An Acoustic Communication Framework for Game Sound - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 146

(Truax, 2001; Westerkamp, 1991). As Hildegard
Westerkamp (1991) points out, the phenomenon
of background music is responsible for sound
becoming “associated in our memories with en-
vironments and products” (1991). In essence it
becomes the ambience of the media environment,
however, it does not result in endless diversity of
spaces and sounds but, rather, in the emergence of
archetypal surrogate environments (Westerkamp,
1991). In the context of games, ominous abstract
tones analogous to the cinematic model of the
mood track provide such a strong emotional sense,
enforced and enriched by previous generations of
media listening such as film, radio and TV, that the
acoustic qualities of space, reverberation, distance,
location and timbre, which are the more subtle yet
vital cues of everyday listening, are often lost in
the 'background'. Similarly, music in action and
rhythm games often provides a promotion vehicle
for indie bands whose sound is conceived as cul-
turally related to the genre of the game itself thus
perpetuating—not challenging—the status quo
of popular culture and mass media. Essentially,
music's overshadowing of other sonic elements
has both a cultural and a political economic im-
plication for games in addition to an acoustic one.

game characters and the player-driven avatar are
all participants in the ecology. However, such
algorithmic subtlety is far from reality to date
and, partly due to economic reasons but also party
due to notions of value, may never be a generally
utilized phenomenon anyway. Even though sound
in games has experienced tremendous growth
and is now considered an important part of game
design, development companies still invest in it
considerably less than they do in visual graphics
and animation. Sound designers in game develop-
ment companies are typically pressured to stick
with tried and true approaches to composition,
design and functionality of audio, and are dis-
suaded from implementing “risky” new ways of
using sound as part of the game mechanics. There
are, of course, a few examples where sound is used
in more participatory or ecological ways. For a
while now Nintendo DS features a microphone
input so games such as Elektroplankton and to
a lesser degree titles such as Yoshi's Island or
Guitar Hero involve user-generated vocal ele-
ments into the gameplay: mostly in the form of
shouting, blowing or speaking into the mike. More
complex platforms support a genre called stealth
games where the avatar's own soundmaking in the
game (primarily footsteps) is implied to be heard
by the other non-player characters. Metal Gear
Solid is the best known title, in addition to Hit-
man , Assassin's Creed 2 , and even youth-themed
games such as Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets , or Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass , where
Link has to walk slowly in the Temple of Time in
order not to alert the phantom knights. Even at a
rudimentary implementation such as linking the
player/character's speed to levels of “noise” in a
given space, this approach taps into an aspect of
acoustic ecology that has been largely overlooked:
the character's experience of listening within the
gameworld. Acoustic Community as a Feature of
Game Sound
We have already discussed acoustic com-
munity in the context of game soundscapes as a
conglomeration of different types of sound cues,

Ecology of Listening

While so far we have been discussing new listening
patterns that emerge from the experience of game
soundscapes and their socio-cultural and histori-
cal evolution, what about the listening that takes
place inside game soundscapes? Does anybody
listen within the game itself or is it a silent vacuum
space where sound happens but no one can hear
it? In other words, how would a game's acoustic
ecology change if characters in it (maybe even all
of them!) could listen to one another and to the
player's character, or even to sounds outside the
gameworld? In Truax's (2001) terms this would
complete the holistic relationship of true acous-
tic communication, uniting a constant interplay
between listeners, sounds and soundscape, where