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of sound that are considered when designing the
soundscape of a computer game. Volume is the
relative loudness at which a sound is heard from
a loudspeaker. Timing is the relative synchroni-
zation of the sound with its source. Source is the
origin of a sound.
Game sounds are here categorized into the
common topology of three separate categories:
music, dialogue, and sound effects (Wilhelmsson
& Wallén, 2011). Music is a type of mood-setting
technique that typically coincides with the theme
of a game. Music is not considered as part of this
study because it is typically non-diegetic in na-
ture and music is “heavily controlled by tempo”
(Cunningham et al., 2011) rather than the sound
properties studied here. Dialogue is diegetic but is
not considered in this chapter because properties of
speech, such as intonation, may be more important
than the selected properties of volume, timing,
and source in their impact on players. Sound ef-
fects are diegetic game sounds, such as ambient,
weapon, and environmental sounds. Examples of
sound effects are: ambient noises such as rustling
leaves and the steady drip of rain; player avatar
sounds that are not related to dialogue, such as
pained grunts; and weapon noises, such as the
crack of a rifle or the swing of a club.
To understand how the sound properties of
sound effects are used by game designers to cause
fear and anxiety, the state of the art in sound design
for games is reviewed in this section. Specifically,
computer games in the survival horror genre are
reviewed using the sound properties of volume,
timing, and source. Survival horror games provide
good case studies because they are designed to
keep the player in a state of fear, suspense, and
anxiety throughout the game: “Crawling with
monsters, survival horror games make wonderful
use of surprise, attack, appearances, and any other
disturbing action that happens without warning”
(Perron, 2004, p. 2). The games chosen for this
field review are:
Alone in the Dark
(2008),
Dead
Space
(2008),
Doom 3
(2004),
Eternal Darkness
(2002), and
Silent Hill 2
(2001). The following
provides an overview of the sound design of the
five different survival horror games selected:
•
Alone in the Dark
: This game uses high
quality visuals coupled with interspersed
moments of surprise to cause player fear
and anxiety.
•
Dead Space
: This game has an abun-
dance of ambient sound effects and clut-
ter to add to the realism and increase the
player's anxiety and suspense.
Dead Space
also uses a combination of well-timed and
high-volume sound effects to elicit fear re-
sponses from the player, and has received
praise for its sound design.
•
Doom 3
: The soundscape of
Doom 3
fo-
cuses on voice acting and ambient sound
effects. The ambience succeeds in creating
a mood of suspense, while the encounters
with monsters focus on creating fear.
•
Eternal Darkness:
This game takes a mini-
malistic approach to sound design and only
uses sounds very sparingly. This approach
allows the player to hear what few sounds
are in the game with little difficulty and
this increases the effect of each sound.
•
Silent Hill 2
: This is an older game that
uses a minimalist approach to sound de-
sign, like
Eternal Darkness
, but with more
of an emphasis on game sounds without
visible sources to create suspense.
Volume of sound Effects
While game designers decide on what level of
volume to play their sound effects relative to other
sounds, players change the overall volume of the
game sounds emitting from their loudspeakers at
will. Thus, the game designer can only manipu-
late the magnitude of volume in relation to other
sounds. A “loud” sound has a higher volume than
the average sounds currently playing. A “soft”
sound has a lower volume than the average.
Psychoacoustic research suggests that the lower
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