Guidelines for Sound Design in Computer Games - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 372

tive sound, allowed by the consideration of the
player's context.
Actually, all guidelines here presented have
been strongly influenced by a constant attention
to context. In all aspects-interaction protagonists,
emotional support, consequent sound, action
through sound-there is always an emphasis on
the need to consider a global perspective, both
concerning the integration of the different mo-
dalities and regarding the different combining
approaches in the particular case of sound. The
bottom line is that no approach is good unless it
fits in the whole. If it does not, either the approach
or the whole needs to be adjusted.
This guideline goes a little further in terms of
the consideration for context. The argument is
that the context is not limited to the game itself.
A game is played by someone who actually has-
and is -context too. So there is no point in trying
to figure out how to turn a game into a perfectly
designed context piece if we leave out the only
element of the context who would possibly ap-
preciate it: the player.
Some concepts that have recently became
well-known in game design, such as immersion
(Grimshaw, 2008) and flow (Csíkszentmihályi,
2008), emphasize, in different ways, the pertinence
of getting the player and the game into the same
plane of existence. These approaches focus mostly
on the migration of the player into the game. We
suggest tackling the same issue in a complementary
way, which is somehow the reverse method: To
extend the game in order to embrace the player,
that is, to build the game around the player.
Dealing with context poses complex chal-
lenges. Conceptually, all aspects of the player's
context matter to whatever is done in the scope
of that context. In practice, this has two related
implications. One is that, since it is not technically
viable to seize all context parameters, it becomes
necessary to identify and capture the most mean-
ingful parameters of that context, considering
the process we are designing. The other is that
we cannot afford to neglect some aspect of the

context that turns out to be indeed influential to
that process, bearing in mind the problem that
contextual aspects are inherently non-evident.
Another class of challenges is the actual read-
ing of the contextual parameters which, in many
cases, demands the usage of probes or sensors.
In turn, this is potentially problematic not only
in terms of the availability of those devices but
because some of them can be considered intrusive
or uncomfortable to use.
An example of contextual parameters, which
we suggest for the sound designer to consider,
is the player's ambient sound (as in Cunning-
ham, Caulder, & Grout, 2008 and Cunningham,
Grout, & Picking, 2011). This might be useful
to dynamically equalize each of the categories
of game sounds according to the expected abil-
ity of the player to perceive them. Or, in a more
complex endeavor, it might become interesting
to integrate the players' ambient sound, or some
of its acoustic parameters, into the game's sound.
Still, we should not restrict ourselves to sound-
to-sound explorations: all possible combinations
are relevant to game design, at the very least
those that have sound in either of the extremes
fit the present guideline. For instance, we are
particularly sensible to acoustic explorations that
can be develop from the readings of the players'
physiological indicators, namely heartbeat, breath,
and brainwaves. In truth, there are some classical
examples of similar exploration in other domains,
as evidenced by the relationship between music
rhythm and the heartbeat. We believe that, since
these indicators provide hints on the player's
emotional state, it will be interesting to consider
their potential to dynamically set compositional
aspects of sound in game scenarios thus aiming
at a better resonance and possibly as the basis
for entrainment. This is suggested in Guideline
7 below (see also, Nacke & Grimshaw (2011) on
the monitoring of psychophysiological states of
players and implications for game sound design).
An aspect that also deserves some commen-
tary is the possible contradiction between leading