GANG stands for Game Audio Network Guild, a group dedicating themselves to championing the work of music and sound effect teams in the game industry. And it's work that deserves championing! After all, what would Halo be without its opening score? What would Metal Gear be without the dramatic "discovered" chime? How could I have enjoyed the first Manhunt if I hadn't had Brian Cox threatening my earhole?

So the GANG awards were held during GDC last week, with prizes handed out for things like best music, best sound design, etc. Fittingly, Dead Space took out the big audio prize of the night, while in an upset Asian PSN title Afrika won best music. Other winners were Grand Theft Auto IV, LittleBigPlanet and, awesomely, Sega maestro Richard Jacques.

Full list of winners below:

Audio Of The Year
Dead Space

Music Of The Year
Afrika

Sound Design Of The Year
Dead Space

Best Cinematic/Cut-Scene Audio (Tie)
World Of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King
Gears Of War 2

Best Use Of Multi-Channel Surround In A Game
Left 4 Dead

Best Original Vocal Song - Choral
"Main Title" - World Of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King

Best Original Vocal Song - Pop
"Still Alive" - Mirror's Edge

Best Original Instrumental (Tie)
"The Garden" - LittleBigPlanet
"Main Theme" - Afrika

Best Original Soundtrack Album
Video Games Live: Volume One

Best Dialogue
Grand Theft Auto IV

Best Use Of Licensed Music
Rock Band 2

Best Handheld Audio
God Of War: Chains Of Olympus

Best Interactive Score
LittleBigPlanet

Best Game Audio Article, Publication Or Broadcast
"The Complete Guide To Game Audio" 2nd Edition - Aaron Marks

Best Audio - Other
Watchman Motion Comic

Rookie Of The Year
Wataru Hokoyama (Afrika, Resident Evil 5)

Lifetime Achievement Award
Bob Rice

G.A.N.G. Distinguished Service Awards
Richard Jacques
Tom Salta
Stephen Years

G.A.N.G. Recognition Awards
Jim Charne
John Broomhall

Student/Apprentice Competition Winners
Music - Tom Graczkowski
Sound Design - Benoit Babin

Dead Space, Afrika Take Home GANG Audio Awards [Gamasutra]

But did you know that it's been featured in at least 48 video games? From Ant City to Timesplitters 2, Mr. Juandrful at Kezins has gleaned the full list. It's longer than Wikipedia's list of games using the scream, and includes titles not yet released (where the scream is used in a trailer), so he seems to have done his homework. We had a little something on this back in 2006, but not a full list of games. So check it out. And booby prize goes to whomever comes up with the best onomatopoeic spelling of the scream, in the comments.

We've All Heard it: The Wilhelm Scream [kezins.com]

More nuance, details, dynamics, crazy ideas, and hard work will raise the quality of game audio. Games get more interesting and unique soundtracks when you try novel techniques.

The play experience will be better, because the player won't hear typical snow sounds — they'll hear real sounds with real surfaces. Suddenly, your games feel fresh. The player might never realize what's different, but the game will feel fresh and new.

After all, I think that winter sounds can be amazingly hard to get, but it's worth it. The versatility of winter sounds is huge, so I really think that they should be taken seriously. I'm not saying that I recommend field recording only for the winter sounds, either. Many things can be done in studio with Foley, but sometimes you have to go outside and make it real.

I can't say I've ever listened terribly attentively to ambient snow noises, but I'm all for nuance and subtlety. As long as I don't have to shovel in-game driveways.

Sounds Of The Snow [Gamasutra]

At GDC, Patrick Balthrop, Senior Sound Designer at 2K, explains what they did to make BioShock's sound just so haunting. So would you kindly hit the jump to read more?

Throughout the soundscape, the constant goal was to "juxtapose the real with the surreal." Take the security bots. On one hand, they featured accurate motor effects and when they crashed out of the air, it all sounded feasible to the listener. But to achieve that "unique gameplay experience" the BioShock team was after, accuracy or feasibility wasn't enough. So they took a turn to the exaggerated and beyond. In the case of the security bot, we see this turn in its "VO" (voice over) of R2D2esque beeps and blips.

In the penny-arcade machines selling power-ups, we see the same philosophy applied. The music started with authentic calliope recordings. Then to add character, 2K opted, once again, to use VO. But this time the VO would be quite literal. Remember it? "Welcome to the circus of values!"

The end result is an experience that doesn't seek to recreate what we've already seen, but reinvent that which we've seen to build a unique and rich world.

But despite the search for this original sound with each piece of the game, 2K actually did surprisingly little post-production processing to the voices in the game. The two exceptions were the Little Sisters and Atlas.

Balthrop played two clips to demonstrate what his team did to the source audio. The first was vaguely familiar—a crystal clear Little Sister recording...but it sounded like a typical little girl. But then this track was mixed with a duplicate track dropped a few octaves with reverb, the Little Sister voice is tainted by the demonic subtext, that unharmonious melancholy that sits in our ears to this day.

