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Originally Posted by lonely_john  its strange to me that so many people are in sound for video games yet there is so little info available on it and even smaller amounts of schools dedicated to it. |
Don't be misled. There aren't a ton of us running around. We are a severe minority in the gaming industry. As far as minimal info, there are a few problems:
A) We're all busy as hell. Most developers won't budget for a large audio staff, so we end up scrambling to keep on top of things.
2) There are no standards, which is something we're trying to fix, but due to problem three it can be a bit of a moving target
III) We all use different tools, but to complicate it further, we're all implementing our sounds in different engines on different platforms (PS3, 360, Wii, DS, PSP, PC, etc)
I've tried to compile a bit of info, both about sound design and audio for games specifically, on my web site. But there's lots more out there. I'm currently writing a book on the topic, but given my current workload, I'd be surprised to see it out in the world (that's assuming I can get a publisher) before 2010.
Oh, and if you can afford it, take Georgia up on her offer. Having a proper TV/Film post background will make you much more effective in game audio. There really are two types in the games world: those who understand pro audio because they have a background in it, and those who grew up totally in games and don't have any clue about timecode, pullup/down, reference tones, etc are all about. While a lot of that isn't day to day useful in games, having the background in it will put you in a position to make far more intelligent decisions about how you create audio for your games, and the result will benefit from it.
I wish I could make all game audio people go spend 6 - 12 months in a serious audio post shop before they worked on games. The whole medium would sound better for it.