Giving Nexus a voice one fire extinguisher at a time

Every now and then, Carbine takes a break from showing us pretty pictures of WildStar's planet Nexus. Sometimes it's to describe the fauna that'll be eating the players. Other times it's to introduce members of the teams responsible for bringing Nexus to life, be it through story, combat, or music. For this week's WildStar Wednesday, we're introduced to Senior Sound Designer Greg Meader as he gives us some insight into what's involved in giving everything on Nexus its own sound.

In addition to some backstory about where he worked before starting with Carbine, Greg talks us through some of the process of sound design. We might hear a monster roar or some background noise while playing a game and not really give a lot of thought to where it came from, but there's quite a bit involved in getting that sound. It's not like there's an actual Metal Maw for them to mic up and get some sound bytes from or an Esper to bring to a firing range to record as she attacks some targets. You have to build these sounds from what you've got on hand. The videos Greg included give us an example of what's involved. He tried a few different real world sounds to match up with what the Skug Queen was doing in-game, but nothing quite matched up. Bring them all together and do a little tweaking though and you've got something:

If you'd like to learn a bit more about what's involved in creating sound for an MMO, head over to the WildStar blog and read the rest of Greg's post. There's also an in-between video if you'd like to hear something between "fire extinguisher" and the finished product.

Michael "Ragar" Branham