What do you believe is the most important contribution to immersion in terms of audio design and implementation?
The first things that come to mind are weight and spatialization. Things need to have the right amount of low and high elements to properly convey how "heavy" something is. This along with a well tuned reverb setting in your level will increase immersion. Another thing is depth in your ambiance with multiple layers (background, mid-ground, and foreground). This can be achieved by using the right verb, ping pong delay, and a well tuned dry/wet mix. If you walk into a forest you aren't just going to hear birds in the trees right next to you. You will also hear distant, muffled creatures and birds coming from the left, right, and center.
Immersion is subjective by nature, but do you believe that any genres have an advantage in obtaining it?
I think each genre and camera style bring their own set of complications to creating immersive audio. I haven't had a huge variety of titles I've worked on so I can't say for certain if one genre is easier than another. I did mention something above about 2d games vs 3d but I think really that comes back down to having enough resources to get the best tools possible. There will always be limitation to any genre and it's your job as a sound designer to come up with creative ways to make it work.
It is common to understand that the audio budget generally suffers to that of it’s graphical counterpart, is that still the case in modern video games? And do you believe this budget limits the immersive capabilities that audio can achieve?
I don't think audio budgets are ever going to be able to match the visual budget. MOST developers and consumers just don't care as much about audio. People are much more forgiving of crappy audio than crappy graphics. The budget is definitely a limitation of what the audio can achieve but anything is possible with a strong creative audio team. You have to make do with your limitation.
