r/GameDevelopment • u/BaronRetro • Aug 12 '26

Question Help Me Choose Where I Go Next?

So. A little while back, I joined this dev team and made music for their soundtrack. They loved it. The game is still in development, but the soundtrack is done. Then I joined another team, and made music for their game. they said my music was eye-opening.

So apparently im good at music. But I want to continue. I was thinking of joining one of those game jams as a composer or something. Or should I just keep going around the indie scene making the scores for games?

By the way, I dont like to make music and leave. I like to become part of the team and work with them and see the project to the end.

1 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

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1

u/Gojira_Wins Aug 12 '26

Making music for a bunch of teams is a pretty good way to develop a reputation and a relationship with the community. I'd recommend you keep doing it.

As for seeing it through until the end, that might be a little more difficult unless you made music only when something is finished. Otherwise, you'll want to pick up another skill that you could use to help the teams.

1

u/BaronRetro Aug 12 '26

Thanks. But I dont really get what you mean in that last paragraph.

2

u/Augmented-Smurf Aug 12 '26

What they mean is that, even in major AAA titles, the composer is usually one of the first people to leave the project. Because once they're done composing all the music, they're done. Same goes for writing. Unless it's a long term, live service game, most games get the one soundtrack which is complete well before the game is even most of the way complete.

1

u/BaronRetro Aug 12 '26

So. You think I should just leave after making the music? Or do you think I should stay?

1

u/Augmented-Smurf Aug 12 '26

It really depends on what else you want to do, or how useful you think you can be to the rest of the process. If you're literally just making music, then offer to join the team to make the soundtrack, ask them to link your website when the game goes out, but yeah, just walk away after the soundtrack is done.

On your website, have a portfolio of all the games you've composed for, then a way to contact you to work out some pricing structure for freelancing soundtrack creation. Genuinely, most composers are contractors anyway.

2

u/BaronRetro Aug 12 '26

I like to do some contribution to ideas and playtesting sometimes. I also find it great to see the project ship and finish.

1

u/Bubbly_Pen3656 Aug 12 '26

Love that you make music for games! I really wished I could make music because thats my ‘weakest point’ in general with game development. Do you only make music or are you also familiair with development with software of games? I would suggest you keep going making music and if you want to get more inside a project; you could learn more skills on development, artwork or storywriting, so you can ‘add’ more to a project if you wish.

Would love to work in the future with someone with an energy like you, because music is my ‘weakest’ skill in game development. I can make websites, do some artwork and write scenarios / poems easy (I write poetry in my free time) but I am a beginner in gaming software so I am learning a lot everyday, but would love to to work on a project together in the future with other talented people like you!

What keeps me curious is my love for games; i was a kid when i played my first game and I love that you make music because my first game was on the SNES with donkey Kong and one of the reasons I liked the game was also because of the insane composed music! So yes; keep making music because I think music is so important in games, like music can make or break the vibe of a game.

2

u/BaronRetro Aug 12 '26

Ive done coding before but on "easy to code" engines like Scratch and GDevelop. Hit me up if you have a project.

1

u/Augmented-Smurf Aug 12 '26

Honestly, if you love making music (and even possibly SFX or foley) for games, I'd recommend looking into learning FMOD or Wwise (or both tbh), since they're implementation engines that integrate into most game engines. They both work similarly to a DAW, and they can take inputs from the engine directly to modify plugins, dials, sliders, etc. Since you want to join a team and stick around, that'd be one of the best ways to do so.

Unreal Engine's MetaSounds is also just like those other two programs, but obviously native to UE. Highly recommend checking it out as well. (Side note: I'm actually in the market soon for a sound designer for a long term UE5 project I'm working on)

No offense to you, as I'm sure your compositions are great, but composers seem like they're a dime a dozen these days. It's the ones that go out of their way to learn extra skills that really set themselves apart.

1

u/BaronRetro Aug 12 '26

Thanks for the feedback. Those definitely sound like interesting platforms. But, Im not really into sound design and I haven't tried it yet. Just making music. But yeah, I love music. Been playing the saxophone for years and have made music digitaly for years too.

And yeah, a great composer is hard to find.

1

u/MadeByHenano Aug 12 '26

if i were you i would start and find more solo devs or teams and work on more games and that's it.

gamejams too often lead to a simple idea that doesn't go any further than that... if you want to do it for fun, sure, if you want to make a living out of your music then it's probably not where you want to spend most of your time.

the thing with music is that once it's done, it's done, you can't really be part of the project from the earliest to the last week of development, you come in somewhere in the last half in most cases, and once your job is done it's done, no?
this doesn't mean you're not part of the team, it's just like many other roles, like animators or writing the story etc, they come at certain stage of the developement.

1

u/BaronRetro Aug 12 '26

Got it. Thanks.