Hi guys,

I'm wondering if any of you out there have done sound/music for mods before? I have heard that it's a bad idea to work on a mod from a programmer standpoint (since you're essentially working with someone else's code instead of your own) and potential employers don't look on them as valid experience. I wonder if the same applies to audio?

As I see it:

Pros:
- Chance to make pro-level music and sounds suited for more AAA-type game (rather than the usual 2D platformers!)
- Exposure on sites such as ModDB

Cons:
- No money in mods...
- Limited end-user audience (basically only people who are interested in mods)

Any thoughts?

I'm a programmer, not an audio guy, but --

I have heard that it's a bad idea to work on a mod from a programmer standpoint (since you're essentially working with someone else's code instead of your own) and potential employers don't look on them as valid experience. I wonder if the same applies to audio?

If you've never shipped a commercial game, then working with commercially proven code is probably going to be a damn good learning experience for you. As for valid experience, it depends what you do with it.
If instead of modding a game, you make your own "engine" from scratch, you might be just showing off how inexperienced you are and end up demoing a badly designed, semi-functional, ugly and very basic game. On the other hand, if you mod an existing game, the groundwork is already there and perhaps you can implement some really cool features in the same time-budget. There's a lot of variables.


The same goes for audio. If you do audio from scratch, you've got nothing (or very little) to connect it to. If you do audio for a mod, then you've got an entire game's worth of stuff that you can bring alive with your sounds. You'll likely be able to make a very coherent demo in a much smaller amount of time -- e.g. make a basic level, delete all the game's original weapon/monster/etc sounds for that level, and replace them with your own.

As long as you can clearly describe which parts are the original game, and which parts have been added (e.g. all music here, or all weapons here, etc), then mod work should come across well.

P.S. coming from someone who got their first industry job by demoing a mod ;)

Pros:
- Chance to make pro-level music and sounds suited for more AAA-type game (rather than the usual 2D platformers!)
- Exposure on sites such as ModDB

Cons:
- No money in mods...
- Limited end-user audience (basically only people who are interested in mods)

Implementation is such a critical part of any game audio job so any time you can showcase your audio work implemented in a functional game - it will ALWAYS speak louder than streaming a linear audio file. It also presents problems and situations that that commonly come up while producing audio for a game project - especially 3D. It's a great way to start but you're right - there is no money with mods so you do have to be careful.

I have heard that it's a bad idea to work on a mod from a programmer standpoint (since you're essentially working with someone else's code instead of your own) and potential employers don't look on them as valid experience.

I'm not sure where you heard that, but as Hodgman has already touched upon it isn't something that is universally (or even really usually) true, and there are many cases of individuals or entire teams that have gotten started in the industry via work on mods -- one famous example you might know of being Counter Strike, which began life as a mod for the original Half Life. The important thing is that you create an impressive game-play experience, and if you're better able to do that working on a mod then that is the correct approach to take; you'll also be working with an existing code-base, which is something you would have to do in a real industry job -- I would suggest that the same applies to audio -- a demo of music and/or SFX set to actual gameplay rather than simply a static recording will usually make a much more impressive portfolio piece, assuming you've done a good job of it.

As always, you should be picky about which mod projects you work on, as you have limited time, and (just as with from-scratch projects) the majority of them may not go anywhere -- you'll also likely (as you observed) have a limited or non-existent earning potential from your work on mods.