We’re not talking about the orchestral scores, ambient loops and sound effects you hear during play (though those are important too), but rather the tunes we groove to as we work.  This is about what we listen to on the way into the office, or crank up after dark while the midnight oil burns.

Here are some of our favorite summer jams — the albums that keep us going during the dog days of July and August.

Amanda Cosmos – Senior Quality Assurance: Deadmau5 – For Lack of a Better Name

Joe Fielder – Producer: Explosions in the Sky – The Earth is not a Dead Cold Place

Grant Chang – Senior Animator: Neko Case – Middle Cyclone

Chris Kline – Technical Director: Stereolab – Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements

Ken Strickland – Combat Designer: The Gaslight Anthem – American Slang

Kristofel Munson – Programmer: Andrew W.K. – I Get Wet

Murray Kraft – Level Builder: Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children

Matt Boehm – Animator: Rogue Wave – Permalight

Clint Bundrick – Combat Designer: Tool – Undertow

Collin Moore – Community Manager: Sleigh Bells – Treats

The Collected Ears of Irrational Games take in a wide variety of music.   Now we want to know:  what summer songs keep your iPod humming?

We just dug up a particularly precious artifact:  a sketchbook from System Shock 2. We’re talking original artwork on honest-to-goodness paper – no Wacom tablets or Cintiq monitors, but  paper with the original coffee stains still intact.

We are pleased to share with you some of the contents of this archaeological find.  Enjoy the art in this installment of From the Vault, while we look for more treasures in long-abandoned boxes and dusty storage closets.

Keith is a human Swiss Army knife – the kind with the tweezers and the saw blade and the magnifying glass.   His ability to complete any and every task that would otherwise fall through the cracks is, quite frankly, a bit spooky.

Need a video edited?  Done.  Need someone to build a tool in PHP?  Done.  Need someone to crack open the editor and quick-fix a level?   Done.  Need someone to record a podcast?   Done.  Keith is a runaway problem-solving machine, and his contributions since arriving here at Irrational are too numerous to catalog.  His dedication and immense value to the team have not gone unnoticed by his co-workers.  We are thrilled to have someone like Keith on staff, even if we’re a little freaked out by how many different things he can do.

And as if that weren’t enough, the man wears a mean kilt.

Your title is ‘Associate Producer.’  What does that mean?  And does the job change depending on the department you assist?

The title Associate Producer, or AP, can be difficult to define here at Irrational, but the primary goal is to assist the team with the development of the game. Of course what ‘assist’ means changes on a daily basis and can range from doing things like taking notes in meetings and tracking developer tasks, to flying out to California to hand deliver the game to the manufacturer.

At Irrational, each AP is assigned to a department to assist them with their particular needs, as well as being responsible for general production tasks.  During my five years here I’ve performed my AP duties in some capacity for basically every department (Art, Programming, Design, Audio). Each one has its own specific needs, but I’ve found them all to require some degree of technical knowledge in that department’s specialization. I think Irrational is unique in that, as an AP, I’ve actually done a great deal of development work that has made it into the final game.

What games have you worked on?

I playtested The Lost for a few weeks when I was in high school… does that count? My first full development game was BioShock. I’d say it was a good start!

Describe Life at Irrational in three words or less.

Challenging but rewarding.

What is your favorite game of all time?

I have a soft spot for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  It was the first RPG I had ever played.  I just wasn’t aware prior to playing it that that kind of depth could exist in a game.

Name a game everyone should play once in their life.

I can’t really suggest one because games are highly subjective.  Play one that your friends, kids, or significant other enjoys playing.

What is your favorite movie?

Movies are like games for me, in that I don’t internally rate good movies over others; they just exist in a mental list of movies I liked.  If you force me to choose, I might say Spirited Away, No Country For Old Men, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, or Garden State, depending on the day.

What are your hobbies outside of work?

Other than gaming and watching movies, I enjoy spending time with my fiancée Heather and beagle-basset named Hazel. I also dabble in web development and aspire to ride my bike more.

Can you tell us about the joys of web development for fun?

Web development is a lot like game development: you get to create something that a wide audience can interact with.  I have a CS degree so messing around with Ruby on Rails is a good outlet for my technical abilities, and the design side feeds my visual creative needs.  Also it’s just fun to pull something from your head and have it exist in the real world.

