Word on The Street 18: Audio Direction

Word on The Street 18: Audio Direction

From Word on The Street, with Greg Street & Scott Johnson by Scott Johnson

August 5, 2025 · 49 min

About this episode

Scott Johnson and Greg Street discuss audio design in MMOs with guest James Ackley, focusing on challenges and immersive soundscapes.

Scott Johnson and Greg Street with guest James Ackley, Audio Director for Ghost at Fantastic Pixel Castle. They discuss audio design in MMOs, especially challenges with adaptive sound in open-world games versus corridor shooters and other genres. James shares his background (Monolith, ArenaNet, Amazon, Meta) and talks about leveraging in-world lore to craft immersive soundscapes. Avoiding traditional fantasy music, favoring diverse and real-world-inspired audio. Collaborative development is key! It’s all here in this episode!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

People in this episode

Hosts: Scott Johnson, Greg Street

Guest: James Ackley

Topics covered

  • audio design
  • MMOs
  • adaptive sound
  • open-world games
  • immersive soundscapes
  • collaborative development

Keywords

  • audio direction
  • MMOs
  • adaptive sound
  • sound design
  • game audio
  • immersive audio
  • fantasy music

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Ghost, Fantastic Pixel Castle, Monolith, ArenaNet, Amazon, Meta

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