New Wine in New Skins - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 403

done in real time, depending upon the player's
performance and the dramaturgy unfolding in the
gameplay, by adding or subtracting elements of
complex sound constructions or by just modifying
volume, envelope, and/or frequency spectrum of
the interaction sound.

in classical Western movies. And what about a
tool allowing players to select from a wide range
of sounds, or even import their own sounds, to
teach the game how they want it to sound like?
Something like a sonic pipette, following the
pipettes of photo-editing software? In particular,
using procedural sound design for autonomous,
procedural avatars, like the “Drama Princess”, 21
is an interesting prospect.

Sound Mediating the
Relationship to the Avatar

Sound Mediating the Relationship
to the Virtual World

Another important point related to ergo-audition
is the relationship to the player's avatar, which
includes a transformed projection of self, even if
no visual representation of an avatar exists in the
game. In this sense, games incorporate aspects
of theatrical performance and role-playing. For
instance, in online role-playing games such as
World of Warcraft (Blizzard, released in Europe
in 2005), players are explicitly required to cre-
ate an alter ego which also includes the selection
of a virtual race, body, clothes, profession, and
skills. Upon entering the gameworld, users act
out their role using all elements available. Creat-
ing and maintaining virtual identities is thus an
important part of many games. So far, however,
there are very few titles that allow the player to
customize sonic identities without having to ac-
cess low level functionality of the software. It is
somewhat implicit in Spore , as the creation of a
life-form also influences how it sounds. This is an
area where a fictional physical modelling system
would produce exciting new design possibilities.
Each piece of clothing or artefact an avatar could
put on or use would have a dynamically generated
sound which could be modified additionally by
attributive settings to achieve a rich sound palette.
A team of players in World of Warcraft would
also follow sonic criteria when choosing their
equipment and clothing and they could further
customize their sonic appearance to their liking.
The sounds of their approaching avatar could
become a signal of peril for their foes or a signal
of hope for their friends, just like the sounds of
the cavalry and fanfare to the Indians or settlers

While film sound often connects elements of
visual montage and provides continuity, game
sound can link the player action on the interface
with the action of her/his virtual presence in the
gameworld. A simple click is transformed into
a complex dynamic movement or process like
opening boxes, operating artefacts and so on. On
the one hand, missing visual information can be
replaced by sound, on the other hand, through its
“immaterial corporeality” (Connor, 2004), sound
contributes to a virtual embodiment of a user's
agency. Sound-image synchresis is thus extended
to action: What I do (or what I suppose another
agent did) has caused that sound.
Also the physicalization effect of sound is
relevant for action and proprioception as it gives
us hints about the meaning and properties of a
virtual object and provides a kind of sonic affor-
dance, giving the player hints about what to do
next, thus stimulating action. Sound here supplies
a form of virtual embodiment, often compensat-
ing for the lack of haptic feedback, for example
when picking locks in Thief 3: Deadly Shadows
(Eidos, 2004): Here, the two dimensional move-
ment of the mouse is transformed audio-visually
into a physical, three-dimensional interaction
with the lock. Another interesting example is
represented by the sounds emanating from the
Wii Remote when pulling the virtual string of
the bow or using the virtual fishing rod in The
Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess (Nintendo,