An older but still perfect example for the “loudness war” going into the wrong direction is the CD master of the Death Magnetic Album of Metallica (pic:.recordinghacks).

Will my game music be perceived as loud enough?

The answer is yes. The counter question would be: What is loud enough? Crytek was one of the first studios to integrate the new -23 LUFS standard into their audio specifications. Ryse: Son of Rome was their first game mastered to that standard. 

The loudness standards we’ve adopted for Crytek are based on statistical analysis of best-selling video games, showing that those mixed to a lower and more consistent loudness level were actually selling better. (Simon Pressey/ Crytek Audio)

As a matter of fact more and more studios are adapting to the new audio industry standard to ensure constant audio quality and consistent loudness in-game and between games. This is also true for streaming providers like Netflix, Spotify, Youtube, a.m.o. and their respective content. This is the basis for delivering highly emotional and pleasing audio on a consistent level and quality, which creates an unique and all-embracing immersive user experience. The gamer should not be distracted by unbalanced audio, but be carried through the gaming experience by a balanced sonic ambience.

Why should I rely on well mastered tracks in my upcoming game?

We can all think of a number of games, where it is almost impossible to concentrate on dialogues or contextual sounds because the music is too loud or dense. Ear fatigue and even physical pain can result. After playing a while you feel depleted and concentrating on the gameplay becomes increasingly difficult.

I like the game a lot, but without any individual volume settings (music, sfx, voices), i can’t play anymore. With headphones the mix is weird and the music is way too loud making me miss a lot of contextual and important sounds. The mission with the talking car was a good example, a messy wall of sounds. (User on a Gamer’s forum)

If you are not sure about the different audio levels in your game, you should at least implement user-adjustable individual volumes in your menu. But even if you are able to change the individual volume settings, if the audio sources are overly compressed, it is almost impossible to find a pleasing balance between music, speech and sfx. Take a look at the picture on the left (above for mobiles). This is a screenshot of the waveform illustration of Metallica’s “The Day That Never Comes” in Pro Tools. In the upper half you see the CD version and beneath it the game music version for Guitar Hero. The upper version is clearly over-compressed. There is little space between the peaks. You can imagine, that in addition to the distortion and the lack of punch, there is no headroom for additional sounds like bonus sounds or alerts. That is why an alternative version was made for the video game Guitar Hero. Even in the loudest part there is plenty of headroom, as one can see on the screenshot. This is essential for a music-based computer game. Think of a digital image: the more compressed for example a jpeg file is, the more artifacts and noise are visible. At some point one is not able to distinguish the details anymore and it is exhausting trying to do so.

On average, consumers prefer electronic audio content to be no louder than 69 dB, which is not much louder than normal conversation. They want to be able to smoothly switch from TV to video game without having to constantly adjust the volume. (Simon Pressey/ Crytek Audio)