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North Carolina is where you’ll find the biggest hub for video game developers on the east coast. Surprised? I was too, and I’ve lived here all my life! On April 20th, thousands will flock to the Raleigh Convention Center [2] for the 8th East Coast Games Conference [3]—but despite being the largest gathering of devs this side of the Mississippi, the conference is still under the radar for many.
While the East Coast Games Conference (ECGC for short) has been a strong meeting grounds for programmers, artists, and writers, the audio scene has been lacking.
That all changed last year, when the conference introduced its first-ever audio track: a series of talks, panels and events aimed at the game audio community. I had the pleasure of attending last year’s ECGC, and it was a life-changing experience. I met so many talented composers, musicians, sound designers—it made me realize, yes I do want to spend the rest of my life in cahoots with these crazy individuals.
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Last year the conference attracted composers like Jason Graves [5] (Dead Space, Far Cry Primal) and sound designers like Akash Thakkar [6] (Hyper Light Drifter) to talk about getting into the games industry, negotiating work as a freelancer, advanced sound design techniques and more.
This year’s roster for the audio track includes:
- Chris Groegler [7], sound designer for Red Storm Entertainment [8]
- Xiao’an Li [9], composer and director for East Coast Scoring [10], a full-time studio orchestra
- Steven Melin [11], an independent games composer
- Alyssa Menes [12], independent composer, sound designer, orchestra director, and resident Nintendo nerd
- Jack Menhorn [13], award-winning sound designer for Boss Key Productions [14]
- DJ Yingling, sound designer for Insomniac Games [15]
Additional speakers will be announced soon. They’ll be talking about everything from VR audio innovations to arcade games, which means ECGC 2016 is shaping up to be a fantastic event for game audio.
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If you can’t make it this year, you can live vicariously through me as I cover the event on Twitter. Be on the lookout for a wrap-up of all the audio events after ECGC ends, April 22nd.
Mr. Hassan DuRant [17] is a composer out of North Carolina and a guest writer for OSV. All information and opinions are his own.