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to interpret and react to what we hear. A sound
heard spawns meaning and interpretations based
on our previous experiences. In games this can
be extremely useful as a way to invite the players
to invest and get deeply involved in the game.
This relates strongly to the GameFlow criterion
“immersion” described above.
and musicals, music and ambience, and music
and sound effects in games and films.
speech and Dialog
When you want to convey a clear and unambiguous
message, the human voice is a natural choice. The
same is true if you want to tell a riddle or recite
a poem or just want to be vague and ambiguous.
Human language is so rich and there are a myriad
of ways to use this in computer game contexts.
Speech and dialog can be used to address several
of the criteria for player enjoyment included in the
GameFlow concept. They can be used to promote
concentration on the game by providing a comple-
mentary source of stimuli, getting the player's
attention without disrupting the player's visual
focus, or spreading the total game workload on
complementary channels, for instance. Sometimes
it is necessary to give instructions to the player
on what to do next, or what is expected from the
game. If you do not want to exclude the player
from an ongoing game sequence or if you have
problems with limited screen size, using speech
as a complement to text is one solution. Today,
more and more computing and gaming platforms
have built-in support for voice recognition, which
means that the player can control the game by
issuing voice commands. Since this is totally in
line with what we do in our everyday lives, it
also supports a very natural way to co-create the
game world and to get a desired sense of impact
upon it. Speech is a natural way to get feedback
from a game on player progress and distance to
game goals without having to force the player to
shift visual focus to get the necessary feedback.
Speech and human voices are totally natural parts
of human society and of everyday lives. The hu-
man voice is therefore very well suited to making
the players forget that they are participating in the
game through a medium and it helps to make the
game interface less visible and less obtrusive to
the player. Voices can therefore be integrated into
sOUND tYPEs At YOUr DIsPOsAL
There are a number of ways to categorize and clas-
sify sounds. In this context it makes sense to use
the three categories traditionally used for sound in
films and computer games (Sonnenschein, 2001;
see also Hug, 2011; Jørgensen, 2011 for more
involved taxonomies of computer game sound):
•
Speech and dialog. Human language
brought to sound, the sounding counterpart
to the visual text. The most cognitive and
unambiguous of the three types often used
to convey clear messages with least pos-
sible risk of misunderstanding
•
Sound effects and the subcategory ambient
sounds. The result of events in the physical
world. A falling stone hitting the ground;
air fluttering in the feathers of a bird; a
mechanical clock ticking; a heavy piece
of frozen wood dragged over a horizontal,
dry concrete floor; the ever-present, ever-
changing sounds of the atmosphere
•
Music. Sometimes referred to as “the lan-
guage of emotion”. An integral part of
human cultures since the dawn of Homo
sapiens.
Note that these categories are only for clarity
and discussion. It is important to point out the fact
that, in reality, the possible borders between them
are floating. he borders between music particularly
and the other two categories have been blurred for
centuries: for example, music and dialog in opera
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