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on their actions, very much like in real life. This
in turn adds in a natural way to the sought-after
effortless immersion.
us, but we are also forced to process most of what
we hear subconsciously.
Often, we do not know exactly what the source
of a sound is or from what direction and distance
it comes. We can hear a vehicle approaching from
behind but have to guess what type of vehicle it is
and how fast it is approaching. We can roughly tell
if it is a truck or a car and make educated guesses
about when it will pass us, but usually not more
than that. Sound leaves a relatively large space
within which we can (or are forced to) fill out
the details ourselves and make assumptions and
interpretations based on our individual memories,
experiences and associations.
When telling stories, making films or design-
ing computer games, this ambiguity can be of
great value. By planting a well-designed sound
at the right moment, you can trigger a person's
imaginative and emotive mechanisms by forcing
her to consciously or subconsciously interpret and
disambiguate the sound. Leaving the user space
open to her own interpretation, inviting her and
giving her the freedom to use her own imagination
can potentially help the user to be emotionally and
viscerally involved in the game.
sound connects to the
Physical World
Sound connects you to the physical world by tell-
ing about physical objects and events that involve
physical objects. We can be described as hardwired
to perceive and automatically interpret sounds as
results of events occurring in the physical world.
This is true even if the sound is mediated through
a loudspeaker: our internal interpreter does not
make much difference between sounds from a
physical coffee cup being placed on a table and
the recorded sound of the same event played back
through a pair of headphones as long as the tech-
nical quality is sufficient. It is still a coffee cup
being placed on a table. As with the real-world
example you were asked to listen to above, try
listening to a film with your eyes shut. It is vir-
tually impossible to turn off the flow of images,
feelings and associations flowing through you as
you listen. You have to concentrate very hard on
something else not to be affected by the sounds
that reach your ears. The sound of a dentist's drill
gives a direct bodily sensation and you can almost
feel the drill in your own mouth. The picture of
the drill alone, without the sound, does not have
the same power over our imagination, emotions,
and physiology.
Again, sound can be used to immerse the user
in the gameworld in a way that strongly resembles
the way we handle and work in everyday life.
sound reaches us on
subconscious channels
Our ears are constantly capturing the soundscape
around us. If all that data were to be processed by
the cognitive and conscious layers in our brains,
we would either suffer from mental overload
or have another brain constitution. But thanks
to the limited bandwidth of our consciousness,
our subconscious, emotional and intuitive layers
process most of the sounds we hear.
This does not mean that we are not affected
by what our ears pick up and what our brains are
processing. What it does mean is that the effect
is not totally controllable by us and that we are,
to a large degree, victims of the sonic world.
Often this is useful, sometimes it is stressful and
sometimes it is fun. We are more or less forced
sound can be Ambiguous
We constantly hear sounds from all directions and,
to some degree, we can decide the direction and
the distance to the sound source. At will, we can
consciously filter out discrete sounds of special
interest to us from the whole soundscape around
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