Audiokinetic at GameSoundCon 2025

8:00 AM – 9:00 AM | Wwise Up: GameSoundCon - Product Manager AMA

Location: Academy 1 / Expo floor

Grab a beverage and drop-by the Wwise booth in the Expo Hall for some open-ended conversation with Product Managers: Damian Kastbauer (Wwise) & Simon Pressey (Strata).

9:30 AM – 10:30 AM | Introduction to Wwise: Hands-on Quick Start to Game Sound Integration

Speaker: Robert Brock (Director of Education, CRAS)

In this fast-paced session, starting from a completely blank Wwise project, you'll quickly learn the interface, discover the most important elements of the software and see how creative you can get with sound effects integration. Most importantly, you'll build your assets into a game and be able to hear your sonic masterpiece in actual game play. Bring your Windows or Mac (OS X Mountain Lion v10.8 and up) computer and headphones and we'll provide the software and project files.

10:45 AM – 11:45 AM | Workshop - Dynamic Mixing in Wwise

Speaker: Julie Delisle (Technical Support Specialist and Wwise Certified Trainer, Audiokinetic)

Dynamic processes are a surely among the reasons why game audio is so truly engaging. In this session, learn how to build a mental model of how to think about interaction between the sounds and auditory streams you mix, and how to leverage several mechanisms provided in Wwise in combination with your game logics for a more powerful and meaningful sound design. We will go through the presentation of strategies for effective mixing processes, and of dynamic mixing techniques based on Game Parameters, States, auto-ducking, side-chaining and HDR.

12:15 PM – 1:15 PM | Wwhat's New in Wwise 2025.1 & Strata

Speakers: Damian Kastbauer (Audiokinetic, Product Manager) & Simon Pressey

Wwondering Wwhat's New in Wwise 2025? Come check-in on the "Wwise Summer of Beta" to hear more about the features of 2025.1 and how they've evolved thanks to feedback from the interactive audio community. We'll also touch upon what's new with Strata, from new collections to advanced workflows!

2:45 PM – 3:45 PM | Wwise: Interactive Music (Part 1) - Understanding the Process from Composition to Game Play

Speaker: Robert Brock (Director of Education, CRAS)

Interactive music is a buzz phrase that everyone has heard, but many are unclear about the workflow necessary to create a truly interactive score. To understand the process, you’ll see how a conventional DAW and Audiokinetic’s Wwise can take a game that is musically void, to one where the player’s actions control the musical soundscape.

Through the process you’ll see how interactive music impacts:

• Compositional process
• Song structure and organization within a DAW
• Mixing considerations
• File delivery
• Integrating music assets into the game
• Game play

Seeing this demonstration will help you better understand a game studio’s needs and help you make better decisions during the earliest phases of the creative process.

4:15 PM – 5:15 PM | Wwise: Interactive Music (Part 2): Exploring Interactive Music Structures and Strategies

Speaker: Simon Ashby (Head of Product, Audiokinetic)

This session invites composers and sound designers for an in-depth look into the tool chest of compositional techniques by examining a variety of Wwise projects and videos from shipped games. Topics will cover:

• Utilizing pre-rendered audio stems, MIDI and generative music
• Classic interactive music structures
• Methods to reduce repetition (and get the most out of the few megs of memory available)

By observing these integration techniques, you’ll be inspired to create your own unique approach for how players are provided musical feedback and rewards, core to the mechanics of any game.

5:45 PM – 6:45 PM | Multi-Medium Haptics, Wwise Workflow & Live Demo

Speaker: Tyler Hoffman (Sound Designer, Insomniac Games)

Join Sound Designer Tyler Hoffman as he explores the fundamental principles of haptic feedback, their application across modern mediums (like the DualSense), introduces a new way of mixing haptics, and dives into their practical application in Wwise. You'll learn how haptics are authored, managed, and mixed to provide players with a more immersive and tactile connection to their games. The session will include a live, hands-on demonstration using a Wwise demo project, followed by a Q&A. Walk away with a clear understanding of the tools and techniques needed to bring impactful haptics into your own projects!

8:00 AM – 9:00 AM | Wwise Up: GameSoundCon - Product Manager AMA

Location: Academy 1 / Expo floor

Grab a beverage and drop-by the Wwise booth in the Expo Hall for some open-ended conversation with Product Managers: Damian Kastbauer (Wwise) & Simon Pressey (Strata).

