An Acoustic Communication Framework for Game Sound - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 144

Figure 4. A sonic excerpt from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas gameplay. While richer and more varied
in dynamic range (including periods of relative silence) the game flow still consists of a series of sound
effects strung together, with some distance/amplitude rendering

result, we begin relying less on active, engaged,
information-processing listening, and more on
habitual background and media listening in all of
our surroundings (Schafer, 1977; Truax, 2001).
This is not to forget however, that games are
interactive, and the player is, in Schafer's terms,
a co-composer of her own game soundscape, at
the same time that she listens to it. The listening
positions that I'd like to add to in the interest of
engaging with and critically understanding the

experience of computer game sound are presented
in Table 3.

EcOLOGY

Discussing game soundscapes as sites of local
acoustic ecologies is not a novel idea (Grimshaw,
2008) and as Grimshaw and Schott (2007) point
out, “the more immersive a game is the more appro-