Seattle, WA (September 24, 2024) – GameSoundCon, the largest professional conference for video game music and sound design, celebrates its 15th anniversary today.
It all started when Brian Schmidt, who had been creating video game music and sound effects for companies like Electronic Arts, Capcom, Namco, Sega, and others for many years, joined the original Xbox design team at Microsoft. One of his roles was to educate composers and sound designers on the intricacies of creating interactive music and sound effects for the specialized and powerful Xbox audio hardware. At that time, the game industry was attracting the attention of traditionally ‘linear’ composers and sound designers from the film and TV industries, who had little or no experience in games.
In working with those aspiring game composers, Brian realized there was an education gap—composers and sound designers wanted to work on games, but didn’t understand the unique challenges of creating interactive music and sound. So he decided to create a conference dedicated to sharing knowledge on video game music and sound design. The idea was to give those coming from a more traditional music background an intensive ‘boot camp’ to learn the many differences between creating sound for games and creating sound for film or TV.
The first GameSoundCon took place in September, 2009 at the Century Hyatt in Los Angeles, with around 40 attendees and 12 speakers and panelists, and was targeted primarily at those “Hollywood” composers who wanted to learn about opportunities in game audio. Over the past 15 years, GameSoundCon has grown into the industry’s largest professional conference on game music, sound design, dialogue and education, attracting seasoned game audio professionals and novices alike.
GameSoundCon 5 years ago – back then in the Millenium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles
Having moved to the Burbank Convention Center, GameSoundCon now has over 130 speakers sharing their knowledge and experience across 7 rooms, and attracts over 700 in-person attendees with another 350 attending remotely from around the world.
This year, GameSoundCon will be held at the Marriott Burbank Convention Center in Burbank, CA on October 29 & 30. Register here: https://www.gamesoundcon.com/
Happy 15th Anniversary to GameSoundCon!
