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or less elaborate static samples with event based
triggers can result in interesting and even out-
standing gaming experiences, as we have seen in
the examples given in the first part of this article,
but this approach will never be able to exhaust
the potential of the interactive real time medium
that games are. Harvey and Samyn (2006) state in
the Realtime Art Manifesto : “The situation is the
story. Choose your characters and environment
carefully so that the situation immediately triggers
narrative associations in the mind of the user.”
This also means that sound should be designed
in a way that supports a situational emergence of
narrative, which of course requires us to rethink the
whole sound design process and the unorthodox
use of the procedural technology we have at our
disposal. An approach could be based on a script
language that allows us to denote conditions for
certain narrative and compositional reconfigura-
tions of a procedural audio engine. The sound
designer's job in this case would be to define
the changes in the parameters and the mappings.
The engine registers the patterns in the player's
actions: This acting could be framed by simple,
established psychological categories, for example
basic emotional states or levels of intentionality.
Does a player walk straight to a target or does
he explore the surrounding world? Is he low on
health, weak, hectic or calm? Where does he look
and for how long? Does he first aim, then shoot?
Does he collect health potions and use them only
when necessary? Is he hitting the target with a last,
desperate, blow? Does the player often look at the
map? Does he constantly rearrange the inventory?
Does he switch weapons aimlessly or in a very
targeted manner? Does he miss a lot of the hidden
pickup objects of secret doors? All this implies
certain experiential qualities that can be taken as
control elements of the interactive experience.
This way, the experiential quality, that in film is
narrated audio-visually, becomes the actual ex-
periential quality of the player in the gameworld.
In some ways, this strategy is comparable to
the approach that is used in adaptive music. The
essential difference is that it is basically a system
to allow for the creation of complex modification
patterns in all aspects of the sound design, from
the sonic object to its arrangement in an interactive
time-space, depending upon the player's behaviour
in the gameworld. This requires further research
into how people play games and the strategies
they develop (the field of affective computing
is one that researches these questions (see, for
example, Picard, 1997)).
Agency-Driven Sonic Montage
From the standpoint of aesthetical history of film,
montage is probably one of the most important
aspects of audio-visual design. As discussed
above, temporal concepts such as asynchronic-
ity or counterpoint cannot be transferred directly
into games, but an agency-driven understanding
could be followed. Like the active, script-driven
mixing proposed by Bridgett (2009a), and that I
mentioned earlier, one could envisage an “active
montage”: By motivating the player to do certain
things, for instance, to visit the inventory repeat-
edly or to switch perspective from close-up to
total, an agency-driven sonic montage may be
achieved. Game mechanics and level design are
the fundamental components of design here.
Let us also consider cinematic off-screen
sound for a moment, an important element in the
audio-visual montage. At first view it seems that,
in a three-dimensional game, which gives the user
a fair amount of control over the camera (both
independently or not from the point of view of
her avatar) an “off-screen” mode does not exist
as a possibility. But by examining this possibil-
ity more closely, you will notice that specifically
staged “off-screen” sound events actually do
exist in games. Common examples are invisible
doors, machinery and so on, that are activated
by switches and the like. Another example is the
spawning of players, NPCs, or objects. Spawning
and remote control switches (and their derivatives)
are constituent elements of many games. The
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