Uncanny Speech - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 221

it just can't work in a real-time gaming environ-
ment” (as quoted in Ashcraft, 2008).
Accordingly, for virtual characters used within
computer games that are approaching levels of
realism as achieved for the film industry, it may
be advisable to reduce the level of human-likeness
for a character's voice to a level that is in keeping
with that character's appearance. Actors' voices
are typically used for realistic, human-like char-
acters' speech in computer games. Yet, if the level
of fidelity for achieving human-like realism for
computer games is less than that achieved for film,
a less than human-like voice should be used to
avoid the character being perceived as unnatural.
Hug (2011) makes a similar point when discussing
the similarities between indie game and animation
film aesthetics. Hug describes an affinity between
sound used in animation film or cartoons matches
and the aesthetic style for the animation: “[S]ounds
that are more or less de-naturalized in a comical,
playful, or surreal way, which is characterized
by a subservsive interpretation of sound-source
associations”. He further uses the example of an
explosion that occurs within the arcade game
Grey Matter (McMillen, Refenes, & Baranowsky,
2008) as an intriguing case of “cartoonish” sound
design “when an abstract dot hits a flying cartoon
brain, the latter 'explodes' with sounds of broken
glass”. Although a more cartoonish style of sound
is used for the explosion, the sound seems more
in keeping with the stylized appearance of the
object to which the sound belongs. The visceral
sounds of the impact are still evident despite the
more simplistic nature of the sound. The acoustics
appear more natural as the level of detail appears
to match the stylized aestheticism of the film's
environment.
Of course we do not suggest that cartoon-like
voices be used with characters that are approaching
believable realism in computer games, however
the level of human-likeness may be subtly modi-
fied so that the perceived style of the voice sound
matches the aesthetic appearance of the character.
This absurd juxtaposition may be necessary to

reduce the uncanny for computer game characters
due to the fact that they will always be playing
catch up to the level of realism achieved for film.
Refinements made to character's voices over a
spectrum of human-likeness ranging from human-
like to mechanical, may perhaps help to remove
the uncanny where it was previously evident.
Reiter notes that recently, more attention has
been given to the quality of sound in computer
games to keep up with the quality of realism
achieved visually for in-game play and to provide
a more cinematic experience. As a method of
communication both diegetic and non-diegetic
game sound enhances a game's plausibility in
that sound can “trigger emotions and provide
additional information otherwise hard to convey”
(Reiter, 2011). Distinctions made as to the quality
of game sound are not simply due to the level of
clarity, resolution, or digital output achievable
for sound: “Perceived quality in game audio is
not a question of audio quality alone” (Reiter,
2011). For speech, textures, emotive qualities and
delivery style are attributes that contribute to the
perceived quality and overall believability for a
character. (Qualities of speech and the uncanny
are discussed further in the following section.)
Quality of speech is critical in portraying the
emotive context of a character convincingly.
However with regards to the uncanny, if the per-
ceived realism and quality for a voice goes beyond
that of the quality and realism for a character's
appearance, such a cross-modal mismatch could
exaggerate the uncanny. Further experiments are
required to test this theory. Building on the premise
of Hanson's (2006) experiment where the uncanny
was removed from a morphed sequence of images
from robot to human by making a robot's features
more “cartoonish” and friendly, similar changes
could be made to the acoustics of speech for
videos of realistic, human-like characters. Whilst
the videos of characters would remain constant,
the speech sound would be changed across a
spectrum of human-likeness from mechanical to
human-like. If our predictions are correct, char-