Sydney Kennett is a champion, world record holding skydiver who is also deeply afraid of heights.
You’re probably wondering what Sydney does to overcome her fear – perhaps meditation or white-knuckling past it. But I assure you that every jump she does, she does gracefully and without panic. That’s because, at just fourteen years old, Sydney does all her jumps and choreography completely inside of an indoor jumping facility.
But when posed this question – are you looking forward to skydiving by jumping from a plane when you’re older? – Sydney didn’t reply with the certainty you’d expect from a 10-year seasoned veteran (yes, she started at four years old). “I might want to skydive when I’m older…” says Sydney, “…but I’m also kind of scared of heights!”
That lack of certainty is something we all experience whenever we’re considering something new. Last week, I shared three reasons that you may want to learn the new skill of audio implementation with programming. But, I know some of you are still uncertain, so today I’m going to cover three reasons you absolutely shouldn’t jump headfirst into this new skill.
- You shouldn’t if it’s not a job requirement
- You shouldn’t if you hate programming
- You shouldn’t if you just feel like everyone else is doing it
More skills don’t equate to a job.
The number one reason people consider learning audio implementation with programming other than being interested in the topic, is that they think the skill could put them ahead to get a job.
If programming isn’t a job requirement (and 95% of the time, it’s not), then it won’t. For AAA development, programming and implementation skill is a “nice to have”, not a “need to have”. Having the skills could benefit you, your career, and your teammates tremendously – but it’s a value add, not a reason to hire you as a creative designer.
What will get you hired in AAA is deep focus and practice. Become a phenomenal sound designer. Better yet, think about the specific game you’d die to work on, and critically investigate what types of sounds you need to improve at making in order to create that style of game! The more deep focus and practice you put towards that, as well as relationship building, the more you increase your odds of landing the job you want.
Even if programming is a “desired but not required skill” – don’t freak out about it. Learn more if you wish, otherwise don’t stress.
It’s okay to hate programming.
Plenty of you are unsure if you should learn programming, while some of you straight up hate programming. You’d rather die than type code, and you’d rather live in your DAW all day long. But, since being “technical” has become a bit of a trend, you feel like you should learn some programming.
Don’t. It’s okay. You’re fully free to loathe the thought of it, and nobody should shame you for that. It would be really smart for you to understand some programming concepts – but those are things people can share with you in analogies. You never need to type a line of code if you have no personal desire to.
The good news is that this clarifies the exact job role you want. If you’re not an employed sound designer yet – that’s what you want to aim for. If you are a sound designer and you’ve been begrudgingly assuming you should dabble in code – don’t! Instead, apply yourself fully to sound design alone and completely ignore other avenues even if your competition doesn’t.
You’re not missing out on anything.
Many of you are seeing others either jump on learning how to program, or at least considering it. There’s a tremendous amount of “Fear Of Missing Out” ™ involved in your decision making. You feel like you’re cutting yourself off from potential jobs, new skills, hireability, and you’re being left behind if you don’t learn implementation with programming.
All of that thinking is false.
Focusing your efforts on becoming a fantastic sound designer will open up plenty of doors for you. If you don’t already have an interest in implementation and programming, you won’t be adding anything onto your career at all. In the weird case that you apply yourself and learn these skills but dislike them, you may end up being relied upon to do things you don’t enjoy doing simply because you know more than others.
Let other people go crazy with their nerdiness over text on a screen and hooking sounds up. By applying yourself to what you love – you’re just engaging deeper with who you are and what you want to get better at. When you don’t follow the crowd, you drastically stand out.
“But Adam…” you say, “I think you’re crazy, won’t it help my career out if I just learn a bit of this stuff?”
It could. But, likelihood is, it won’t if you’re not really interested.
The vast majority of professionals in AAA game audio know absolutely nothing about implementation and programming. They know just enough to hook sounds up to their specific engine with very specific tools. Even plenty of job listings for “Technical Sound Designer” really mean “someone who understands Wwise really well.” not “I need a programmer.”
All of that is totally okay! Again, if you want to apply yourself and learn programming – sweet, it’s definitely an excellent value-add to your career. But if you’re on the fence and unsure – you can hop right off that fence and stick to sound design. I give you 1000% full permission to do that guilt-free!
Remember, stick to sound design if…
- Programming isn’t a job requirement
- Programming is something you’d rather die than do
- Programming is something you’d learn just to “keep up with everyone else”
Syndey may never jump from a plane
And it’s 100% cool if she chooses not to, with no shame involved. Instead, she spent ten years dedicating herself to working on her craft indoors and won championships and world records. Just the same, you have the freedom to stick to sound design, and make legendary, award winning audio!
But if you really want to learn now…
Don’t forget that my C# Implementation with Wwise and Unity video course is once again opening up on September 28th. I’m going to send you a few more emails about it to make sure you don’t miss out, but go ahead and take a peek at the details if you’re curious.
The course is going to be limited in its availability, so take a few weeks and consider diving in. If you’ve got any questions about, all you have to do is reply to this or email me@adamtcroft.com.
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