Listening to Fear - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 192

Chapter 10
Listening to Fear:
A Study of Sound in Horror
Computer Games

Guillaume Roux-Girard
University of Montréal, Canada

AbstrAct

This chapter aims to explain how sound in horror computer games works towards eliciting emotions
in the gamer: namely fear and dread. More than just analyzing how the gamer produces meaning with
horror game sound in relation to its overarching generic context, it will look at how the inner relations
of the sonic structure of the game and the different functions of computer game sound are manipulated
to create the horrific strategies of the games. This chapter will also provide theoretical background on
sound, gameplay, and the reception of computer games to support my argument.

INtrODUctION

most intense terror. In horror computer games,
it is not recommended that the gamer divert
their attention from the various sound events,
as a careful listening will allow for—or at least
favour—the survival of their player character. In
his thesis on the sound ecology of the first-person
shooter, Mark Grimshaw (2008) underlined that in
common day life, where dangers are limited, the
auditory system “can operate in standby mode (or,
in cognitive terminology, [the] auditory system is
operating at a low level of perceptual readiness)
awaiting more urgent signals as categorized by
experience” (p. 10). Just as Grimshaw did about
the genre at the heart of his study, I suggest that
“the hostile world of the [horror computer] game

Computer game sound is as crucial to the cre-
ation of the depicted gameworld's mood as it is
in its undeniable support to gameplay. In horror
computer games, this role is increased tenfold
as sound becomes the engine of the gamer's im-
mersion within the horrific universe. From the
morphology of the sound event to its audio-visual
and videoludic staging, sound cues provide most
of the information necessary for the gamer's pro-
gression in the game and, simultaneously, supply
a range of emotions from simple surprise to the