Inquiring fans wants to know: when do we get to see a picture of you in the field hockey outfit?

Haha… well I scoured photo albums for some, and couldn’t really find any images better than these:

I think the picture on the left is the one they used in the year book so it ended up being a 20th of the size of the other player pictures. I regret not having had more pictures taken of me at the time.

What’s your favorite Irrational story?

Our original office space flooded about two winters ago while most of the office was out on vacation. It created a bit of a headache as the space was practically unusable.  But in classic Irrational fashion, we didn’t let that stop us from working on kick-ass games.

Many of the crew moved into a make-shift office space at a nearby hotel for what was only supposed to be a short stay. It took much longer than expected to repair the original office space, so we decided to take over a recently vacated space on the floor below while we waited out the repairs. Once the office was de-funked and inhabitable again we moved back upstairs. We liked the lower floor space, and because we were growing, we decided to permanently make it part of our Irrational home where most of the Irrational crew now resides.

While the delays, moving and uncertainty of that period might have sunk other companies, we soldiered on and turned lemons into awesomely-styled lemonade.

For the pilot episode we are happy to have Todd Howard, Executive Producer and Game Director from Bethesda Softworks.  Howard has been at Bethesda since 1994, with countless classics under his belt including The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and most recently Fallout 3. Howard is well known for his sense of humor and his drive to make great games.

Head over to the forums for the usual lively discussion.

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• Produced by James Bonney, Shawn Elliott and Alan Bice
• Music Provided by The Happy Hallows

Ten Things, as the name implies, gives you ten opinions from ten different Irrational employees, each time on a new topic.  It could be cookies, or albums you should own, or things to do at a picnic… any and every subject is fair game.

With E3 behind us, we’re kicking off Ten Things with the topic:  “Impressive products at E3 in 2010.”

Stephen Alexander – Senior FX Artist: Portal 2. Looked very pretty, gameplay seemed like what made the first great with lots of new ideas, writing seemed to have maintained its really high bar.

Dan Johnson – Quality Assurance Tester: Dance Central, using Kinect and creating a real game that has the same infectiousness that pervades Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Kristina Drzaic – Designer: Epic Mickey blew me away, more over Disney’s decision to play with Mickey’s brand image in an interesting way than actual demonstrated gameplay, which still looked great.  I’m looking forward to that one.

Sarah Rosa – Assistant to the Creative Director: There was a lot of awesome at E3.  I must say that the 3DS is definitely worth molesting and worked as described!

Mike Syrnyk – Associate Producer: I was impressed by Bulletstorm just because I love the idea of literally booting the crap out of every enemy in sight.

Chad LaClair – Level Designer: RAGE.  Best looking game I’ve seen on the 360.

Adrian Murphy – Associate Producer: Ghost Recon.  I didn’t pay too much attention before E3, but after watching the videos, I was pleasantly surprised.  It doesn’t seem to be taking the Modern Warfare/ Battlefield route of “ZOMG everything is exploding all the time I am Rambo.”  The cloaking looked cool, and the joint takedown sequence was rad.

Ben Lo – Concept Artist: The most impressive one was Gran Turismo 5 to me. Even though I’m not a big racing gamer, the in-game graphics alone will be able to get me going at it for hours and hours. It is just gorgeous.

Joe Faulstick – Producer: Civilization 5 has me excited. They seem to be finding the perfect balance between keeping what worked well and improving upon the original core experience.

Jorge Lacera – Concept Artist: Metal Gear Solid: Rising fucking blew my mind. I’m ready to slice some shit up!

Irrational’s four-person audio team may be small, but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in talent, dedication and heart.  “Talent, dedication, and heart” – that sums up Jeff pretty well.

When he isn’t doing spot-on vocal impressions, kicking ass in any number of video games, or bringing his co-workers to tears with his wonderful sense of humor, Jeff can be found hard at work making our games sound oh-so-sweet.  Armed with vast skills and a devilishly handsome smile, he comes through no matter how thorny the problems he faces.  And we can always count on Jeff for an honest, unvarnished opinion on any subject, audio or otherwise.

He’d be a incredible asset to any team, but he’s ours.

