We are very grateful for everyone who would like to participate in this experiment by submitting their favourite examples of good or bad game audio. Here’s how you can contribute:
Step 1: Choosing a good or bad game audio example
In this experiment we specifically do not specify what we define by good or bad. If you think a certain game features good audio (for instance, you simply love the music for various reasons or believe that a certain gun or character sounds amazing) or bad audio (for instance, you are of the opinion that the sounds are not coherent, or match the game’s visuals, or that some part of the game sounds plainly awful due some weird bug), you have made your choice!
Note: we prefer actual (interactive) gameplay footage over recorded cutscenes.
Step 2: Capture game audio footage
The next step is to capture your favourite game audio footage. This should include the visuals (unless you decide to capture an audio game of course) as these provide meaningful context to what is being heard. Try to capture only about 1 minute of game footage. If you are on PC we recommend using Fraps. You can download Fraps through this link. If you want to capture a console game, read this GameSpot article titled ‘Capturing Console Footage’. You can also checkout this article by VideoForums.co.uk.
Step 3: Upload your video to YouTube
We have decided to use YouTube as our main means of storage. On one hand this is because we do not have unlimited harddiskspace and traffic like YouTube, on the other because millions of people are using YouTube already anyway. YouTube eliminates the hassle with codecs and mediaplayers, because it simply works in your browser with the Flash-plugin enabled. Yes, unfortunately the sound quality is not that good. Therefore at least make sure the sound of your original movie is as high a quality as possible! Then just upload your video to YouTube (click this link to read more about uploading videos to YouTube) and copy the URL.
Step 4: Submit to PUGS.com
Fill in the form on the submission page. Click this link to visit the submission page. Please write down any arguments for why you choose this footage and why you consider it to be an example of good or bad game audio. Do not forget to copy-paste the YouTube URL to your movie! Press the submit button when you are done. For anti-spam reasons you will be asked to confirm your post. Press the confirm button to confirm your submission.
Now your submission is posted to the website. It may not be directly visible but if you come back in a couple of hours it will be there.
Thank you for your submission. Please feel free to post as much footage as you want!