E3

The Chaotic Content staff journeyed ALL the way to Downtown Los Angeles last week from Santa Monica (racking up those frequent flyer miles) to check out the E3 Expo! It was our first time there, and the larger-than-life gaming convention definitely lived up to the hype. This year it was all about controller-less gaming, with Microsoft leading the way with their new Xbox 360 Kinect, which essentially turns your entire body into one big controller. As you’d expect, 3-D technology was also prevalent as we saw several people donning the 3D glasses and testing out new games or products at a number of booths. We also saw a lot of Lakers jerseys, but I’m pretty sure that had nothing to do with the gaming industry. Something about a basketball game across the street… 

First, we spent a good amount of time visiting with our friends over at Nexon and got to check out the music and voice-over work we did for them recently. Their booth was bustling with attendees eager to catch a glimpse of their newest free online games, available to play for free at www.nexon.net. Here are 3 videos of what we worked on for Nexon:

Vindictus Trailer 1

Vindictus Trailer 2

Dragon Nest

With 3 full days to roam around, we got to spend some time at almost all the booths and had some great conversations about what’s happening in the industry, especially on the music and audio front. The general consensus from game developers and publishers are that the standards for in-game and game trailer music keep getting higher as players’ music tastes and expectations continue to evolve. It wasn’t too long ago that players and developers were content with MIDI-quality keyboard music. Now, full orchestral scores seem to be the norm, especially for the action and adventure games.

With gaming markets becoming more global by the year, localization has also become common practice for game publishers. We spoke to several Asian and European companies looking to localize their games for the American market, and it sounded like the demand for this service would continue to grow over the next few years. We were happy to hear about that, as game audio and music localization is an area we’re currently very involved in with Nexon and other foreign developers and publishers.

Overall, it was a fun, exhilarating and informative show…and we have the pictures to prove it:

Now we’re back in the office, which is fine, except playing video games all day long here is frowned upon for some reason. Can’t wait for E3 2011!

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