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM | Audio Optimization: an Intro to the Wwise-251 Certification

Speaker: Damian Kastbauer (Audiokinetic, Product Manager)

An average mobile game can have hundreds of assets, making integration difficult and tricky. Creating lush soundscapes while working within the constraints of mobile platforms requires an entirely different set of knowledge and tools. CPU, memory, and battery optimizations are paramount considerations for the mobile platform. This session covers aspects of the Wwise 251 certification while providing useful context for the task of optimization! The free 251 course will introduce you to conversion and compression settings, voice management and prioritization, SoundBank granularity and system memory usage.

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM | Workshop - Spatial Audio: Acoustics

Speaker: Julie Delisle (Technical Support Specialist and Wwise Certified Trainer, Audiokinetic)

Navigate in a spaceship and hear your enemy behind two doors. Be part of a fantastic ride through the forest and suddenly arrive in a clearing. Or sit on your patio and listen to someone talking in the living room. With the Acoustics features from Wwise Spatial Audio, learn how to model acoustic environments and to render various sound propagation behaviours. Get familiar with concepts such as Rooms & Portals, Reverb Zones, Late Reverb, Geometry, Diffraction and Transmission Loss, and Early Reflections.

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM | Wwise: Interactive Music (Part 1) - Understanding the Process from Composition to Game Play

Speaker: Robert Brock (Director of Education, CRAS)

Interactive music is a buzz phrase that everyone has heard, but many are unclear about the workflow necessary to create a truly interactive score. To understand the process, you’ll see how a conventional DAW and Audiokinetic’s Wwise can take a game that is musically void, to one where the player’s actions control the musical soundscape.

Through the process you’ll see how interactive music impacts:

• Compositional process
• Song structure and organization within a DAW
• Mixing considerations
• File delivery
• Integrating music assets into the game
• Game play

Seeing this demonstration will help you better understand a game studio’s needs and help you make better decisions during the earliest phases of the creative process.

2:30 PM – 3:30 PM | The Untapped Potential of MIDI in Interactive Music

Speaker: François-Xavier Dupas (Lead Composer & Creative Director, Side)

MIDI has been at the heart of music production for decades. Yet despite being part of Wwise for years, its real-time use in games remains rare—an oddity given the flexibility and interactivity it enables. This session explores why MIDI is a powerful tool for adaptive music, with different strengths and interests than audio playback, and how it can enrich the way music responds to gameplay.

We’ll look at practical workflows for creating, integrating, and editing MIDI content in Wwise. From building sampled instruments and programming synth patches to sequencing via DAWs and MIDI controllers, attendees will discover how MIDI can extend their creative toolkit beyond conventional audio. Concrete examples will be drawn from several projects, including Zix, a VR title (launching in Early Access on September 18) whose music relies heavily on MIDI to make the entire score feel like a “living organism.”

Beyond practical techniques and creative tricks, this talk aims to spark a broader reflection on current limitations, future directions, and the untapped potential of interactive music in games.

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM | Workshop - Spatial Audio: 3D Audio

Speaker: Julie Delisle (Technical Support Specialist and Wwise Certified Trainer, Audiokinetic)

Maybe you've been wondering about 3D Audio? What's the big deal? Is it just binaural over headphones? Or maybe you're already convinced by the possibilities afforded by object-based audio. Regardless, this session will be an introduction to Object-based audio and will provide guidelines on how to leverage 3D space in sound design and mixing in Wwise, in order to create a clear understanding of the potential that 3D Audio brings to the future of interactive audio. Topics will cover the benefits to use 3D Audio in your project, Objects and Metadata, profiling and budgeting Audio Objects, as well as using Effects with Audio Objects (W)wisely.

5:45 PM – 6:45 PM | A Panel on Audio & Accessibility

Speakers: Jenna Jennissary, Dana Plank, Bonnie Bogovich, Joshua Du Chene

Join us for a panel discussion on the past, present, and future of accessible audio design. Panelists Bonnie Bogovich, Dana Plank, Jenna Jennissary, and Joshua Du Chene, will each bring their unique perspectives and explore what it means to create inclusive audio experiences. 

We’ll be diving into common misconceptions, how audio developers can champion accessibility throughout the development process, and sharing some simple yet effective ways to increase the accessibility of a game's audio. We’ll also be taking your questions live!

Join us as we spark a conversation that moves beyond checklists and basic features, encouraging us to consider accessibility as a core principle of good design.