Antoine Peltier joined Gameloft Montréal a year ago during the pandemic as our worldwide audio manager.
A huge gamer, Antoine has over 21 years of experience in the industry and has worked all over the world on various franchises and platforms!
Antoine leads our Audio Department to create all the audio for our games, and his most recent project was The Oregon Trail on Apple Arcade.
Learn more about him, his job, and some of the great advice he has for game audio lovers below!
Hi, Antoine! Tell us about yourself.
I’m Gameloft’s worldwide audio manager, and I’ve been involved in the video game industry since 1999.
I started as an audio tester for EA Sports in Vancouver and developed into a dialogue designer and audio director on the NBA Live franchise. In 2007, I performed the same functions at THQ in L.A. on the UFC Undisputed franchise and then got a first taste of life in Montréal in 2013 when I worked as an audio lead on Outlast for GameOn Audio.
I then took a break from games to travel, work on some personal projects, and as a sports announcer on TV in Paris. I got back into games in 2017 as a senior audio producer for Splash Damage in the UK where I worked on Gears: Tactics, and finally made my way back to Canada in November 2020 as audio manager for Gameloft. It’s been quite a ride!
My uncle had an arcade when I was a kid, so I’ve basically been a gamer since I was a toddler. I even had a “job” delivering newspapers when I was 8, which allowed me to buy my NES with Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt!
I’ve been very lucky to work on games with subject matters that I’m passionate about, and Gameloft has an incredible lineup on the way that I can’t wait for gamers to get their hands on!
What is your role, and what do you enjoy most about your job?
As the worldwide audio manager, my role is to administrate the Audio Department at Gameloft, which is a service department that caters to all the audio needs for all of the company’s global studios.
We have a team of 25 sound designers, composers, dialogue specialists, technicians, mixers, and testers that handle the development of audio for all Gameloft games and marketing. In a nutshell, my job is to make sure that our department has all the people, software, hardware, tools, facilities, and processes in place so that we can deliver world-class audio for all of Gameloft’s needs.
The aspect of my role that I now enjoy most is being deeply involved in the process of finding powerful, robust, and cost-effective solutions to the challenges posted by Gameloft’s cross-platform strategy.
Several of Gameloft’s upcoming high-profile releases require the use of powerful third-party platforms and middleware like Unity, Unreal Engine, and Wwise, and our whole department is very excited about these new tools because of the power they put into the hands of creatives.
As a company that has historically and primarily released mobile-only titles, Gameloft is moving in a bold new direction by also releasing games on PC and consoles. With my experience in AAA, PC, and console dev, I find it very inspiring to help make this transition successful!
What are some of your most memorable moments at Gameloft?
Well, I joined Gameloft 7 months ago in the middle of the pandemic, so it’s been a lot of quarantine, lockdown, and curfew!
With the work-from-home situation, I’ve actually only been briefly to the studio here in Montréal once. That being said, during this time we’ve released The Oregon Trail on Apple Arcade and that’s been receiving great reviews, for both the game in general and the audio specifically.
I’m very proud of the fortitude my colleagues have been showing given the circumstances, and we’ve also made some great new hires that are making amazing contributions and gelling with the team despite the fact that many of us have never even met in person.
Montréal is slowly getting back to normal, and I’m excited about the prospect of spending more time in person with my teammates and being part of many memorable moments!
What advice do you have for people who want to work in gaming in a similar role?
In order to properly run a large, multi-project audio department, the attribute that has allowed me to be the most effective is my previous experience as a creative and technical audio artist.
When you’ve been confronted with the problems and challenges of artists as an artist, it allows you to properly asses, triage, and prioritize similar problems as a manager. I don’t have any formal training as a manager—everything I do, every instinct I have, is entirely the result of my experience in the industry making lots of mistakes and learning from them.
If you’re new to game audio, my advice would be to find a role within the industry that you’re passionate about, dive in with both feet, ask lots of questions, listen to and observe the experts around you, make mistakes, and get better.
Once you become a creative and/or technical expert, you should then be in possession of a certain depth of perspective that allows you to lead or manage others on a project. Once you’ve shipped several projects in that capacity, your increased perspective should allow you to run a department.
It comes down to profoundly understanding the craft of game audio and the dynamics between the Audio Department and the various other departments on a project (Animation, Gameplay, UI, Cinematics, etc.) as well as the other support departments in the studio (HR, Recruiting, Legal, IT, etc.). The ultimate goal is to be able to empower your team with everything they need to make world-class audio in a cost-effective and sustainable fashion!
If you're interested in working on game audio, the Audio Department is currently looking for an audio director. Our team is working on many exciting, new cross-platform games, and you can find all our opportunities in Montréal and our studios around the world here! Stay tuned for another edition of Humans Behind the Game!
