I grabbed the audio pass this year, so I was able to attend a good handful of some really insightful panels discussing everything from footsteps, sound scapes, and epic music in AAA and independent games.

I’m super happy to take away a lot of knowledge from GDC, but one thing that stood out to me the most was the dynamic range that interactivity in video games can have. I was always aware of how effective cross-fading and layering tracks could be to create an emotional response. But as shown in the Splinter Cell: Conviction panel, it can also be used to reward/encourage teamwork, something that the co-op in that game relied so heavily on. It also occurred to me that adding multiple layers to a game score wasn’t necessarily restricted to always coming in on the beat, as shown at Marty O’Donnell’s Key note speech when he would play two tracks from Halo: Reach and would play them together at random times, but they would all sound perfectly in sync.

Overall, phenomenal experience and I’m already looking forward to next years.

Then after (barely) catching up on my sleeping patterns I ran off to PAX EAST this past weekend. I managed to catch the Giant Bomb panel, absolutely hilarious, although I wish that they had them up on the big screen. Didn’t catch any other panels, but managed to check out a lot of the show floor. Great to see a lot of indies down there! And Ubisofts “Child of Eden” game looks badass.

And then after my eventful weekend at PAX I went home for a couple of days. Great to have a little break and check out some shows.

WRONG! This game is addicting as hell. I haven’t turned on my XBOX since I’ve grabbed it. For those of you not familiar with the game, you play as a lawyer, gather evidence, defend your clients, call out witnesses when they’re lying in court. I know it doesn’t sound incredibly exciting, but it’s extremely fun. Music is grade A as well, by composer Masakazu Sugumori.

Also, finally upgraded to Finale 2011, so far I’m enjoying it a ton more then 2010. I’ll talk more about the better features after I use it on a couple of projects.

Furthermore, I’m currently reading Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better And How They Can Change The World by Jane McGonigal, who will be doing the keynote speech at PAX EAST this year. I’m only about halfway through, but so far this book is both excellent and inspiring. Fully encourage everybody to read it; even if you’re not into video games, she goes over all of her examples pretty thoroughly, so it’s easy to understand if it’s not familiar territory for you.

After many months of hard work and preparation, I finally have got a new site! Woot! I’m really excited to have a new way to share my music and projects.

So here it is! I have equipped the site with some new tunes and videos for your enjoyment.

Also a new feature to the site is this blog, which I’ll be updating on various things that I find interesting – i.e. music, games, movies, technology, books etc.

Few little wrap up things:

Thanks to William Chan for the photos you see on the site.

And a HUGE THANK-YOU to Alejandra Valencia for creating and designing this site. Without her this site would not exist, nor look nearly as good. Thank-you again!

All for now!

Visit my website for updates on my latest work!