Guidelines for Sound Design in Computer Games - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 362

Chapter 17
Guidelines for Sound Design
in Computer Games

Valter Alves
University of Coimbra, Portugal & Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Portugal

Licínio Roque
University of Coimbra, Portugal

AbstrAct

The inconsequential exploitation of sound in most computer games, both in extent and nature, con-
trasts with its prominence in our daily lives and with the kind of associations that have been explored
in domains such as music and cinema. Sound design remains the craft of a talented minority and the
unavailability of a public body of knowledge on the subject has greatly contributed to this state of af-
fairs. This leads to a mix of alienation and best-judgment improvisation in the broader development
community. A sensitivity to the potential of sound for the enrichment of the experience—with emphasis
on game specifics—is, therefore, necessary. This study presents a contribution to the practice of sound
design for computer games. An approach to intentional sound design, informed by multi-disciplinary
interpretations of concepts including emotion, context, acoustic ecology, soundscape, resonance, and
entrainment, is distilled into a set of design guidelines that holistically address the different sound layers.

INtrODUctION

in computer games. More relevant to the study
presented here, there is little theoretical support
for someone, who is not one of those experts, to
perform intentional sound design.
This situation is not an exception in the broader
context of human-machine interfaces and interac-
tion systems. Game development, though, is one
of the fields where sound is deserving of greater
attention as noted by a number of recent authors
(Collins, 2008a; Ekman, 2005, 2008; Grimshaw,
2007; Peck, 2001, 2007). Additionally, in the

Computer game sound design is in its infancy.
It is still a practice almost reserved to a limited
number of experts in the game industry who have
typically made their own way through the field in
the absence of a structured body of knowledge.
The consequences are self-evident. To start with,
there is no abundance of purposeful sound usage