Listening to Fear - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 198

sound Generators system. Accordingly, I will briefly describe these

generators following Jørgensen's definition and
adapt them to my own corpus of study. General
informative functions of each type of generator will
also be mentioned as they will provide a tighter
relationship with the next section of this chapter
on the functions of horror computer game sounds.
A sound generated by the gamer is “caused
by [gamer] action” (Jørgensen, 2008, Player
Generated Sound section, para. 1). As Jørgensen
explained:

In computer games, much attention must be paid to
sound sources as they contribute to the construction
of the diegetic space. However, more important
than what instance or event emits the sound is what
generates the sound. Not only does the notion of
generator furnish knowledge on what caused a
specific cue, but it also provides information on
its relationship to other sounds, its relationship to
the game state, as well as the situation in which
they are heard. These sound generators, as Kristine
Jørgensen (2008) explained are “not the same
as the source of the sounds. While the source is
the object that physically (or virtually) produces
the sound: the generator is what causes the event
that produces the sound” ( Player Interpretation
of Audio in Context section, para. 2). If we adapt
Jørgensen's example to a horror computer game
context, this basically means that the shrieking
sound emitted by one of Dead Space 's necromorph
(its source) while being dismembered by the
player character's plasma cutter is in fact gener-
ated by the gamer. Therefore, this concept (in its
definition) also reflects the interactive nature of
computer games by putting forward the agency 9
of the gamer within the simulated world, as well
as the response of the game to the gamer's actions.
While studying World of Warcraft , Jørgensen
(2008) identified 5 categories of sound genera-
tors: the gamer, allies, enemies, the gameworld,
and the game system each of which is organized
according to the perspective of the gamer.
Even though, some horror games propose an
interaction with friendly non-player characters
such as Luis in Resident Evil 4 (Capcom, 2004)
or, as in Resident Evil 5 (Capcom, 2009) and Left
4 Dead (Valve Software, 2008), offer a multi-
player co-operative mode, most games of the
genre privilege the solitude of the player character
and allies are normally quite scarce. Therefore,
this chapter will focus on the dynamic and non-
dynamic sounds (Collins, 2008) produced by the
gamer, the enemies, the gameworld, and the game

The most important informative role of [gamer]
generated sounds is to provide usability informa-
tion, or more specifically to provide response since
they always seem to appear immediately after
a player action. Player generated sounds also
provide spatial information, and sometimes also
temporal and [player character] state informa-
tion. (Player Generated Sound section, para. 1)

In Resident Evil ( Capcom , 1996), for instance,
these sounds may include footsteps, gunshots,
the opening of doors, angry monster growls after
they are shot by the gamer, the opening of Chris
Redfield's or Jill Valentine's inventory menus
and so on.
For their part, enemy generated cues “are pro-
duced externally from the [gamer's] perspective,
by being detached from the [gamer's] own actions
and emerging from the gameworld” (Jørgensen,
2008, Sound Generated By Enemies and Allies
section, para. 1). Such sounds will furnish spatio-
temporal information and will also serve “pres-
ence” purposes as they engage with the existence
of enemies in the vicinity. Of course, these sounds
also give information about modification in the
game state and supply progression functions of
the game: these might include the sounds of off-
screen or on-screen monsters, or may indicate
that the player character has been wounded after
being hit by a zombie.
Gameworld generated sounds are similar to
what Huiberts and van Tol (2008) described as