New Wine in New Skins - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 401

sonic design of these off-screen events is usually
very stereotypical, for example through some
kind of synthesized energy sound or the sound
of a mechanism being activated. From the study
of film sound, we quickly realize that this is not
necessary the end of it. To begin with, the engine
could be aware of the direction an avatar looks at,
and control “off-screen” sounds depending upon
this direction. From there, a myriad of design
possibilities open up that wait to be explored.

unique element of the realtime medium and it wants
to be free”. Thus, it is not possible to attempt to
control all aspects of gameplay!
Multisensory congruency, consistency, obvi-
ousness: they are all useful and often necessary.
However, there is no absolute rule stating that
artificially created virtual experiences have to
follow these ideals. As for sound, already trivial
everyday observations show that the multitude of
sensory phenomena occurring at any moment does
not have to overlap necessarily: I can be looking at
a picture of my last holiday while I hear the cars on
the street (Ihde, 1976). These components are not
semantically related by some kind of embracing
narrative, but they can potentially emerge into a
“narrative” in my memory which always will be
unified into a coherent whole: The same is true
for computer games if they are understood and
designed as autopoietic systems that have very
little or no predetermining story line. Soundscape
studies have revealed how soundscapes mediate
relationships between listener and environments
(Truax, 2001) and these soundscapes are not
simply “atmos” or “backgrounds”: They are
constituted by sonic manifestations of individual
agency, human or animal, culture and nature. By
situating games as acoustic ecologies, Grimshaw
(2007) developed such an understanding of games
and it seems worthwhile to elaborate on it, both
theoretically and in experimental practice. It is the
fundamental listening experience of the acoustic
ecology as emergent, non-conventional and poten-
tially surprising that may encourage us to follow
the tracks of Eisenstein, Clair, Tarkovsky, Lynch,
and so many others who introduced the poetic,
unforeseeable and even indescribable into their
works. The game The Path , which was mentioned
earlier, is an example of an almost Tarkovskyan
audio-visual aesthetic. And the spatially extended,
delocalized sounds of Thief: The Dark Project are
akin to the changing room tones we can hear in
Eraserhead in the role they play in our experience
of the gameworld.

Sonic Effects: A Helpful Paradigm

A useful paradigm that can support the design of
dynamic interactive sonic environments are “sonic
effects”, proposed by Jean-Francois Augoyard and
Henry Torgue (2005). “Sonic effects” emerge from
the interaction of sonic events with their spatial
and social environment and they always also have
perceptual and psychological dimension. This
approach, originating in urban studies, provides
a useful link between Pierre Schaeffer's “objet so-
nore” and Murray Schafer's “soundscape”. Sonic
effects relate to sounds as an instrumentarium to
give shape to human relations and the everyday
management of urban space, thus stressing the
performative aspect of sound. At the same time,
the approach roots sounds in specific situations
and places. In addition to the acoustic analysis of
a sound, or its relation to other sounds and space,
it also considers its psychological dimensions
and the socio-cultural discourse surrounding it. It
seems to me that understanding how sound can be
a constituent of experience should be fundamental
in thinking about procedural semantics. In their
topic, Augoyard and Torgue (2005) describe a
range of sonic effects and this knowledge could
be implemented in game engines as well.

Predictability Killed the Game Star

Sound design for games must also embrace limits
of control and pre-determination. Harvey and
Samyn (2006) state that: “Interactivity is the one