Time for New Terminology? - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 90

Figure 1. Gamespace vs. gameworld. Diablo 2. ©2000 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved

a traditional sense, it is a feature that seems alien
to the diegesis while at the same time it provides
information about the gameworld. However, view-
ing gameworlds as different constructs compared
to traditional fictional worlds, the icon is clearly
part of the gameworld, since it is not part of the
overlay interface, but a feature picked up as the
avatar visited a stamina well and which follows
the avatar everywhere he walks. Since gameworlds
works on other premises than traditional diegeses,
players would have no problem accepting that this
is part of the gameworld even though the avatar
is not aware of it.
There is an important direct link between the
gamespace and the gameworld which is particu-
larly accentuated by the use of sound. When the
player decides to discard an item in the screenshot
above, he will use his mouse to drag and drop the
item from the inventory on the right to the vir-
tual environment on the left or, in other words,
he will move it from the gamespace to the game-
world. The moment he selects the item in the

inventory, there will be a short, nondescript click
which does not seem to represent any actual sound
in the gameworld. However, once he discards it
in the gameworld, there is a responsive sound
resembling that item being dropped to the ground.
If it is a potion, there is a bubbling sound and, if
it is a weapon, there is the sound of metal hitting
the ground. By being adjusted to the atmosphere
of the different spaces, the sound clearly empha-
sizes which frame it belongs to; there is no doubt,
though, that it does move from one to the other.
However, how this movement from frame
to frame is achieved may vary between games
and genres. A first-person shooter like Crysis
(Crytek, 2007) that integrates the interface as a
HUD 3 that is part of the avatar's suit situates the
relationship between gameworld and gamespace
somewhat differently from third person perspec-
tive avatar-based games. One of the empirical
player respondents elaborates: