How does sound in video games impact the audience experience?

 

If you consider yourself a gamer, I want you to think about how many times you’ve stopped playing to focus on the sounds of the world. For most readers, I’m willing to bet the number is quite low, or maybe you can’t think of any times. Despite this, the sounds heard (or not) as you play a game have a remarkably large influence on your experience - sometimes larger than the game itself. This unseen effect that audio has on your experience is the topic I have chosen to look at for this essay, as I believe what I learn while writing will broaden the possibilities for my CMP. 

 

In many modern games, sound is the foremost tool for providing the player with feedback on what they are doing - be it navigating the pause menu or shooting a gun, the presence of a sound in response to the player’s action helps actions feel grounded and tactile.

 

During the development of the 2003 game ‘Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory’, many play testers complained that the Allies team’s default weapon, The Thompson SMG, was far too powerful when compared to the Axis team’s counterpart, the MP40. The developers were surprised by this, as they had programmed the two weapons to be statistically identical. Upon checking, both were indeed equally powerful. Despite this, server statistics showed that players were getting significantly more kills using the Thompson than the MP40.

 

The developers came to the conclusion that the cause of this issue was actually the sound that the guns made. The Thompson had a far bassier and more powerful sound than the MP40, causing players to perceive it to be more powerful despite having no actual difference and leading to few people wanting to play with the MP40. Sure enough, upon changing the Thompson’s sound to be less powerful, the complaints vanished.(Bratt, 2019)

 

This story is a good example of my earlier statement that the sounds within a game sometimes have a greater impact on the player’s perception of the game, and even their performance, than the game itself.

 

An unfortunate property of sound design (not just in video games - pretty much anywhere) is that it is usually created to be ignored. This means sound design is not usually made to stand out, but to blend in. When sound design is poorly done, however, it sticks out very clearly.

 

Good sound design takes into consideration not just how the game should sound but how it can be used as a medium to communicate gameplay info through, all while keeping the soundscape believable and allowing the player to connect with the world. It is important to know the difference between 'believable' and 'realistic,' however, as even games that would be considered realistic stylise much of their audio effects to make them more readable.

 

As a communication tool, audio has a multitude of uses within video games. In recent years, accessibility options in games have become par for the course, giving the opportunity to play expansive games to people with impairments or disabilities. The fighting game series Mortal Kombat has been praised by communities of disabled gamers for its robust, carefully planned sound design which allows even entirely blind people to play at a professional level. The series' development team has consulted some of these blind gamers for the development of their newest games, opening the door for even more players. (PBS Voices, 2022)

 

In Mortal Kombat games, while using stereo audio, the sounds of characters' actions and voice lines have been set to either the left or right ear (but not in between) based on which side of the screen each character is on. Since there are only two players in a Mortal Kombat game, you can gauge which way to look based on this. Each action the player takes has a very short wind-up sound (and animation), allowing the player to react.

 

Some stages in the games have interactable items which the player may pick up and attack the opponent with. After advice from one of the blind gamers on the consultation team, a sound was added to the game to inform players when they’re in front of an interactable item.

 

The 1997 game Regret of the Wind was created by Japanese game designer Kenji Eno after he was inspired by a visit to a school for disabled children. At the school, he found that some of the blind children were playing a game which he had worked on using just the audio cues. Regret of the Wind is a game with no visuals, and the story is told through sound and dialogue. It is similar to the visual novel genre, in which players make A/B choices to advance the story, though of course Regret of the Wind has no visuals. 

 

Eno wanted to create a game which two people could experience in full regardless of whether or not they can see, and one which someone with sight and someone without sight could discuss in depth afterwards.

 

The most common critique of the game is that the game's characters are not disabled and tend to describe places using concepts such as shape or colour, things that blind people would not be able to understand. Despite this, the game was a milestone as the first video game designed specifically with accessibility for disabled people in mind from the very start. 

 

When exploring the environment of a game, you could hear tens of sounds over the course of a minute of gameplay. Sound designers create multiple sounds for even the simplest of actions, such as walking. If a player is walking on grass, the game will not play the same sound as if they are walking on metal, and many games even have different sounds depending on what kind of footwear your character is using. This sounds obvious but when playing details like this are completely invisible. 