Now to replay BioShock...

Game Developer Magazine's audio columnist is hoping to get some input on an upcoming column he's writing about the importance of music and sound to gameplay.

He's got a poll up right now to try and get a handle on what gamers think on the topic. Head over there if you have a second and fill it out. It's an interesting topic.

When I used to do my gaming upstairs, just a few dozen feet from our bedrooms, I would play games with the sound muted at night and I can tell you, it really takes away from the experience. I was surprised to find I did much worse in shooters while playing muted because I couldn't hear some of the audio cues built into a game to let you know people are trying to cap you or sneak up on you. Brian Crecente

Mister Poll: Video Game Sound

Earlier, wrote an article about a game called Metronome and posted a trailer. Thanks to a link provided by commenter, Psychotext, I was able to check out a page on the game on creator, Tarsier Studios' website. There's more about the plot here and while it's not much, gives us at least a little more information on a game I'd like to see more of. There are also several screenshots that look pretty amazing and remind me a bit of American McGee's Alice.

In the game, you take on the role of a young train conductor. You get to venture into the city of Metronome, a sprawling mass of haphazardly built houses and huge steam engines where the outlandish inhabitants are carrying out their chores day and night. A city where the life of every citizen is dictated by the Corporation, a single bureaucratic entity that owns all the land, the entire infrastructure and all the industries.

Explore winding alleys, skewed rooftops and crowded apartment buildings as you search for proof of the Corporations secret agenda, all while listening for sounds to record.

The game's full title is actually The City of Metronome and according to Tarsier's website, although they still haven't found a publisher, the game is indeed still being worked on. The website update and new trailer I mentioned earlier were announced on the site around mid December so hopefully we will see more soon.

If any of the major publishers out there are listening, many of us would like to see more games of this ilk on our new generation consoles. Less shooting, more thinking. Flynn De Marco

She told the tale of a little independent game from Swedish company, Tarsier, called Metronome, that had shown some promise at E3, but has yet to find a publisher. What makes this game so different, you may ask? Well for starters, the game uses sound to get around in the game.

Sounds that can be used for a variety of tasks: fight enemies with loud and destructive sounds, solve problems and confuse citizens by clever usage of the right sound at the right moment, use seductive and melodious sounds to change the mood and behavior of listeners.

Can't find the specific sound you need? Create it yourself! Shove a bookcase down some stairs, throw a rock through a window or simply annoy someone enough to make them shout at you and then record the result.

It sounds like a pretty innovative approach and given the art direction, which looks like a sort of Tim Burton meets The Brothers Quay, I'm quite anxious to see this come to fruition. The very short trailer below looks incredible and the website, which is really nothing more than a page, promises a new site and trailer coming soon.

Thank you for this, dear Eliza. I shall keep a candle burning in the window for you in the hopes that you shall one day return from the moors. Flynn De Marco

Metronome [Game|Life]

8 Sonic Driver Gaming Headphones
Dedicated amplifier for each channel
99% Oxygen-free cable
Built-in uni-directional noise-cancelling microphone
On-The-Fly Positional volume control over each individual pair of drivers
2 Sub-woofer drivers for clean, powerful bass
Built-in Razer HD-DAI for dedicated connection to Razer Barracuda AC-1 Gaming Audio Card

Oh and they sell for $130. I don't know, I think I'll stick with one of the ratty pair of headphones that live in the nest of wires and cables under my desk. Brian Crecente

Opera DS, by all accounts, looks remarkably usable. But there's got to be trade offs in any portable browsing solution like this: PocketPCs haven't mastered portable web browsing yet, so we can hardly expect full usability from Opera DS. So what, exactly, can't we expect?

The browser won't be capable of displaying Flash and PDF, nor will it support video and sound. While you can save bookmarks to your favorite pages, you cannot save images or other elements of pages.

No one's going to miss PDFs, but not being able to watch YouTube vids is a bit of a blow. And no sound? How will you enjoy those delightfully braying YTMND sites now?

Actually, outside of YouTube, no flash, no sound and no PDFs sound pretty much like the abstinences of my dream browser: the one that stops the internet from causing my fillings from spontaneously and bloodily ejecting. Florian Eckhardt

DS Browser Sited [IGN]

Someone who was definitely smoking something inserted Mario Brothers sound effects into a scene from Kill Bill Volume One. Very strange, but it did make me realize that not nearly enough Mario games end with nail-studded planks of wood thudding into skulls.

Kill Bill With Nintendo Universe Sound Effects [Nintendo Gal]

Those Sony prepackaged PSP headphones really don't cut it. Gamers need better gear. So for handhelds, sound equipment manufacturer Shure employs the same "sound isolating" tech that concert singers use to hear themselves. These sound isolating earphones sport hi def drivers that deliver ultra-wide range sound. These aren't just sound blockers, canceling ambient noise. Shure's buds create a sealed environment to shut noise out with out covering it up. Talk about isolating.

Buy them Here [Amazon] via Cool Hunting