Awards

World Soundtrack Awards

  • Longlisted for Best Game Soundtrack (Eternights, 2024)

PROMAXBDA Awards

  • Winner of Best Channel Image Promo, Long Format (“Runaway Melon,” Nick Jr. Block Party)

  • Winner of Best Interstitial (“Runaway Melon,” Nick Jr. Block Party)

Daytime Emmy Awards

  • Finalist Best Short Form (Nickelodeon Halloween Spots, 2014)

Game Audio Network Guild Awards

  • Winner of the Distinguished Service Award (2018)

  • Finalist for Best Audio in an Indie Game (Eternights, 2024)

  • Finalist for Best Game Audio Publication (The Game Audio Strategy Guide, 2021)

Grants & Fellowships

  • Newbury Comics Fellowship (Newbury Comics, Boston, 2024)

  • Lacawac Artist in Residence (Lacawac Sancturay, 2023)

  • Berklee Faculty Development Grant (Berklee College of Music, 2023)

  • Hudson Emergency Arts Grant (Hudson Development Corp. 2020)

  • Hartt Interactive Music Technology Fellowship (The Hartt School, University of Hartford, 2019)

Praise for the eternights soundtrack

The soundtrack can almost hit as hard as those "isekai" trucks that can take you to another world …Certain pieces from [Eternights] soundtrack are also bangers, and its few songs are catchy enough to make me want to dig through the internet and add it to my personally curated playlist. - Game8

Another great tool Eternights has for presentation is the soundtrack, which can easily jump from chill jazzy beats to intense electronica on a moment’s notice. The variety of music present in the game never fights the setting, with each song and genre feeling like it fits in just as well as the others. The music can be subtle at times, hard to notice, or it can be at the forefront of your mind. -Try Hard Guides

The music helps convey the tense atmosphere and haunting parts of the title exceptionally well. I especially love the beautiful ending theme sung by Lorien. - RPG Fan

Best Audio in an Indie Game

Eternights has been nominated for a Game Audio Network Guild Award! Check out the full article in Variety Magazine. Winners will be announced at GDC in March.

The Game Audio Strategy Guide: A Practical Course

by Gina Zdanowics & Spencer Bambrick

The Game Audio Strategy Guide is a comprehensive text designed to turn both novices and experienced audio designers into technical game audio pros. Providing both a theoretical foundation and practical insights, The Game Audio Strategy Guide offers a thorough look at the tools and methods needed to create industry-quality music and sound design for games. The text is supported by an extensive companion website, featuring numerous practical tutorials and exercises, which allows the reader to gain hands-on experience creating and implementing audio assets for games.



"If you’re interested in the world of game sound, you need this book! I couldn’t be more excited that this book exists and wish I had had such a comprehensive and well-organized handbook when I was starting out as a sound designer/composer. Gina and Spencer take us through a complete overview of the craft and the skills involved in this growing field where sound is an essential component of game development. They shed light on the creative process, the technical skills, and the practicalities, from sound and music creation to game audio implementation.

This book is a culmination of Gina and Spencer's many years of professional experience wrapped into an accessible and effective guide. Not to mention, they are seasoned educators, so as you can imagine this book is not only bursting with invaluable tips from professionals, but it’s also instructive and even includes assignments and additional practical information on a companion website to make sure the concepts really hit home. That combination is invaluable and an enormous help! A must-read for up-and-coming game audio folks, in my opinion." - Michele Darling, professional sound designer and assistant chair of Electronic Production and Design at Berklee College of Music, Boston, USA

"This is an astonishing achievement. It is the definitive book of reference that the industry has needed for years. It will help guide a whole new generation of creative technical audio professionals into this immensely challenging and rewarding area of the video games industry. If you have any serious interest in video games audio or music, you must read this book." - Guy Michelmore, composer

"A delightful and useful addition to the Game Audio Toolbox of Your Mind (and bookshelf!)" - George Alistair Sanger, "The Fat Man"

"The Game Audio Strategy Guide is a comprehensive text for anyone wanting to better understand the nuts and bolts of music composition and sound design for games. In their information-packed treatise, Gina and Spencer provide an excellent roadmap for understanding the complex and not-so-straightforward art of game music and sound." - Brian Schmidt, executive director, GameSoundCon and Brian Schmidt Studios, LLC, USA

"This exciting book is a comprehensive 'walkthrough' of the creative processes of game audio. It uses the experience of industry professionals in tandem with theoretical discussion to present practical wisdom in an accessible manner. The book encourages readers to become reflective, innovative composers and sound designers. A strategy guide, yes, but absolutely no cheating!" - Dr Tim Summers, lecturer in Music, Royal Holloway University of London, UK, author of Understanding Video Game Music and co-founder, Ludomusicology Research Group

''The Game Audio Strategy Guide is a dense educational textbook that packs as much information as possible into a single source and aims to fulfill multiple goals. The authors present a theoretical and practical framework that covers all major aspects of game audio (sound design, composition, implementation, business) from the fundamentals all the way to advanced topics. It aims to bridge the gap between academia and industry practice.

A noteworthy feature of this book is its detailed companion website, which is actually a vital part of the reading experience, an approach that might bring its own advantages and disadvantages. The website adds a considerable amount of essential information, detailed clarifications, examples, and practical exercises for each chapter.

As an educator, I cannot think of another game audio book that provides that much combined value to its readers in such an expanded range of topics that touch on both a theoretical and a practical perspective. If a student wishes to buy only one educational book on game audio, I think this is it!'' - Marios Aristopoulos, Journal of Sound and Music in Games