Audiophiliac…Music and Sound in Games

Hello everyone — well, the about 20 people who actually “read” my blog,

Earlier this week I confessed to the world my love for audio.

I promise, it wasn’t a secret, music and sound is a big part of life. Ergo, it follows that music and sound are a big part of any experience — even digitally interactive ones.

Tonight I thought I’d like to discuss the impact of audio and music in games, starting with some good old Psychology. Several psychological studies — including those done at institutions such as the University of California and  show that the listening of music, among other sensations, can be a nostalgia provoking stimulus (Barret, F.S., et al.) In addition, music has — according to preliminary studies been shown to contribute to the physiological stress response of playing video games (Hébert, S., et al.)

So, we’ll get to sound design in a bit, but for now I want to focus on the music.

Instead of using words to explain this phenomenon of evoking emotion I will let the audio do it for me…

Perhaps you were at one point a Halo fan like myself…
..and this played in Halo 2 over eight years ago…

and in Halo 3…

With literally hundreds of hours invested into the Halo universe — imagine the feeling when…

(Doesn’t make Halo 4 any better of a game — certainly still the least complete Halo game yet — probably time crunch)

So maybe Halo wasn’t your thing…

How does this feel?

So you don’t get my point yet?

Maybe this?

Ok, so what if you don’t play a lot of games?

Hopefully you get the point now. If not……………………………………….

Anyway, now on to audio design and sound effects.

This is a lot less emotional stuff and more about experience.

There are plenty of games with good sound design. There are very few with GREAT sound design. Regardless of the case, high quality, directional, full immersive sound does wonders for the experience. In addition, sound effects, like music, can have a particular impact on game franchises.

Anyone remember these sounds?
Or this?

Would you recognize them without labels?

My point being, when invested in virtual worlds, everything in the “universe” has its own sound. Developers can therefore use this advantage — as well as music mentioned before — to better tie franchise titles together.Unfortunately this relationship works both ways, and leave long term fans with thoughts like:

“How did the Halo Energy Sword go from sounding like this and this to sounding like:”

Side note: having good immersive sounds also allows the player to get a more invested experience.

I rest my case. Audio designers and composers, you have a lot more impact on games than you realize, don’t screw up. Also, if your name is Marty (The Elder) O’Donnell, you’re amazing.

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