I was doing some work for a British radio spot and was familiarizing myself with the EBU's R-128 standards when i realized I have no idea if there is a standard or governing body for games (with regards to audio standards). I know for the PC it's probably the wild west with this kind of stuff, but are there loudness standards for Android, iPhone, or Console games?

Someone correct me if I am wrong but I think there is some "suggestions" (I remember reading a paper from Sony I think) but no rules.

Yup, this is my understanding as well. I've heard many-a-talks at GDC about this very topic.

Thanks for the info! I'm surprised by that, I would have thought Apple at least would have had some ridiculously strict standard for this kind of thing.

Well in that case what do you guys generally shoot for when you master music for games? I've been going for -1Peak / -18RMS which I feel leaves enough room for 'dramatic' dynamics instead of crushing it that CD-Audio style.

Well in that case what do you guys generally shoot for when you master music for games? I've been going for -1Peak / -18RMS which I feel leaves enough room for 'dramatic' dynamics instead of crushing it that CD-Audio style.

I normalize everything and then via middleware or whatever system my client is using - set the appropriate volumes. Either by doing so directly or a bunch of emails/calls/chats back and forth if I'm remote. I don't have a standard -RMS setting for all games or anything but rather consider the device(s) it will be played on and then do a lot of A/B comparisons with other media for those same devices to make sure the audio works well. Too often, I don't really get much say in the implementation of audio, sadly.

The talk in the industry is developers adopting the EBU-1770 set of standards as a general rule for console / pc games.

http://designingsound.org/2013/02/loudness-in-game-audio is a great article about this topic.

However, I've found that mixing for a game is really dependant upon the game. A lot of handheld titles have to stand up to players playing them without headphones - so that can affect frequency choices and mix volumes of sounds.

The talk in the industry is developers adopting the EBU-1770 set of standards as a general rule for console / pc games.

That's what I'm using right now. The EBU-R128 standards call for -23 LUFS +/- 1LU weighted with ITU-1770. The more I use this scale the more I prefer it over dB RMS, it seems WAY more accurate. It's also a lot harder to 'cheat' the scale like you can with RMS.

I normalize everything and then via middleware or whatever system my client is using - set the appropriate volumes.

Why are you normalizing as opposed to using compression?

Sloppy typing - I am using compression with music along with several other mastering items. For SFX, I normalize.

Sloppy typing - I am using compression with music along with several other mastering items. For SFX, I normalize.

Ahhh ok that makes a LOT more sense