Appendix - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 422

equally important are (physical) game controllers.
And I mean not just Wii Motes, but the idea is
that everything can become a game controller in a
“mixed reality”. The interesting differential then
(and it's this differential that is the most exciting
to design) is between the player's actions and
the sounds as manifestations of this action in the
game world. So biophysical monitoring would not
mainly be used to adjust the sensory output of the
medium to alter the player's emotional state, but
it would be used to give the player an additional
channel of expression.

of the aesthetics of the medium. Game sound thus
should explore new directions and for that we need
people (artists?) that abolish preconceptions and
just try out crazy stuff.

I think no one can exactly say how a game sound
aesthetics will or should be like, but we can say
that we have to explore unorthodox paths and
eventually, a new “language” will emerge. I also
think, that the directions towards which such
an exploration could go can be derived of some
genuine qualities of the medium. Think about the
idea of “montage” in film which was one of the
strongest catalysts for audiovisual innovation. In
games, it is maybe not so much about audio-visual
montage, but about action-feedback montage.
De-constructing familiar action-feedback loops
and creating new ones.

Imagine a game where players learn about the
sonic behavior of virtual artifacts (and the way
they have to handle them using their physical
placeholders or project natal - body movements),
where totally new and surprising action-sound re-
lationships could be designed. And the mentioned
input channel for speech & nonverbal expressions
could play an important part in it. Remember the
audio-gun from Dune ?

Another field which is prone to artistic exploration
is “diegesis” of game sound, as it seems very un-
clear where diegesis starts and ends in a medium
where a narrative is not passively consumed but
actively co-created as player experience. Film
sound has developed a great variety of ways to
establish or support diegesis, as well as how to
integrate non-diegetic sound to serve a narrative.
In game sound this is still terra incognita to a
large extent, in particular if we look at genres
with “low narrativity”.

Hug: Addressing Droumeva's point. There is
always a fascination in the simulation of “real-
ity”, and actually I think part of the fascination
comes from the knowledge that you are not “out
there” but sitting at home in your full immersion
suit listening to binaural soundscapes. I think
this will always have its place and justification.

But on the other hand, I think Grimshaw is right.
It's the “otherworld” that we seek to flee into.
This otherworld certainly is composed of familiar
elements but deconstructs them and surprises us
with the unexpected.

Grimshaw: Certainly the player may subvert the
system I propose and that might be part of the fun
(and would all players be aware of the possibil-
ity and, even if they were, would the apparatus
recede into the background with familiarity and
the needs to play the game in order to reach the
desired outcome?). However, why not have the
game subvert the player? The sound engine need
not slavishly mimic the fear of the player, for
example, it could do the reverse and stubbornly
refuse to help that emotion along until the player
is lulled into a false sense of security and then....!

In general I think that creative and more sustain-
able potential lies in the definition of new aesthetics
rather than simulation of the familiar and “real”. I
think game sound could take an example in how
film sound was pushed into a media language of
its own, establishing design strategies that have
become kind of “naturalized”, are inherently part