Listen… Can you hear that? Well, of course you can’t. This interview makes less noise than a silent film. Now, just imagine if our games were like that. They’d be pretty boring, wouldn’t they? We’re in luck, however, because guys like this are on the team…
Who are you, and what do you do at Bungie?
Why hello! I’m David Henry, and I’m a Senior Audio Designer here at Bungie. Basically that means I make noise – weapon noise, vehicle noise, character noise, ambient noise, junk-sitting-around-in-the-world noise, and any other noise that might be called for. Then I work with the rest of the audio team to help mix all the noise together and end up with a beautiful, rich, and compelling aural palette for the world we’re building.
What are your interests outside of work?
Spending time with my family is the big thing – life is too short not to prioritize the people you love over everything else. Apart from that, I’m a pilot (private, instrument rated for those that understand and care what that means) and love flying. I play a bunch of games, do all the requisite outdoorsy stuff that we are drawn to in the Pacific Northwest, and participate in a few of the Bungie sports teams. I’ve also been getting into gardening in the past couple years – I’ve got this dream or growing a bowl of salsa from seed, although in Seattle that’s probably a fool’s errand. So far I’ve had the most luck with cabbage. People around the office can vouch for that because a lot of them have been given gifts of cabbage. Anybody want some cabbage?
I’m good, thanks. Where else have you applied your green thumb to the act of bringing the noise to games?
I’ve been in the industry for a pretty long time – 18 years, 17 of them creating audio for games. I started at Sierra On-Line making adventure games in the 90’s, moved over to Microsoft for about 10 years, and then joined up with Bungie for about the last year of Reach. Who remembers the grenade launcher? Or the Falcon? Or the assassinations? I made those noises.
Were you a noisy kid as well? If we went back in time, and asked him what he wanted to do with his life, what would he have said?
Astronaut, fighter pilot, studio musician, superstar jazz guy, lawyer. Totally depended on who asked and when.
Well, at some point, someone had to have asked you to declare a major in school. What was your answer?
When I was in school there was no such thing as a game audio program, so people from my generation needed to learn how to take the skills we learned – mostly as music majors – and adapt them to the gaming industry. There were no classes in Pro Tools, nothing about mixing or mastering, no introduction to recording studio technology. There were a couple classes that involved MIDI, but not many and we don’t use MIDI much these days.
I’ve got a music degree in Jazz Studies (Arranging) and a minor in Music Theory from The University of North Texas. Clearly I’m not arranging jazz as part of my day-to-day responsibilities, but a lot of what I picked up in school does cross over nicely to game development. That would include critical listening, striving for perfection in everything I’m creating, and adhering to aggressive schedules all while being willing to work hard on something and then throw it away and start over when it’s not headed in the right direction.
That’s something I see people new to the industry struggling with all the time – spending a great deal of effort on a thing that may be a good thing, but isn’t always the right thing. Then falling in love with it and trying to manipulate it into being the right thing. Sometimes the ticket to success is throwing away the thing you love and starting again. For any creative person this can be a really painful process. It can feel like tearing out a little part of your soul and tossing it aside. In the end, though, letting go of that initial creation is often the path to discovering a better creation.
Honestly, people coming out of a lot of these game audio programs that schools are offering now are a lot better prepared to work in the industry than anyone was back when I started. I think that’s a good thing.
You’re really on a roll. Keep it up and tell us how you started to build your relationship with Bungie.
I’m going to assume people won’t be interested in my real answer to this question (I’d been successfully shipping games for 15 years and was well known among industry-folk), so I’m gonna answer a different question.
Wait. I’m asking the questions here…
“David Henry, please tell the people of Earth how you got into this highly competitive industry with no real experience at all? Sure, you were OK at writing big band music, but what does that have to do with sound for video games?”
Okay. That is a better question (although the “people of Earth” thing was a little over the top). You may proceed with talking to yourself. How did you break in to this business?
I got lucky. It was somewhat directed luck, but it was luck nonetheless. I was working in the Corporate Sales department at Sierra Online and trying to figure out how to wrangle my way into doing music for their games. At the time, they were just starting to move some of their development teams to their new Bellevue office (the one where I worked), and one of those teams signed Michel LeGrand to write “thematic musical material” for the game (drop his name into Google, young people – he’s one of the greatest living composers we’ve got and you should know who he is).
Mr. LeGrand delivered a DAT (look that one up too, kids) of about 10 incredibly wonderful pieces of music performed by himself on piano, sometimes also singing a melody. Nobody on the team really knew quite what to do with this – the music was fantastic, but in a format that couldn’t be used in the game.
It turned out that there was this kid from upstairs in Corporate Sales that had been pestering the Producer of this game and given him a tape of all these big band tunes he written and arranged. Maybe that kid would have the chops to transcribe this fantastic music and turn it into a game score.
Let me guess…
That was me, and I did. It was an incredible ton of work in a very short timeframe, but also hugely rewarding.
I guess the moral of the story is that you never know what an opportunity is going to look like, but it pays to be ready when one comes along. And don’t discount the long-term value of directed luck.
Well, it wasn’t all luck. You did pester the guy, after all – which is what we call “networking” in the modern job market. Can you share your experiences in pestering your way onto the team at Bungie?
I don’t think anyone wants to hear about my interview at Bungie. For one thing, it was about an 18 month process.
Fair enough. We’ll skip the long story and cut to the chase. What is it about working for Bungie that is worthy of an 18 month-long campaign?
The audio team here is truly a spectacular group. Having this much talent and creative energy in one studio – well, I’m not sure it should be legal. In all seriousness, it’s really rewarding to be able to be able to bounce ideas off these people and engage in a real creative exchange every day with everything we make.
How does that creative exchange unfold from day to day?
Arrive early, get coffee, work hard, go home late. Repeat “get coffee” part as needed.
Aside from all the coffee you can drink, what is your favorite perk associated with making noise in our games?
All my son’s friends think I’m cool.
You can't put a price on that. It’s very likely that a lot of our readers think you're cool, too. Can you give them sound advice on how they might follow in your footsteps?
Get a good education. Work hard. Do something that makes you stand out from the crowd. Be prepared for a lot of rejection. Don’t give up. It’s every bit as rewarding as it seems.
I have pestered you for long enough. Let’s close out this duet with a final question: Experience, Work Ethic, or Talent? Rank them in order of importance to your role.
Work ethic, talent, experience. Experience means nothing by its self, and both talent and experience are useless without a solid work ethic.
David’s story may be rare, but even the largest body of work begins with one chance. There are many dance steps that lead to Bungie, but many of the first ones are planted elsewhere. To see where many of us started, check out the
Breaking In archive.