An Acoustic Communication Framework for Game Sound - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 142

fantasy game theme songs have long transgressed
the computer game genre and, particularly in Ja-
pan, are frequently re-orchestrated and performed
by choirs and symphonic orchestras. Composers
of game music, while largely unknown in North
America have star status in most of Asia.
There is another issue too: fantasy games deal
with imaginary actions that no one has experienced
in the real world, such as stepping on enemies'
heads, eating a giant mushroom, catching a star
(references from Super Mario ) and, sonically,
these actions do not have 'real' counterparts in
the acoustic reality we are familiar with. Creat-
ing the infamous sound of the lightsaber in Star
Wars (McDonald, 2008) is a classic story in the
history of metaphoric sound using both musical
conventions and pop-psychology. Likewise, this
quote from a sound designer of Torment illustrates
game verisimilitude challenges perfectly:

in realistic, rich cinematic RPG/action games. I
will begin with Murch's (1995) notion of worldiz-
ing —giving a certain space acoustic qualities that
make the player get involved—and combine that
with Ekman's (2005) discussion on diegetic versus
non-diegetic sound as acoustic elements that do or
do not belong to a gameworld. Historically, it is
important to note again how early games (Collins,
2008; McDonald, 2008) instantiated the use of a
melody to represent space—for example, in Final
Fantasy towns have a certain melody representing
the calm mood of a non-threatening environment
while out-of-town wooded areas use a separate
melody which is consistent everywhere in the game
and represents mild danger: mission dungeons
have their own musical melody and, within them,
entering the space of a boss battle features a fast-
paced tension music that is consistently the same
throughout the game for each boss battle. Thus,
these games established a situation where mood,
space, and call-to-action are rolled into one and are
all represented via one single melody/track. With
the emergence of more powerful game consoles
the notion of space becomes divorced from the
conveyance of mood or a call for a particular ac-
tion and becomes more representative and realistic
aiming to immerse the player into a gameworld.
This connects the idea of diegesis with the
notion of verisimilitude through the experience of
immersion, as “immersion is a mental construct
resulting from perception rather than sensation”
(Grimshaw & Schott, 2007, p. 476). While the
cinematic concept of diegesis simply refers to
whether or not the sound source is in or outside
the frame, both Jørgensen (2006) and Ekman
(2005) use this term to address whether a sound
belongs to a gameworld or not. There is an im-
portant distinction to be made in using diegesis
in this way as it puts the emphasis on immersion
into the resounding space (Grimshaw & Schott,
2007) of a game and carries an implication that
the gameworld already is an acoustic reality that
sounds either belong or not belong to. On the
other hand, regarding diegesis only as a refer-

During Torment, I was processing some sword hits,
and they were coming up very interesting. While
they didn't work for the spell I was working on, I
gave them a description like 'reverberant metal
tones, good spell source.' Later, I was looking for
something with those qualities, but had forgotten I
made those sounds. When I searched my database
for 'metal tones', I found them, and they were
exactly what I needed! (Farmer, 2009)

A less discussed but highly important part of
game verisimilitude is the temporal flow of the
soundscape, as it is intimately linked to the tradi-
tion of sound effects and aural objects. While the
fantasy sound of the past presents a highly melodic,
musically semantic flow, the interactive-adaptive
tradition results in a “loopy”-sounding score of
slightly varied bank sound effects (i.e. there may
be only one footsteps sound that is nevertheless
used for all characters) organized around modules
of game quests and activities but lacking an overall
structure or temporal design (see Figure 3 below).
Another aspect of verisimilitude in game
sound has to do with creating space, specifically