Time for New Terminology? - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 86

referents. Such sounds appear to be produced in
the gameworld, while its referent is a mechanic
of the game system. An example of a masking
sound can be found in World of Warcraft when a
monster attacks the avatar preemptively. In such
cases, a sound specific for that monster will be
heard that signals to the player that the avatar has
entered the aggression zone of that monster. This
sound is hard to interpret as natural to the world of
the game since no animal would signal to its prey
that it is about to attack. Being represented by a
sound signal with a source in the gameworld, the
sound has the ability to mask its origin as a system
message by being integrated into the gameworld,
and thus becomes situated on the border of what
is traditionally seen as the diegesis. Ekman calls
a sound symbolic , however, in cases where the
signal is non-diegetic and the referent is diegetic.
An example of this is adaptive game music that
is not produced by a source in the gameworld,
but refers to an event in the gameworld, such as
is the case when the player suddenly hears the
music change when an enemy is about to attack
in Dragon Age: Origins .
Although Ekman's model is fruitful in explain-
ing how game sound relates to the traditional film
theory understanding of diegetic and non-diegetic
sound, it also demonstrates the problematic aspects
of applying these concepts to games because game
sound in many cases is only partially diegetic. Also,
there are many examples of sounds that cannot be
fully explained by Ekman's model. When a voice
that apparently belongs to the avatar proclaims
that “I'm overburdened” in Diablo II , it is not
certain whether signal and referent are diegetic
or not. While the signal gives the impression of
being diegetic due to the use of the first person
personal pronoun and the fact that it is produced
by a voice that seems to belong to the avatar, it
may also be interpreted as a non-diegetic system
sound masked as diegetic since it is unclear who
the avatar is talking to (itself or the player?) and
since it provides information about the inventory,
which is the game system feature that allows the

player to collect and store items in the game.
This interpretation was suggested by two player
respondents in my research on the topic of trans-
diegetic communication:

[…] Well, it is the character's voice saying this.
But still I don't get the feeling that it is the char-
acter speaking. It's like the game narrator's voice
provides the player with a hint that, okay, you
should check your inventory. […] (John, (30).
Individual interview, Dec 10, 2008.) 1

It's a like some sort of error, or a… if you want
to see her as an individual person, it's really an
error. Because then the question is, who is she
talking to? […] (Isabel (25). Individual interview,
Dec 1, 2008.)

While John sees the above sound signal as a
system message masked as diegetic, Isabel thinks
of it as an error since it is unclear who the avatar
is talking to. In this case, the referent is also am-
biguous in the same way as it is not clear whether
the sound refers to the fact that the avatar is trying
to pick up something in the gameworld but fails
or to the fact that the inventory is overloaded.
Warcraft 3 provides another example. When the
player tries to place a new building on an illegal
location, a disembodied voiceover says, “Can't
build there!” At first glance, the signal seems to
be non-diegetic since there is no character in the
gameworld that produces the sounds. However,
this is challenged by the fact that the voice and
the accent are very similar to the voices of the
other units of that race. The referent is even more
ambiguous: while the sound refers to an operation
that is illegal according to the game system, it also
refers to the fact that this specific location in the
gameworld has diegetic properties such as trees
or existing structures that makes it impossible to
build here.
As has been demonstrated in the above discus-
sion, the attempts to adapt the concepts diegetic
and non-diegetic to game sound point to interesting