Guidelines for Sound Design in Computer Games - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 377

condition in the relationship with a parent depends,
firstly, on its receptivity to communicate-which, in
turn depends on the number of cubs with whom a
successful conversation has been carried out-and,
secondly, on the level of satisfaction to which the
castaway can lead the creature in a process where,
in response to each castaway's sound sequence,
the creature manifests the correspondent sympathy
reaction. The level of sympathy may drop during
the interaction with the parent. Every zone in the
island shares the same game mechanics: what
differs are the sound stimuli.
The relationship with the cubs can be under-
stood as a learning process of the sound stimuli
that will eventually allow a successful relationship
between the castaway and the cubs' parent. On
the other hand, the relationship with the parent is
an exploratory exercise of composition through
the combination of these stimuli with some room
for creativity.
Regarding similarity evaluation criteria of
the sound stimuli used in interactions, in a first
approach, the following acoustic variables were
considered: duration, loudness, and pitch. In prac-
tice this means sounds do not have to be strictly
identical: they only have to match according to
those variables.

designed from scratch), keeping a faithfulness to
the principle still demanded tenacity, despite the
passionate attentiveness to the guidelines.
Ironically, despite all that freedom, it was not
particularly easy to come up with a satisfying idea
that permitted one to experiment with the set of
guidelines. Actually, that was a time consuming
task and a valuable lesson that deserves some
commentary. It was evident, for those involved
in the exercise, that the team was particularly
unaccustomed to the opportunity of thinking in
auditory terms. For instance, the insights often
suffer from too much visual bias: In a moment
when auditory possibilities were being experi-
mented with, the team agreed it was desirable to
go beyond a simple mapping to visual elements
and worked instead to make the gameplay itself
as strongly influenced by the audio component
as it is by the visual modality.
In the early stages of this exercise the team
was uneasy about how long the observance of the
proposed guidelines would have to be explicitly
carried. Yet, and although the circumstances of the
research did not allow designers to forget about
them, once the design was defined, particularly
the game flow and interaction, their requirements
became embedded into the whole design and, as
intended, subsequent steps related to sound became
merely a matter of implementation.
One difficulty, more operational than conceptu-
al, had to do with which sound files to use. This was
not exactly a surprise since we knew beforehand
that “sound designers are often limited by having
poor, outdated equipment, not enough off-the-shelf
sound libraries, but most importantly, not enough
time to go out and get new, original sounds for
the game project” and that “sound is art [and] to
make a game sound artful […] sound designers
[must] have the time and money to practice their
art” (Peck, 2001, p. 1). There are several reasons
for us to mention our experiences regarding this
practical aspect. First, to note paucity of exist-
ing sounds and lack of time to record new ones
were critical factors in this particular exercise.

critical reflection on the Exercise

The observation of the design experience sur-
rounding this exercise provided a reinforcement
of the idea that the observance of this set of
guidelines implies that they must be considered
from the early stages of the overall game design
process. The guidelines involve fundamental
aspects of the interaction which could hardly be
tuned and achieved if too much design features
had already been decided. That is an important
consideration. We may have the need to put it as
a prerequisite or accept the limitation of this effort
if used upon an already well-developed design.
Although, in this exercise, there were the optimal
conditions to escape this struggle (the exercise was