed like a great candidate for this and we discussed it with Playdead. They really liked the idea of making a Limbo trial and the Wwise project file freely available to the educational community.
We are already having fun playing with the new build of Wwise and if you want to check it out it’s free to download here as long as you’re not making a profit: https://www.audiokinetic.com/downloads/
Interview by Sam Hughes
Uploaded 20/09/13