All ours.

You can’t have him.

Your title is ‘Senior Sound Designer.’  What does that mean?

I design, author and implement sound effects for all aspects of our games. These range from one-off sounds for things like weapons, Foley and explosions, to more complex subjects like ambients, animations, and full-blown cinematics.

What games have you worked on?

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Blitz: The League 2, SimCity Societies: Destinations, SimCity Societies, Caesar IV and Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War

Describe Life at Irrational in three words or less.

Inspiring beyond measure

What is your favorite game of all time?

You know that question is totally unfair, right? At least have the decency to ask for a Top 3.  But if I must pick an all-time favorite, a game that I can always come back to, it’s Beyond Good & Evil. It delivers the total package with beautiful and unique environments, charming characters, an amazingly diverse soundtrack, and a nice variety of gameplay. It continues to inspire my work to this day.

Name a game everyone should play once in their life.

Fallout 2. Trade in your lousy paper money for caps and start your journey into the wasteland.

What is your favorite movie?

Ameliebladerunnerjaws. Did I get away with that? I could honestly watch those movies every day of my life.

What are your hobbies outside of work?

I was a musician before I was ever a sound designer so I continue to write and play music whenever there’s time.  From time to time I can be spotted on a Geocaching hunt, and I also love to cook.

Geocaching?  That must result in some ridiculously nerdy adventures.

Geocaching is a bit nerdy with all the sneaking around in broad daylight, but it seems to be gaining traction now that almost every mobile phone has a built-in GPS. My adventures in Geocaching have ranged from creepy to hilarious.  Creepy: finding a monument buried deep in the woods of Massachusetts left in memoriam of a town that was all but wiped out by smallpox in the 1600s. Hilarious:  running into a person or group on the hunt for the same Geocache as you.  You pace back and forth for 15 minutes trying to be inconspicuous and eventually someone says, “Ok ok, we’re both looking for the Geocache, right?”  If the person just stares at you, the best option is to run away serpentine as though you’re being chased by a crocodile.

You confess that you like cooking.  Any recipes you could recommend to people that are challenged by the culinary arts?

As a native of New Orleans, I had to bring some Creole cooking with me to Boston. I’m also studying up on classic French cooking which not only starts off relatively easy, but also leads to natural improvisation with recipes. For those feeling noobish in the kitchen but interested in some authentic New Orleans fare, start off with Red Beans & Rice. It’s easy and almost impossible to screw up. Once you’ve mastered that, forge onward and keep your knives sharp!  Holler at me on the Community section when you’re ready to take on the Seamster gumbo recipe.

What’s your favorite Irrational story?

My favorite story so far comes from my first day on the job. As soon as I walked through the door, our audio director grabs me and says we’re going out to record the Fore River Bridge between Quincy and Weymouth. He’d gotten a tip from our art director that it was going to be raised so that a large ship could pass underneath. The recording gear was packed up and we hauled ass to make it down to the bridge in time. We readied ourselves for some great throaty metal sounds because this bridge is a hulking beast of steel. The warning gates went up and the bridge began to move.

Believe me when I tell you that this bridge must have been designed by a squad of ninjas and padding specialists because it was utterly silent. Not even a peep when the bridge came to rest on what I speculate to be a bed of marshmallows. The only sound that truly stood out during this experience came from a deckhand on the passing ship who whistled Suicide is Painless (the theme from M*A*S*H) as the vessel lazily drifted by. So, if you need a recording of a silent bridge, now you know where to go.

Do game makers game differently?  In this episode of Irrational Behavior we ask the team if they are able to turn off their critical filters and play the part of consumer.  From the untold developer chatter during lobby sessions in the latest multiplayer games to conquering  great single player experiences, how do we play and what do we think.  We also ask the team on games that influenced them in their roles and impacted the games they helped create.

• Part 1: Team Deathmatch
• Part 2: Appetite for Deconstruction

Stay tuned to IrrationalGames.com for more content related to this month’s podcast.

Discuss this episode of Irrational Behavior over in the forum.

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Podcast music provided by:

• Signal Hill
• Patrick Balthrop
• Rich Vreeland
• Razors in the Night

Additional Production provided by:

• Tim Franklin