Akash Thakkar, an award-winning composer and sound designer in the video game industry, will be making his SXSW debut both as an attendee and featured speaker. Akash has worked on such various games such as Destiny and Hyper Light Drifter. Before starting his career, Akash was a graduate of Berklee College of Music. This was where Akash learned how to achieve both of his passions of video gaming and music.

Akash’s inspiration for his workshop “Don’t Follow Your Passion: Honor the Struggle” comes from his experience of being influenced by the idea of “finding one’s passion”. When his life started to get difficult in his career, Akash found himself falling into the habit of jumping from thing to the next thing; hoping to see where his passion truly lied. He hoped something would eventually feel comfortable and natural. Like most things in life, Akash realized that anything worth pursuing would be difficult. After learning to appreciate the complicated road ahead, managing his expectations, handle the struggle and hard times, Akash’s career took off.

He’s spoken on this topic on TEDx and has received incredible feedback from people who have applied his method in their own lives. Akash hopes that people walk away from the session with:

The ability to discern when to quit something, or when to keep going. I would also like to give people some tools they need to help them become more resilient in the face of any challenges that come up.

This year, Akash will also be releasing a book about how to create sound effects for video games. Be on the lookout for “Sound Design for Games: Immersive Audio for Video Games and Virtual Reality” from Apress publishing.

See Akash’s TEDx below:

Sunday, March 11th
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Austin Convention Center – Job Market Stage

Find out more: Don’t Follow Your Passion: Honor the Struggle

Featured image: provided by Akash Thakkar