Causing Fear, Suspense, and Anxiety Using Sound Design in Computer Games - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 182

in volume a sound effect is, the more likely that
players will miss the sound (Healy, Proctor, &
Weiner, 2003). For game designers, this means
they should create important sound effects that
are at least the same volume, if not louder, than
the ambient soundscape in order to be perceived.
Loud sound effects are more likely to be effective
at evoking sudden and shocking emotions in the
player than soft sounds. Softer sounds, however,
may serve as a good atmospheric tool that can
enhance immersion and set a mood. Computer
games typically play ambient sound effects at
low to medium volume, while emotion-evoking
sound effects play at medium to high volumes to
maximize the likelihood that the player perceives
them.
For instance, in Alone in the Dark , the ambient
sound effects such as electrical sparks and rag-
ing fires are typically abrupt and louder than the
background music but soft enough that they do not
drown out other important sounds like dialogue and
combat sound effects. The ambient sound effects
of Dead Space consist of steam vents leaking,
garbage rustling, and lights sparking, and are all
low to medium volume. In these cases, it is not
clear whether the ambient sounds solely promote
greater immersion and/or promote anxiety.
In Dead Space , the player's interaction with
the monsters is the most important part of the
game, and thus, the sound effects related to these
interactions are the loudest. For instance, any
time the player engages in combat, the monsters
screech loudly and very discernibly until they die.
The scream instantly tells the player that his or
her avatar is in danger and, because the monsters
can kill the player's avatar, these sound effects
can cause fear in the player.
All of the ambient sounds and music in Doom
3 are loud: they mask out almost all other game
sound. The enemy sounds are quieter than the
ambient noise, which causes the enemies to
seem less menacing. The only thing consistently
louder than the music and the ambient noise is the
player's gun and avatar's pain screams. Doom 3

seems to focus more on visual quality than sound
quality. Yet, one section in Doom 3 that stands out
among the rest occurs when a screaming, flying
skull circles around the player's avatar, and its
volume rises and falls based on its distance from
that avatar. This part of the game causes fear due
to the perceived danger from the sudden and loud
sounds accompanied by the mysterious nature of
the flying skulls, though over time the fear sub-
sides as the player becomes more habituated to
the situation. Furthermore, Doom 3 has an enemy
ambush almost every time the player's avatar picks
up an item. The game has the same sound and the
same enemy for many of these ambushes. This
eventually becomes repetitive and boring, and
players begin to anticipate the ambushes.
Eternal Darkness and Silent Hill 2 use the
technique of “less is more,” where a few high
volume sound effects scattered throughout evoke
more fear and anxiety than many high volume
recurring sound effects that may eventually cause
habituation, as in Doom 3 .
The use of volume with sound effects varies
depending on whether the game designer is at-
tempting to evoke fear or anxiety. Based on the
above review of games, high volume, abrupt sound
effects seem to be more effective at causing fear,
while low to medium volume ambient sound ef-
fects may be more effective at creating suspense
and anxiety by convincing the player that they
are in a dangerous circumstance.

timing of sound Effects

Game designers decide for each sound effect one
of three alternatives for timing: (1) the sound effect
is timed to coincide with a corresponding, often
visible event or object, (2) the sound effect and
the corresponding event or object lag each other,
or (3) the sound effect is played without regard to
corresponding specific event(s), that is, untimed.
Thus, timing can be conceptualized as the degree
of synchronization between the sound effect and
visible object(s) (see Roux-Girard, 2011). For