One more reason why we focus on the audio instead of graphics

I had just read this comment in Unity3D forum and I agreed with it:

The State of Game Audio

The traditional sample-based approach to game audio is old and dated.

Over the course of the last two decades, game graphics have evolved from bitmap sprites to near photo-realistic imagery running at a solid 60 frames per second. We have shaders, massively parallel calculations running on dedicated hardware, and much more. With today's and tomorrow's hardware you can literally trace a ray of light as it bounces from surface to surface (and even through them!) towards the camera, creating crystal clear pictures.

Some of these developments are slowly starting to transfer to game audio, but not nearly enough! Games across the entire spectrum, from AAA to Indie, still resort to using ancient sample-based approaches for audio. Middleware packages such as WWise or FMOD offer real-time effects processing, which is a step forward, but they don't offer you the possibility to model your own synthesis model and generate sound on-the-fly. Furthermore, these packages seem to be mostly aimed at AAA first-person-shooter titles, making it difficult to do something radically different with them.

This inhibits development of game audio as a more integral part of game design. The result is that audio in games is still mostly an afterthought. In my opinion, game audio is at least 10 years behind on game graphics.

Audio Design Process

The huge gap in technology means that audio development is a parallel process.

A typical game designer writes a design document with little attention to audio whatsoever. With tools such as Unity, a studio can start prototyping a game within weeks, allowing very agile development methodologies. Sound designers and composers typically get none of these benefits. They are called in late in the process, get their assignment, produce the end result, and that's it. Game designers embraced agile development, while audio designers are still stuck with the waterfall approach.

Game audio is still mostly linear, applied in a non-linear context. Situations in games change continuously, all the time! Audio and music in games should be able to instantly adapt to this.

All this means that audio is never central to a game design, while audio and music are actually a great area for innovation! There is a huge amount of creative potential here, completely untapped.