 

This does not only apply to footsteps, of course. Dropped items, weapon impacts, physics interactions and countless other game world interactions may have their sound effects altered by various factors. In Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, a proprietary "Chemistry Engine” runs constantly behind the scenes to process physical interactions. This system also determines what sound will be played. Brush fires, flaming arrows, burning grass (and every other conceivable form of fire in the game) all have unique sound effects, with even more variation depending on the scale of the flame. Water splashes have different effects depending on the weight, orientation and speed of the object being submerged.(Bradley, 2019)

 

Many modern games make use of Adaptive Music, music that changes depending on the state of the game. In its most basic form, this means changing music tracks depending on the player’s location.

 

Going back to the Breath of the Wild series, there are countless examples of adaptive music within the game. During battles with monsters, the instrumentation of combat music will be decided by the difficulty of the battle, and landing hits on enemies adds further musical stabs to the arrangement depending on how hard you hit. When exploring dungeons, progressing modifies the melody and builds to a grand reveal at the end in dynamic musical numbers which tend to last around 30 minutes. The sheer extent of the musical dynamicism leads to beautiful cinematic moments that work for almost any player, regardless of their gameplay situation.  

 

I would say that music, just as any sound, is a huge part of the experience that someone has whilst playing a game. One of my most fond memories while playing a video game is strongly linked to a musical cue that played in game as I entered a new area. I believe that were the music not present, I wouldn’t remember that moment.

 

Through the process of writing this, my view that sound design is important to games has only been strengthened. Regardless of the genre, a game without sound will inevitably feel ‘dead’ and inert. Poor sound design can alter the feel of a game in an unwanted way or break the immersion of a player. 

 

It has been made clear that sound design and the way that it is connected to gameplay is in no way secondary to an experience. Clever use expands the possibilities for interesting gameplay mechanics, but due to the fact that a not insignificant amount of gamers (~20%) have some form of disability,(Naranjo et al., 2021) it is important to keep accessibility in mind when developing games. 

 

A great deal of the believability that modern game worlds have can be attributed to their sound design, just as it can to any other element of the game’s design. Nigh on every action you may take has a unique sound or set of sounds associated with it in most games today. Were it not for the hours of consideration that goes into each and every one of these sounds, you would feel like more of an observer than an inhabitant of the world.

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Bibliography

 

Maxx Bradley. (2019). "Invisible" Sound Design in Breath of the Wild. [Online]. YouTube. 

Last Updated: 9 July 2019. 

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgev9Gzybk8 [Accessed 30 December 2023].

 

Chris Bratt. (2019). Why the Sound of a Gun Had to Be Nerfed in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. [Online]. YouTube. 

Last Updated: 29 August 2019. 

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDxiuHdR_T4. [Accessed 5 January 2024].

 

Yuta Endo. (2023). How to Sound Design Video Games: Animal Crossing UI. [Online]. YouTube. 

Last Updated: 27 May 2023. 

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLnEIOOz_8k [Accessed 8 January 2024].

 

Marshall McGee. (2023). Why Indie Games Always Seem To Have The Best Sound Design. [Online]. YouTube. 

Last Updated: 15 November 2023. 

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ6ENLakB2g. [Accessed 9 January 2024].

 

Sonic Minds. (2022). How Sound Design Can Make or Break a Video Game. [Online]. Sonic Minds. 

Last Updated: 1 April 2022. 

Available at: https://sonicminds.dk/how-sound-design-can-make-or-break-a-video-game/ [Accessed 2 January 2024].

 

Omar Naranjo et al. (2021). Developing a Video Game Accessibility Toolkit for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired. [Online]. Available at: https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3082/paper12.pdf [Accessed 13 January 2024].

 

PBS Voices. (2022). This Pro Blind Gamer Teaches Me How to Play Mortal Kombat. [Online]. YouTube. 

Last Updated: 9 February 2022. 

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn3r0Pe8f9A [Accessed 9 January 2024].

 

Paper Will. (2021). A (Blind-Accessible) History of Blind Gaming. [Online]. YouTube. Last Updated: 

19 February 2021.

Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKgN4va-gas. [Accessed 10 January 2024].