Appendix - Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and Developments - page 423

If anyone would like to help develop this, let me
know! I like the idea of having to use emotion to navi-

gate the game (and this feeds into more than just
sound). You're right Daniel [Hug], such a game
would probably require a new genre (can I bag
the name first as 'emotive gaming'!) where the
game itself emotionally engages with the player,
becomes a character itself.

This actually also points to a question related to
the future of game audio in general, if procedural
methods really are the future: at which point does
the actual sound design take place? Will we be
merely adjusting parameters of simulated physi-
cal entities? How do we achieve the magic and
the “bigger than life” effect and surprising, new
sounds, if everything is controlled by a “realistic”
simulation engine? Is there a way to combine the
strengths of procedural audio with old-fashioned
compositional sound design? Well, my idea of a
hybrid foley box would maybe be a way to join
these worlds...

Hug: 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....! (Grimshaw)

Well I doubt this degree of control over the player's
emotions can ever be achieved, simply because of
the ambiguity of interpretation. It's maybe a bit
like with psychoactive drugs: for some a dream
for others a horror trip (or even for the same per-
son under different circumstances). This is why I
think the power of biofeedback should maybe be
seen as another channel of agency for the player
rather than hiding it.

Grimshaw: Well I doubt this degree of control
over the player's emotions can ever be achieved,
simply because of the ambiguity of interpretation.
It's maybe a bit like with psychoactive drugs: for
some a dream for others a horror trip (or even for
the same person under different circumstances).
This is why I think the power of biofeedback should
maybe be seen as another channel of agency for
the player rather than hiding it. (Hug)

Hug: My vision of a tool for game sound design:
A hybrid foley box which seamlessly integrates
physical modeling and all kinds of synthesis
methods as well as real-world recordings and re-
synthesis. The most important feature will be a
sonic pipette: just grab a sonic residue somewhere,
drop it into a placeholder object, combine with
“sonic drops” from other sources, including vir-
tual ones drawn from physical models, create an
envelope in real time by singing into it and then
define a set of mapping criteria to attach it to an
entity of your game world (objects, npcs, avatars)
and play around with the object and its sounds in
realtime in the game world.

I can dream.... Certainly a lot of work needs to
be done: fundamental research into mapping
emotion/affect to sound parameters not to men-
tion precise and accurate measurement of such
emotion/affect. It may well be that it's a long time
before we move beyond the blunt tool of mere
positive/negative valence and are able to precisely
identify fear as opposed to anxiety for example.

However, (once that research is well under way)
personal emotion profiles for individuals could be
stored taken from 'set-up' measurements and this
would allow more precise targeting of individuals.