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seems fairly evident that it is not a requisite. What
is more, paradoxically, approaching realism can be
troublesome in terms of perception and emotional
response, as is the case of the “uncanny valley”
phenomenon (Grimshaw, 2009; Tinwell, Grim-
shaw, & Williams, 2011) that comprises a feeling
of strong discomfort with greater humanlikeness.
That is, plausibility and precise realism become
issues, and failure to achieve them contributes
severely to the degradation of the experience.
Considering that we have been presenting
foundations to possible insights that might inform
game sound design, we feel the need to not let
pass unnoticed the importance of the designer
having a background in gaming and possess-
ing an extensive analysis of the widest possible
universe of computer games. Particularly, once
one is sensible to sound design, one develops
attentiveness to sound facets when playing com-
puter games, even unintentionally. Experimenting
with computer games in a genuine setting-that is,
playing games -and possibly becoming or taking
advantage of being a hardcore player, is also one
rich source of information and insights (Aarseth,
2003). Even gaming experiences that are perceived
as poor, become sometimes most valuable if one
can rationalize what seems wrong and what would
be an alternative.
A different reason why it is relevant to actually
play computer games, with a behavioral pattern
similar to that of the players who are the typical
consumers of the kind of games we are address-
ing, is that, as we argued, a player's perceptions
are strongly influenced by context. In turn, the
context of a certain player is also shaped by the
number and diversity of games played before,
amount of time usually dedicated to playing, the
number of playing hours in a given moment and
so forth. Adding this to the inherent difficulty in
grasping other people's contexts, it seems ap-
propriate to say that the more the researcher or
designer is able to feel like a player, the closer
the judgments reached will be to those of players
(even when considering that no two players are
equal, nor even that one player remains the same
through the passage of time).
Finally, and somehow in the same vein, it is
fundamental to recognize that we will never be
designing the players' behaviors or feelings. In-
stead, through sound design, we are working with
the conditions that will influence those players
into what is intended to be a desired emotional
experience. But, again, since those players will
always be subject not only to the designed condi-
tions but also to other conditions that constitute
their own current context-including manifesting
their own will and deciding, for example, not to
engage-it is not reasonable to be assertive and
didactic about effectiveness. In fact, because
games are mostly forms of participatory media,
the players also are, to some extent, designers of
their own experiences.
A DEsIGN EXErcIsE
We present an example of the application of the
guidelines by a group of developers with no prior
experience in game sound design. The exercise
involved a team of 5 Master's students on a
course in game design and development (Alves
& Roque, 2009b). The team was commissioned
with the design of a game specifically intended to
demonstrate the importance of sound in gameplay.
This prompted them to think about a game that
could not otherwise be played except with and
through sound.
Our argument for attaching this example to
this chapter is twofold. On the one hand, it serves
as an instantiation that may be useful to illustrate
a possible interpretation of some of the sugges-
tions this study provides. On the other hand, it
goes some way to verifying the plausibility of the
guidelines we have presented. Of course, at this
point, the simple observance of this experiment
does not provide the support for a generalization
of the results, but the results are an encouraging
indicator nonetheless.
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