A Combined Model for the Structuring of Computer Game Audio - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 99

Figure 1. Huiberts and van Tol's IEZA-framework for the analysis and production of computer game audio
into which we have added frames for the different categories. Adapted from Huiberts and van Tol (2008)

(p. 2). Although these two areas are related and
do share some common ground, they are also
quite different in many ways. It is striking that
when we think about games we use the term
audio, yet when we think about film we seem to
primarily use the term sound. In our opinion, there
is a difference between these 2; audio is a more
technology-based term than sound. A sound is
something you hear which in turn leads to listen-
ing, while audio is something that precedes sound
but with stronger technological connotations as
a term. Film sound is, as Murch notes, normally
composites of sound in several layers, an assertion
which precedes a more thorough discussion of
this model (Figure 2). Murch concludes that we
may be wise to limit those layers to a total of 5
different ones simultaneously played back on the
sound track of a movie. A common method of
separating the different parts of film sound is a
typology consisting of 3 separate categories:
speech, effects, and music (Bordwell & Thomp-
son, 2001; Sobchack & Sobchack, 1980). This
typology is originally based on the technology of
early sound films and its 3 tracks, constituting a
practice-oriented separation of sound into differ-
ent categories. It also corresponds well to Murch's

(1998) conceptual color model (Figure 2), which
spans from language that clearly has relations to
speech (encoded) via effects to music (embodied).
With such a typology rather clearly differentiating
the 3 basic entities of film sound from each other,
we might jump to the conclusion that film sound
is fairly easy to create and that computer game
audio could be modeled, more or less, on the
practice and theories of film sound. Since we only
have 3 basic categories of sounds that can be used
and combined to create a sonic environment, how
hard can it really be? However, film sound is more
complex than this initial typology suggests and
we address this in this chapter. Furthermore,
computer game audio works under quite different
conditions than film sound does: film sound is
fixed, stored and played linearly. This does not,
however, mean that sound in movies needs to be
synchronous with the visual, since it might be
narrating at a different level that does not have
its basis in the present image (Hug, 2011; Kubel-
ka, 1998; Pudovkin, 1929/1985). Computer game
audio, on the other hand, is dynamic and stored
as a resource for the player to use in a non-linear
fashion. An invariant set-up of sounds is stored
in a database, but the use of objects that would