Appendix - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 419

round the walls of my living room (and neither
does my missus!). Wavefield synthesis would be
great too but it's not practical for the average man
in the street. Do we need to go back to HRTF or
are thin, wireless speakers the way to go?

with new control devices surprisingly little has
been done on the side of audio technology sad
enough.

Cunningham: I guess to answer the question
directly, the player experience of computer game
sound in the future will be an one that is totally
transparent, pervasive, and natural.

Wilhelmsson: What would a future be like where,
instead of putting sound to image (to make it look
better), we put image to sound (to make it sound
better)? (I wish to ignore musical forms such as
ballet, musicals etc. here.) (Grimshaw) Alves: One way to obtain this state would be to

start the process of game design with the sound
or at the very least let the sound designer become
a part of the process from the very beginning.
(Wilhelmsson)

One way to obtain this state would be to start the
process of game design with the sound or at the
very least let the sound designer become a part of
the process from the very beginning. I would say
that some ideas from moviemaking could come
in handy. Pudovkin's ideas on asynchronsim for
instance. Use the sound to communicate with
the player what the images do not and stress that
invisible part as game play foundation. Maybe
abandon the image as progenitor of the sound
more or less totally. However, that is not likely to
happen. A more likely development for the player
experience of computer game sound would be less
compressed audio files which in turn might lead
to a sound environment that has a more “natural”
dynamic range. If processing power of the sound
would keep up with or overshadow the processing
power of graphics cards we might have less a need
for high compression on the audio files. Would it
not be nice to have multiple processors and 128
GB to just handle all the audio files in a game?
What more? The player will probably benefit from
more refined audio technology with directional
sound. Why not continue the reconfiguration of
our daily living environments yet another step and
make full use of directed sound technology? Let
the player experience the sound without disturbing
others and not force her to use headphones. This
sound strategy could very well have the positive
side effect that the player might be forced to move
around to hear all that there is to hear. In a world

Yes, I do believe that's the way to go. Though
there will always be the need for people with the
technical ability to deal with sound, the real deal
is to ensure that sound is explored in its depth. Not
only as sonorization but also as part of meaningful
components of the game where sound is relevant
for the course of action and for the inhabitants of
the gameworld.

To accomplish that, a sound designer (meaning
a designer who is aware and attentive to sound
potential) ought to be involved right from the start
of the design process.

Yet, I do not believe that we should be looking
for ways to ensure that a game will have sound.
My understanding is that sound as any other
modality should be subservient to the global
communicative purposes of the game, let's say
to the accomplishment of an emotional script. In
that sense, ultimately, if the best use of sound in
a particular game is to keep silence, so be it - that
will be good sound design too.

Anyway, my point is that for the designer to be
able to use sound whenever and however it should
be more appropriate, it is fundamental to be able