An Acoustic Communication Framework for Game Sound - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 141

sound craft in the earlier days of modern cinema,
and which is experiencing a resurgence today,
builds directly onto these conventions, generat-
ing an ever-increasing repertoire of techniques
through which to simulate “real” sounds (typically
by using other acoustic materials).
In his discussion of film sound Christian Metz
(1985) uses the term aural objects to refer to
film's tendency to solidify an arbitrary relation-
ship between the viewer/listener's perception of
real sounds and the reality of the actual sound
sources. The resulting realism, as pointed out
not only by him, but other film theorists such as
Chion (1994), Deutsh (2003), Figgis (2003) and
Murch (1995), to name a few, is that film sound
bites become hyper-real: We associate them with
certain events and interactions in place of their
authentic acoustic counterparts. For example, if
someone played back the actual sound of walking
in snow and the sound of close-miked grinding
into a bag of rice, most of us would perceive the
latter as more real. Given such a set of conven-
tions, and media's natural condition of being an
inter-textual and self-perpetuating phenomenon,
subsequent media forms and genres simply have
to play on and incorporate said conventions. Or
do they?

meaningful in themselves mix together to create
a flow of gameplay experience (McDonald, 2009)
but also a game space .
As with narrative support music in cinema,
synthesized tunes in early games, specifically in
the fantasy genre (titles such as Final Fantasy ,
Zelda , Castlevania and others), act as a vector (to
use Chion's (1994) term) to the temporal flow of
the interactive experience and take on iconic or
referential meaning (Deutch, 2003). It is precisely
this quality of game sound that illustrates perfectly
the distinction between fidelity and verisimilitude
- as technologies, storage capacities and process-
ing speeds of game consoles have improved over
time, some games have moved towards a more and
more authentic depiction of the acoustic reality,
while others continue to preserve the nostalgic
qualities of what Murch (1995) calls metaphoric
sound , only in better sound quality (see Figure 2).
Metaphoric sound—one that does not represent
the action seen on the screen realistically, is so
ingrained in our cultural memory that it seems odd
to even point it out. Popularized by early fantasy
games and their predecessors—isomorphic car-
toon sounds (Altman, 1992), it contributes to a
type of verisimilitude that is very different from
the one richer and more realistic game genres
strive for (adventure, military or FPS games).
In other words, Super Mario , Zelda or Final
Fantasy just wouldn't be recognizable to their
audience or, in our terms, possess verisimilitude,
if it were not for their inter-textual references to
iconic sounds of the past. Examples are ample -
the theme sounds of their game universe or even
individual sound effects such as the 1-up sound,
the brick-smashing sound or the jumping tune in
Super Mario ; the battle cries of Zelda 's Link and
its iconic chest-opening sounds; or the epic combat
rhythms during attacks and boss battles in Final
Fantasy, among many others. Given this, sound
designers for classic fantasy titles take great care
to preserve these iconic sounds in each platform
and each iteration of their titles. As Phillips (2009)
mentions in his expose on film and game music,

Aural Objects, Flow and space

As mentioned already, the first RPGs utilized a
small corpus of synthesized melodies to denote
unique spaces, quintessential game moments
and mood. Loosely based on music psychology
conventions, these early game soundscapes used
major tonality to signify an uplifting mood, minor
tonality to signify danger or failure (as in Zelda
or the Final Fantasy series), upward note-trill to
denote jump and a downward note sequence to
indicate death or end-game (as in all of the Super
Mario -based and derivative series). The bigger
picture in the early days consisted of having a
continuously running soundtrack of synthesized
music where many smaller elements, that are