Joe Thom is a multi-award winning sound designer, and an alumni of BSc (Hons) Music Technology and MSc Sound & Music for Interactive Games at Leeds Beckett. Alongside his work in the games industry, Joe has also been back to Leeds School of Arts to teach on the Sound & Music for Interactive Games course, sharing his knowledge with current students.

In this blog, he shares what his career looks like and how Leeds Beckett has positively influenced him. 

Courses: BSc (Hons) Music Technology and MSc Sound & Music for Interactive Games 

Tell us a bit about yourself and what you've been doing since you graduated? 

Upon graduating in 2017 I immediately started on a range of freelance work. This included editing podcasts, audio restoration work and occasional sound design jobs where I could get them. After applying to a host of different game development studios, I eventually landed a job at Travellers Tales, where I was lucky to work with IP’s such as Marvel, DC and Star Wars. 

After a couple of years, and several games shipped, I made the decision to head out on my own again and return to the freelance world – this time focused solely on Sound and Music for video games. In this time I’ve been lucky enough to work with a whole range of studios, on several multi-award winning titles. While I continue to operate as my own business performing a range of Sound and Music duties, a large portion of my work is now undertaken with Sweet Justice Sound, a group I’m very proud to be a part of. 

What have been the highlights and challenges of your career so far? 

I think my main career highlight (and challenge!) would be my work on The Ascent. This was a real challenge as it was my first lead role, which carried with it a responsibility for quality, as well as a duty to drive the creative vision of the games soundscape, whilst complimenting the striking art style. The Ascent was also a huge career highlight for me – the developer (Neon Giant) were a new company at the time and had an incredibly refreshing approach to development, different to many ‘AAA’ companies. They extended a level of trust to us, as sound designers & musicians, that allowed us to experiment, fail, and ultimately create something that we were incredibly proud of. This in turn was very well received in the Game Audio industry – being nominated for a Golden Reel award for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Sound’ by the MPSE (Motion Picture Sound Editors Guild). 

Another career highlight would definitely be attending the BAFTA games awards in 2023 following the release of God of War: Ragnorak – a game I was very lucky to help the team at Sony Santa Monica Studio polish up back in 2022. Being sat in the theatre and seeing the game take the win for ‘Audio Achievement’ is something I’ll never forget. 

Tell us about your experience of teaching on the MSc Sound and Music for Interactive Games course? 

It was a great honour to be invited to teach on the MSc Sound & Music for Interactive Games course. The skills and experienced I gained whilst studying it myself laid a great foundation for me to feel comfortable and adept when entering the games industry. This being the case, I was excited and proud to be able to offer the current students some tips and tricks that I have gained over the years since entering the industry.

Throughout my time teaching I was impressed by how switched on and eager to learn the students were. They were fully engaged with the content of the classes and asked fantastic questions, some of which helped me to learn a lot as well. 

How has your experience of studying at Leeds Beckett influenced you and your career? 

So many of the lessons and techniques that I learnt through my time at Leeds Beckett have formed the foundation of my professional practice. The knowledge and experience imparted by the tutors was incredibly valuable and I found the range of visiting lecturers both inspiring and informative. The connections I gained with some of those visitors are still important to me today and I’m proud to be able to call them my peers.

Another way that my time at Leeds Beckett has stayed with me throughout my career is in the experience I gained through spending time in the incredible recording studio facilities. The additional facilities that have since been added (cinema, theatre, atmos rooms, dante etc) are truly mind blowing and I envy the current students being able to spend time in those environments.

What's next for you? 

I’ll be continuing my work with Sweet Justice Sound – we have several very exciting projects underway that I’m eagerly awaiting to be released/announced. In addition to that I’m working on several personal music projects that I’m very excited about and contributing to a number of sound libraries through my personal company Joe Thom Sound Design Ltd.

Some current students on the MSc Sound & Music for Interactive Games course shared their thoughts on how invaluable it was to have Joe return to Leeds Beckett as part of the teaching team:

“The content and expertise that Joe provided I felt was incredibly insightful, with a broad range of information about presenting yourself with reels (learning how to present yourself online and what to expect from the hiring process), the discussions into FX processing (that was super useful looking into the types of plugins and how you would use them), as well as the weapons system in Wwise that he went over. Overall, I’ve found Joe’s sessions to be extremely invaluable throughout the sessions we've had him for the module."

Joe Wilson

“I think that Joe's lessons had a really good impact on the module. Especially his considerations about sound design during the first lessons have changed the way I do re-designs (I really liked his "qualitative over quantitative" approach on layers, and the fact that he showed his plug-ins effect chains as well).”

Giorgio Macaluso