In games, sound is half the design — and half the world.
I’m Umi, a music and sound maker based in Tokyo.
Ten years ago, I made up my mind to leave an IT company that built enterprise ERP systems, and move into media music and audio production — for games, film, and advertising.
Why? Because I genuinely love sound and music — and I seem to have a bit of a knack for it: almost anything I’ve heard, or dreamed up in my head, I can reproduce on a computer without much effort. I’m also a die-hard games and film fan (and a hardcore Resident Evil nerd), endlessly fascinated by the magic of sound and music conjuring a whole world inside a game, a film, an ad. At the same time, I’ve always had a bottomless curiosity for computers and new technology. So for me, the switch was almost inevitable — less a career change than a return to what I was meant to do.
Back then I set myself a rule: if I couldn’t get my name onto the big screen or a game’s credit roll within ten years, it meant I wasn’t cut out for it, and I’d go back to being an ordinary Japanese salaryman. Turns out I’m alright at this — it took me four.
Over these ten years, I’ve worked hands-on — composing and sound-designing for games, film, and ads — and also as a music/sound director on the vendor side, moving between the projects of major game studios and talented composers around the world. And it was there that I watched the same story play out, again and again (film and ads, honestly, tell the same story):
The prototype looks right. It plays right. But as a whole, it just doesn’t sound right. The producer isn’t fluent in audio; there’s no in-house composer; the technical audio person can handle implementation but doesn’t make content; nobody can find the right composer; and there’s no coherent audio design plan. So game audio always ends up last: music gets licensed in a rush, tension never really gets designed, and everything is glued together in the final stretch before ship. Even on big projects with a dedicated audio-planning role, the brief handed to composers is often vague and incomplete — back and forth, back and forth, wearing down everyone’s patience and goodwill.
I don’t think a game team — an indie team especially — should have to turn itself into a master audio designer, a composer, or a middleware expert just to sound professional. And I don’t think audio is “polish.” In a game, sound is half the design and half the world: in a survival-horror game, say, the heartbeat under the floorboards is doing as much work as the lighting. Least of all do I think audio belongs at the tail end of the prototype, or of the whole production — it deserves to enter early, like art does, and genuinely shape the world you’re building. (Honestly, games made by producers who write their own music, or truly understand it, tend to have music that grabs you more — and leave a deeper impression overall. Stardew Valley, Guilty Gear, Silent Hill: take your pick.)
I believe there’s underrated value in bringing music and audio design into the early phase of development. And I believe every team, big or small, deserves the same chance to let sound arrive early.
That’s why SCG Audio exists.
From the perspective of a music/audio director who spent years on the outsourcing side, plus hands-on production experience, I want to give game teams — small and indie ones especially — a music and audio design solution that can find its voice fast. Everything arrives as one working whole: content, state machine, runtime, demo scene, documentation — all listening-verified, and ready the moment it hits your engine. Not a folder of WAV files, but a sound direction you can hear and iterate on the same day, so you find the music and sound design that truly fits your game, sooner.
And if you need more than an off-the-shelf pack — SCG Audio also takes on custom, systematic game-audio and music design, and content production, with a particular soft spot for that so-called “Japanese” game-music flavor. Got something in mind? Let’s have a talk.
More themes, more modules, more polished design, more creators — the same promise: game audio that ships working.
Survival Horror is the first product line, not the only one. The pattern it proves — themed content, music design, and tool integration delivered as a single package — is built to carry into more genres over time.
Near term, that means three things. More genres, so other kinds of games get the same treatment. More tool support — the line ships for Unity Native and FMOD today, and a Wwise edition is in production. And better integration workflows: importers, inspectors, and documentation that keep shrinking the distance between “bought it” and “hearing it in my build.”
The goal has never been to sell more audio files. It’s to let small teams set a sound direction early — while the game is still soft clay — and verify it in-engine the same day, instead of discovering in the final month what their game actually sounds like.
Over time, SCG Audio wants these packs to become a clearer bridge between prototype audio and custom production: start with a pack, find your direction, and when your game outgrows it, the path to tailored music is already laid.
Further out lies a set of problems that outsourced audio production has long struggled to solve: briefs that are never fully defined, a gap between how the client and the maker picture the same thing, and timelines that keep slipping. SCG Audio wants to take these on as well — so creators on both sides can put their energy back into the work itself, rather than spending it on repeated communication and process friction.