We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sungha Hong. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sungha below.

Alright, Sungha thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

Giving the benefit of the doubt to the person whom you might be having conflicts with. While I’ve worked with a lot of different people, there’s definitely been times when I feel like my co-worker/client is making me upset on purpose, and it can be easy to take things personally. For example, one of my clients gave me vital feedback near the deadline, which could have been much more helpful if I received it much earlier. Most of the time, it’s due to lack of communication, hence misunderstanding each other. In this case, it was my bad for not sharing multiple passes of my work-in-progress or asking clarifying questions on how the cello melody on the MIDI score should be played, with staccato, slurred, etc. Over time, I learned to be a better communicator, occasionally even over-communicating for good reasons. This made me realize that 99% of the time, co-workers/clients really don’t have any bad intentions, and we all have the same goal of achieving excellent audio for games together.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a sound designer and cellist for video games!

As a sound designer, I currently work at ProbablyMonsters, an independent AAA video game company based in Bellevue, WA. The game projects haven’t been announced, but it’s been a fun challenge designing sounds for them. Most of the games I’ve worked on before are live-service MMO games like Guild Wars 2 (GW2), whereby the audio pillar of the game has been defined for many years. Hence, building a new sonic world from an early game development cycle with the ProbablyMonsters audio team is exciting. When I first interned at a game audio outsourcing company, sci-fi sound design was my forte, using wavetable synths and processing sources with various audio plugins to create futuristic, stylized sounds for gadgets and machines that are powered by holograms, lasers, etc. However, working on GW2 also made me enjoy and appreciate designing sounds for fantasy games with creatures and magic skills. I also worked on a couple of GW2 boss fights, so I’m passionate about game audio enhancing the experience and helping the player understand mechanics better in encounters.

As a cellist, I previously worked with Lena Raine on the award-winning indie game, Chicory: A Colorful Tale, and I’ve been featured in several soundtracks for the Korean MMO, Tree of Savior. When I’m hired to do cello recordings, I excel in expressive solo melodies. I think that’s why video game composers seek my playing as it’s something difficult to replicate perfectly with MIDI. The cello is an amazing instrument as it can produce such diverse sounds, from beautiful, low legato notes to unique harmonics like the Seagull Effect. I’ve actually been utilizing my cello as a sound design tool too, making awful, screechy sounds on purpose, processing them through audio plugin chains, and ending up with a crazy creature roar or an eerie ambience layer. I would love to be hired to do “cello sound design” for horror game soundtracks someday!

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I introduce myself, people think I have a unique background of being both a sound designer and cellist. While they are both audio-related, one is more technical than the other. There’s a good reason why I do both.
I’ve been a cellist since young, but I always wanted to pursue something akin to audio technology. When I attended Berklee College of Music, I declared the Electronic Production & Design major, and I thought I wanted to become an electronic music producer like Madeon, Porter Robinson, or Disclosure.

I first learned about sound design for video games when a few sound designers from Riot Games visited my college. During the demo derby session where my classmates showed off their portfolio for feedback, I was completely mind-blown. I thought, “Wait, they MADE those sounds? That is so cool, I want to do exactly THAT.” Luckily, there were enough resources around me like the Sound Design Network student club and some game audio implementation classes at college that got me started with sound design.

There’s been ups and downs for sure. At my first student game jam, I barely made 3 sounds for the entire project, and they sounded pretty bad. I crawled into my corner of self-doubt and told myself that I’ll never become a professional sound designer. However, that changed when my friend sat me down at a GDC (Game Developers Conference) party and told me his story of getting into sound design. Hearing about how he worked extremely hard for 1-2 years to break into the industry was encouraging, especially since I was just starting out.

I always feel grateful for all my friends in the industry who helped me in one way or another. They reviewed my sound design demo reel, mentored me, and even helped me get a job by referring me for an open position. Whenever I ask them, “how can I return the favor?”, they would tell me to “pass it down”. So whenever I have the opportunity, I try my best to make time to help game audio folks who are still new, whether it is answering their questions about sound design or giving feedback on their reel.

How did you build your audience on social media?

My one-sentence TL;DR advice would be to keep posting your work online while also consistently going out to in-person or virtual gatherings/meetups to make new friends!

I have mainly used YouTube and Twitter to “brand” myself and my work online. Putting my cello covers of video game music (VGM) on YouTube started out as a passion project. As I put out more videos, people found me through the YouTube algorithm, and my channel naturally turned into an online cello portfolio. I also collaborated with fellow VGM cover artists on YouTube, which helped me with being exposed to a larger audience. Eventually, those friends recommended me to video game composers who were looking to hire a cellist for their soundtracks.

Through YouTube, I realized the importance of putting my work out there, so I didn’t hesitate to use Twitter as my sound design work outlet. While working on my sound redesign projects, I attended every game dev meetup I could go to, both local and national. I met new people, consistently showed up, and connected with them on Twitter. Those people would see the work I posted on Twitter, and either like, retweet, or comment on it. This helped my work reach a wider audience by showing up on their Twitter feed. I had a cool interaction once when I posted a sound redesign clip of one of my favorite games. The sound designer who worked on the original game discovered my Twitter post and even gave me compliments and feedback on my work. It was a “senpai noticed me” moment!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://sunghahong.com/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sungha_hong
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SungHaHong

Image Credits
“Password 6863”