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as well as virtual representations of artefacts, or
even the avatar's limbs, is dissolved. This has in-
teresting implications for how sound is associated
with player agency as it can relate to the physical
interaction as well as the action in the gameworld
or even to actions of the game system, as will be
elaborated below.
Thus, the essential quality of a computer game
is constituted by the action afforded by the game
apparatus and performed by the player, where
the interactive system facilitates the emergence
of certain experiences that may have a narrative
quality, at least in retrospect. I will follow this
understanding of games exclusively here, which
also means that I will not discuss aspects related
to narrative such as diegesis, unless they offer a
possibility for aesthetic experimentation.
In the following section, I will demonstrate how
the inspiration taken from film sound aesthetics
and the qualities of computer games described
here can be turned into directions for innovative
sound design motivated by the inherent qualities
of computer games as defined above.
of a process occurring with an object (Chion,
1998, p. 102).
The concept of realism is particularly question-
able in the entirely constructed virtual worlds of
computer games, where any relation to a “given”
reality (as in film) is entirely voluntary. Films
already require constant leaps of faith in terms
of identifying a sound's source. It is through
psychoacoustics and our imagination and willing-
ness to accept and normalize inconsistencies that
the sound from a speaker somewhere behind a
screen can become the sound of a thing on screen
(see Chion's description of “magnetization” and
“synchresis”, Chion, 1994). But, while a film will
always produce a rupture between the world it
has recorded and its representation, 3D computer
games do not produce this rupture, as the mere
possibility of spatial sound and physical modelling
naturalizes and justifies every sound produced.
Computer games constitute an apparatus where
the process that generates its entities and the
manifestations of these processes form a closed
system, where sounds are calculated according
to an ideal physical model and are “naturally”
emitted from objects in three-dimensional space.
Of course, such a simulative system of recreating
reality has its appeal but, if this approach domi-
nates creation processes, the fundamental quality
of the technology is missed, its potential to create
new, surprising aesthetics is overlooked. It is not
a natural fact that any generative system relying
on physical modelling is predestined for recreat-
ing reality. Let us recall some of the discussions
about Virtual Reality when it still was a relatively
young medium:
Field of Action 1: Media
Aesthetics and semantics
Sound beyond Simulation
and Naturalism
Considering the prominence of the discourse about
simulation and realism identified in the review of
the state of the art in computer games, this issue
shall be addressed first.
I have previously criticized a general sonic
naturalism and reductionism (Hug, 2008b), mainly
by building upon Chion's observation that there is
no sound of a thing as a one-to-one-relationship
and, if an unambiguous indexicality is needed,
we usually rely on idealized instances of sonic
occurrences. Additionally, Chion points out that
many sounds suggest abstract qualities of mate-
rial and process, which he labels “indices sonores
materialisants”, rather than being specific indexes
Whereas hyperreality still implies some con-
nection, regardless of how faint, to the ethos of
verisimilitude, sound has no such loyalty; after
all, where there is no 'thing' to represent, there
can be no 'misrepresentation.' Similarly, VR, as a
space of computer-generated simulation, renders
irrelevant questions of verisimilitude, realism,
and authenticity. Unlike the camera, the simula-
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