Audiokinetic Wwise--what, why, etc.
I'm a composer whose logged in a few credits doing music & sound for some indie games. I was checking out a job listing for Activision on Gameasutra for composer/sound designer and in the job requirements it listed a knowledge of Audiokinetic Wwise. I did some research on the program, but I'm not quite sure what it does. Is it a program to help blend your finished audio into game code or something?
I know my music tools pretty well, been a Logic user since 1995 & stuff, but outside of this listing I've never heard of this program. But if it's something I could learn to increase my job skills I'd like to check it out.
Far out, a response!
I guess my next question is whether this is a composer's tool or a game developer's? If it's the former I'm wondering how I would go about learning it, since I don't have a spare game I could practice putting music into.
Yeah it's not very busy on this forum, but we are here 
It's a tool for both actually. The more you get involved in game audio the more you will face tools for audio implementation.
It's of course a tool for a developper since it concerns the direct use of audio in their game, but since you are part as of the design team as composer/sound designer and you have your ideas of how it should work ingame it is good to know how it works so you can give good advise.
Also on the sound design side you will face more and more that you will be responsible as well (at least partly) of the audio implementation. Tools like Wwise and Fmod are also designed to be used by sound designers and composers.
With budgets getting tighter, timeframes shorter etc, there will be much more demand on such skills as well and your marketvalue will be higher if you have at least decent knowledge of these sort of tools.
As far as learning the tools, you can download FMOD's 'Designer' tool for free and mess around with it (some of the other audio engine providers may do the same, but I haven't checked). Sound Designers/Composers use this to get the audio integrated when working with the FMOD audio engine. Outside of building the project with this tool, the next major step in the audio integration process would be communicating to the programmer as to how/when they should trigger the audio events, followed by some audio QA and bug fixing if things aren't working as planned. With the Designer tool, you'll have access to the docs and example files that will show you how things work. Actually going through the process of implementing the audio for a completed game will obviously be the best way to learn, but you could simulate the integration process to a certain extent without an actual game to hook-in your audio events.
Wwise can also be downloaded for free to experiment with it and it is now also part of the Unreal 3 engine (though I didn't try it out there).
A tip is as well if you have bought one of the unreal tournament games (or any other game with the unreal engine and a kit for making mods) for example to mess a bit with creating mods, adjusting levels and test audio there. Maybe joining a mod team could be a nice idea to work with it directly within a team. moddb.com hosts a lot of mod makers and a nice board where projects are advertised and where you can offer services etc.
Hey Keith,
Wwise is a middleware tool that is used to implemend sound and music into a game. You have a couple of programs (Fmod, Xact, Miles, Wwise and very often inhouse tools are used) that can take care of this job.
You can setup a serie of rules on how the audio should behave in a game (linking to objects, areas, 2D, 3D positioning) and how a music soundtrack should behave ingame (fade ins/outs, playlist, adaptive behaviour etc).
Let me know if it is a bit clear and if you have more questions just shoot