By Sam Chipera - [DE]Sam

For Erich Preston, taking over the role of Lead Sound Designer for Warframe felt right the moment he got the news.

“George Spanos had reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, can we hop on a quick call?’ And I remember going to our meet downstairs, and then he asked me, ‘How do you feel about leading sound on Warframe?’” Erich said, recounting the time he was given the opportunity to lead Warframe’s sound team during our interview.

Erich now oversees the entirety of audio design for Warframe, but he had been a sound designer for eight years prior to the new role. He felt changes brewing as early as the release of The New War update in 2021, and early into the development of Angels of the Zariman, he received the aforementioned message from George.

“I remember saying to him, I need to think about that for a second. So, I went upstairs for all of two minutes, came back and said, let's do it,” Erich explained. 

“And, yeah, my heart was beating a mile a minute.”

For him, that kind of excitement is the name of the game. Excitement and hype have been with him for his entire tenure at Digital Extremes, developing and implementing the audio heard across the game — whether it was recorded in 2013 or 2023.

Anything that comes through your speakers first comes through his. For Erich, watching the game evolve and change through that lens is a dream come true.

“Being here for nine years, I've gotten to see basically, from the beginning, how we got to where we are now and how all of these kinds of interesting characters and spaces have come to life,” Erich said.

Having taken the torch of audio design, Erich is still thrilled to continue creating and crafting adventures for the community. Like others at Digital Extremes, his appreciation for the universe he’s been a part of is boundless.

“The opportunity to work with a new group of leadership: Rebecca Ford, Pablo Alonso, and everyone who moved positions is pure excitement.”

Erich wanted to do Warframe justice when he first entered the role, which continues to this day, and to keep the pride and joy of so many developers sounding its best. When he was leading the charge on the Angels of the Zariman update — a follow-up to the previous winter’s massive The New War update focused on the re-emerged Zariman Ten-Zero colony ship — it was about bringing the best out of everyone.

But beyond even Warframe, sound design is something Erich takes everywhere. It informs how he sees the world and how he leads in this role.

He believes audio inspiration can be pulled from anything: whether he’s listening to music in the car or simply experiencing life in the moment. 

“There’s so much diversity in Warframe’s environments, characters and stories. I always try to bring in experiences from my own life when I’m out and about — I’m always looking for what makes me feel a certain emotion.”

Whether it’s learning out in the world, or learning on the job, Erich is always discovering new things to apply to Warframe. When the team was learning to build the more recent in-game locale of Duviri, the emphasis moved to presenting emotion as a real, physical thing — a challenge that pushed the team in new ways.

“It was a huge undertaking because we have to develop different music for the different moods and different kinds of ambience, sound collections for all of the different moods, and it affects the sounds that play on the enemies,” he said.

Duviri drove him and his team in directions they never would have expected. Now, those lessons have allowed them to experiment even further in Warframe’s forthcoming updates.

“It helps to push us further now and have us go further than we ever have with our audio.”

The experiences he’s learned before and after starting as Lead Audio Designer one year ago have given Eric many opportunities for self-reflection.

“I wouldn’t change anything,” he said. “I feel like Duviri really galvanized the team. When it went live, and seeing the player's reaction and positivity surrounding it, and the positivity surrounding sounds and music. Yeah, it was a super emotional experience for me.”

“And If I changed anything, then I wouldn’t be here.”