STACK #162 April 2018

GAMES FEATURE

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Overwatch ‘s newest map, BlizzardWorld, is a celebration of all things Blizzard. If you’ve played the new map in the colourful first person shooter, you may have noticed that throughout the theme park are dotted speakers that play music relative to each of the different areas you’re in.

W e were lucky enough to get some questions answered by those in the sound team at Blizzard on how they went about recording theme park sounds, some of the Blizzard universe Easter Eggs you might’ve missed, where Blizzard World is actually set, and the nitty-gritty technicalities of getting the perfect sound effects in the games; just the coding itself sounds intense. Onanswering duties: Scott Lawlor: Project Audio Director, Overwatch Paul Lackey: Supervisor, Sound Design, Overwatch Justin DeCloedt: Sound Designer, Overwatch Chris De La Pena: Senior Sound Designer, Overwatch Tomas Neumann: Senior Software Engineer, Overwatch

Going to a theme park is sensory overload, and a very audio-heavy experience. We needed to lean on music, sound FX and voiceover to keep that authentic feel. One of the first things we did is look into the back catalogue of Blizzard music and place it throughout the levels from park speakers. We then decided to cast some of the most recognisable characters fromWoW, Diablo and StarCraft to be the park announcers. As the level was finalised, we were able to drill into all of the details of the ambient sound in the level and the little sound Easter eggs we hid across the soundscape of the map.

Where did you start out with the sound design for BlizzardWorld? Scott Lawlor: The Overwatch team had been kicking around the concept of a Blizzard World map for years. It is something the entire development team was excited about, especially since so many of us have spent time working on the other Blizzard franchises. The process of map creation generally starts with a rough block-out where the level design is hammered out. The art team then starts to plan the layout of the level based on that design. Once the art team gets far enough along, and they have established a theme for each area in a level, we can start to get to work.

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APRIL 2018

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