Develop Awards 2014 – The Finalists: Creative Contribution: Audio

AIR EDEL / Walter Mair

Established 40 years ago, Air Edel is one of the world ?s leading music companies, representing composers, arrangers, music editors and music supervisors world-wide.

Last year, Air Edel produced and coordinated the score for Guerrilla Cambridge’s PS Vita release Killzone Mercenary, based on two hours of original music composed by Walter Mair.

Mair is a classically trained composer who has previously created original scores for feature films and adverts. He also worked on video game scores include the Ivor Novello nominated Empire: Total War and Viking: Battle For Asgard.

Rightly recognised for its quality, Killzone Mercenary’s score is a palette of different instruments, ranging from big orchestra to twisted synths and heavily processed sound, blurring the lines between music and sound design.

THE AUDIO GUYS

Now in its eighth year as an independent audio provider, Somerset-based The Audio Guys create audio for games across a range of different platforms.

In 2013 alone, The Audio Guys provided audio for high-profile releases on Facebook, Steam, iOS, Android, Nintendo 3DS and Xbox One. These included Bossa Studios’s Toy Run, Merlin and the hilarious and massively popular Surgeon Simulator; Eutechnyx’s NASCAR Redline and SEGA’s Sonic Rush; Triumph Studios’ Age of Wonders 3 and Mind Candy’s Moshi Monsters franchise.

The Audio Guys also worked closely with Microsoft Game Studios to assist with the audio on the cars in Forza Motorsport 5 for Xbox One, showcasing the capabilities of the new console and capping off a stand-out year for the company.

HIGH SCORE PRODUCTIONS

High Score Productions Ltd has had a huge year, working on several key projects while expanding its education division.

Highlights include providing award-winning dialogue across many different languages for Gaijin Entertainment’s MMOs War Thunder and Star Conflict, both truly global projects.

High Score also excelled itself with title tunes, dialogue and SFX for projects including Boomtime Baseball, Rugby Kicks and Football Kicks from Distinctive Developments.

Beyond this, High Score has also grown its education department, training over 300 actors with the successful Gravy For The Brain venture and Voiceover For Gaming training course, which are raising the quality bar of voice talent within the gaming sector in the UK.

With work on a big, top-secret new title underway, High Score’s continued success seems assured.

STAFFORD BAWLER

Since the 1990s, Stafford Bawler has worked creating audio for companies including Silicon Dreams, Codemasters and The Audio Guys on a huge variety of different games.

In November 2013, Bawler made the decision to go freelance. One of the first games he worked on in this capacity was Monument Valley, the inventive and beautiful iOS puzzle game from London-based design outfit, ustwo. it has been a huge critical and commercial hit.

One nominator described Monument Valley’s audio as “delicate but not brittle, soft but not weedy, abstract but with solid roots in the ludic reality of ustwo’s creation. In short, it’s an extremely complicated balancing act, but Stafford pulls it off with aplomb”.

Testament to Bawler’s vast experience, Monument Valley’s audio is masterful.

PINEWOOD STUDIOS

In recent years the world-famous film and TV facilities provider Pinewood Studios has established a strong, diverse national and international client base within the games industry, offering foley recording and editing; custom sound design; an in house casting database; localisation in over 40 languages; Oscar winning mixers; sound editorial and project management.

Most recently, Pinewood has worked with Lionhead Studios on Fable Legends for Xbox One; created the in-game foley and sound design for Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation; and contributed 24,000 bespoke sound effects in both sound design and foley for Total War: Rome II. Also on TWRII, Pinewood dealt with the location of a 300,000 word count in four languages from casting to final asset delivery.

With a legendary reputation in the film and television industries, Pinewood’s contributions to the games industry is remarkable.

93 STEPS

Based in northern Italy near Venice, 93 Steps covers a wide array of different audio services from original soundtrack composition, custom sound effects production, post-production, voice overs and localisation.

93 Steps has worked on some huge trailers in 2013, including the War Thunder Heroes CG trailer for Gaijin Entertainment and the World of Tanks: Endless War and World Of Warplanes: Open Beta trailers for wargaming.net, racking up millions of views on YouTube. Furthermore, the studio produced audio for trailer World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition, shown during Microsoft’s E3 2013 press conference and streamed worldwide.

Also composing the original soundtrack for the award-winning mobile title, Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf by Forge Reply, 93 Steps excels across all aspects of game audio.

About The Develop Awards 

The 2014 Develop Awards will take place on Wednesday, July 9th at the Hilton Metropole Hotel in Brighton, and recognises the best innovators and development talent in the UK and Europe.

If you want to attend, you can book single seats and standard or gold tables by contacting Kathryn.Humphrey@intentmedia.co.uk or calling 01992 535646.

There are multiple new awards this year, with a total of 24 prizes up for grabs, while PlayStation 4 lead architect Mark Cerny is 2014’s Development Legend.

There is a host of big names backing this year’s Develop Awards, including Crytek and Deep Silver as Platinum Partners, a slew of Gold Partners in King, UKIE, Amiqus, Keywords International, Codemasters, Perforce, Cubic Motion and Unity, Event Partners Wales Interactive, InnoGames and Tandem Events and Table Gift Partner OPM. Epic Games is Drinks Reception Partner.

For more information on the sponsorship and partnership opportunities still available, contact Alex.Boucher@intentmedia.co.uk or call 01992 535647.

You can find out more about the Develop Awards at the official Develop Awards website.