The "Mix it like a record" mentality is pretty dominant across the board in Video Games. The reason for this is that the Audio Director and Main Audio programmer basically set the overall levels throughout the game play. There are so many variables in a game mix it is ridiculous. When you have 128 tracks of random SFX playing in a dynamic environment with Ambience, Music, dialogue and Cinematics it is really the programmers job on a technical level to set correct overall levels for the game. When the ingame movies play they have to be equal to all the game play sounds to sound seemless. It is quite challenging fighting mix levels in Next-Gen games. Basically it comes down to the consumer to turn up or turn down their TV or audio systems. But we all strive for clarity and a huge impact! I have worked on over 100 games, this is what I have seen/heard in my experiences.
