In creative technology, especially within game audio and interactive media, there's a pervasive myth: that the more complex something is, the more impressive or valuable it must be. Early in my career, I fully bought into that mindset. I built a dynamic music system so elaborate it turned heads. It worked, and I felt accomplished. I saw it as a reflection of my mastery of tools like Wwise and middleware integration.
But that sense of pride eventually gave way to a more grounded realization: complexity isn’t inherently good. In fact, it can be a serious liability.
The Allure of Complexity
When you're new, or even just enthusiastic, it’s easy to get wrapped up in doing things the “advanced” way. There’s a thrill in building intricate systems, layering logic and control schemes, and seeing them function. It feels like proof of skill. But over time, you begin to see the long-term costs.
Complicated systems take longer to troubleshoot, are harder to iterate on, and are nearly impossible for others to understand unless they’ve been closely involved from the start. What begins as a display of competence can become a burden on future development, especially in collaborative or commercial game audio environments.
Simplicity as a Discipline
Today, my approach has shifted dramatically. I actively look for the simplest, most direct path to achieve my goals. I’ve come to see simplicity not as a shortcut, but as a form of discipline. It's harder to build something clear, efficient, and robust than to throw in every possible feature or layer of abstraction.
In one current game audio project, I’m stripping out everything unnecessary: deleting systems, reorganizing files, and simplifying logic. It’s not because I can’t manage the complexity, but because I now understand the risks of leaving it in place without purpose.
The Real-World Risk of Overengineering
This isn’t just theoretical. A few years ago, I was brought onto a large AAA project to help with audio implementation. My colleague and I opened the Wwise project and were immediately overwhelmed. Nothing was intuitive. Naming conventions were inconsistent. Signal chains were buried in nested structures. We asked the audio director if we could clean it up. The answer? “No. We inherited this setup from another team. We don’t really know how it works; we just add to it when we have to.”
That response floored me. Here was a multimillion-dollar production relying on a system that no one actually understood. It reminded me of a post-apocalyptic story where ancient technology is worshipped rather than maintained, used through ritual rather than knowledge.
Inheritance Without Understanding
This kind of legacy complexity is alarmingly common. Systems get passed down, modified incrementally, and eventually become black boxes. No one wants to touch them out of fear of breaking something. But fear is not a strategy. At best, it leads to stagnation. At worst, it leads to failure when something inevitably goes wrong.
The risks here are massive: delayed timelines, bugs that can't be traced, team members who can't contribute effectively. Ultimately, you’re gambling the success of your game audio project on the assumption that nothing critical will break, or that the one person who understands it will always be available.
Designing for Sustainability
That brings me to the principle that now guides most of my technical decisions: If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, could someone else pick this up? Would they understand the layout, the logic, the workflows? If not, I’m doing a disservice to the project and the team.
There are only two options in that scenario: write detailed, maintainable documentation, or reduce complexity to the point where documentation becomes nearly unnecessary. Ideally, a project should be clear by design, not by extensive notes.
What Real Mastery Looks Like
There’s a misconception that technical mastery means pushing systems to their limit. But in reality, mastery often means knowing when not to use a feature. It’s about understanding the tools deeply enough to know what’s essential and what’s just noise. It’s about building systems that are robust, not fragile; transparent, not obscure.
The more experience I gain, the more I understand how much I still have to learn. That’s the paradox of growth: realizing that true expertise often lies in restraint. It’s easy to impress someone with a thousand moving parts. It’s much harder to build something simple, elegant, and enduring.
Final Thoughts
In any collaborative, long-term project, especially in game audio, film, or software, simplicity isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. Complexity has its place, but only when it’s justified and understood. If your project can't be picked up and continued without you, it’s not finished. It’s a liability.
The industry doesn’t need more clever systems. It needs more clear ones.
And if we want to build sustainable, scalable creative work, we need to design like we’re not the only ones who will ever touch it.
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