PrettyUglyGameSoundStudy (or PUGS) is an experiment to gather as many examples of audio in games that people consider either to be ‘good’ (or ‘pretty’) and ‘bad’ (or ‘ugly’). On one hand we wish to get a better understanding of game audio that people consider to work well in games and on the other we would like to get an overview of (typical) game audio blunders, from which the field can benefit. We hope that eventually this archive can grow out to be an inspiration (as well as the occasional good laugh) for those working in the field of game audio.
We are Sander Huiberts and Richard van Tol. For the past years we have taught a course Game Audio Design at the Utrecht School of the Arts (Netherlands), in which we gave our students an assignment similar to the idea behind PUGS.com (“gather 1 minute of footage of what you consider to be ‘good’ game audio and 1 minute of footage of what you consider to be ‘bad’ game audio”). We ended up with lots of interesting footage as well as discussion points. Through this website we wish to share this footage.
Please feel free to contribute to this website either by uploading your favourite example of good or bad game audio, or by commenting the uploaded examples of others!