Sound In Games (Magazine Article)

In this magazine article, I am going to be talking about different sounds within games and assessing what sounds are effective in certain games. Sound is very important in games, because it can cause tension, suspense and can change the atmosphere and the way the game is thought of by the gamer.

Theory of Sounds

Sound is a mechanical wave (a wave that needs a medium to travel) that is a repetitive vibration (oscillation) of pressure that is transmitted through different states, such as gas, solid and liquid. Sound is composed by frequencies within the range of hearing. In sound there are different categories, such as waveform, amplitude, frequency and pitch.

A waveform is an image that represents an audio signal or recording. Audio recording programs often show waveforms because it allows the user to get a visual idea of what type of sounds have been recorded. For example, if the waveform is very low it often means that the recording was very quiet and soft, this is usually when there is just a vocalist singing. Whereas if the waveform fills up the entire image then the recording was probably made with the settings set far too high, this is usually when the drums and guitar come into the song. As you can see by the image on the right, there are 4 main waveforms: sine waves, square waves, triangle waves and sawtooth waves. A sine wave is a curve that shows you that the audio is a smooth repetitive vibration (oscillation). A square wave is a waveform that isn’t a pure sine wave and has instantaneous transitions between high and low levels, they are usually found in electronics and signal processing.

Amplitude is the size of a wave on a waveform, the higher the wave, the louder the sound is. As you can see by the image on the left, amplitude is only positive numbers and never negative numbers, and this is because it can only be greater or equal to zero.

Frequency measures the amount of times something happens in a certain amount of time. It can be used to measure the rate of waves, audible sound waves have a frequency of 20 Hz (hertz) to 20,000 Hz, and this means you’ve heard waves that occur at any time between 20 to 20,000 times per second. Lower frequencies produce low-pitched sounds and are called bass frequencies and higher frequencies produce high-pitched sounds and are called treble frequencies.

Pitch and frequencies are very much the same; it allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.

 

Psychology of Sound

The thing people need to realize is, is that there is a difference between sound effects and the music within games. Sound effects are sounds that aren’t speech or music, for example, the rustling of leaves when your character is walking in a forest. Music in games is the soundtrack that is in the background. Different sounds can make different emotions run through people’s minds, for example, a loud noise within a game can make the gamer jump, feel scared and even feel uneasy. Slender is a game that has been played quite a lot recently and it creates different feelings and emotions for the gamer, they become really scared and weary when they hear a drum beat become louder and faster. The objective of Slender is to go around a dark forest, armed only with a flashlight and collect pieces of papers containing different drawings, while trying to avoid Slenderman.  As you progress and gain more pieces of paper, a drum beat begins to play and gets faster and louder as you become close to Slenderman or the pieces of paper, the use of these noises is to make the gamer feel anxious, uneasy and ultimately scared. Now let’s go on to racing games, the Forza franchise are the most realistic racing simulator games that are out. They rely a lot on the sound that you in hear in cars, such as the slight change of a gear box, the sound of tyres screeching on the floor and the sound of the exhaust; the reason they use these sounds is to make the game seem that more realistic, it fits very well into the gameplay.

Audio Environment

“An object or an environment within a game exhibits a number of complex relationships”

Gamasutra

In today’s day and age, the audio in games have come along way from what it was when video games were first introduced to us.  A number of things can happen in a game, for example if a character is scared or has been wounded, the way the game would get this information across to the player is the use of sounds, so to show that a character is scared a loud heart beat that increases and becomes faster could be used. Everyday our lives are filled with different sound cues, you may be sat in your garden doing some work and in the distance hear a car drive past or the tweeting of a bird, all of these may seem unimportant to the activity that you are currently doing now, they help to create the ambiance of the scene. Video games also do this, for example you could be walking down a street in GTA: San Andreas and here the voices of people that you walk past or a vehicle that has just driven past you, these aren’t triggered by the character’s actions, they’re just there to create the ambiance. Environmental communication helps to reinforce a character or object’s existence within a game environment

However, Need For Speed: Most Wanted, another racing game relies a lot on exaggerated sounds such as the loud roar of the big engines within the cars and the soundtrack that you hear in the background, the soundtrack is designed to get the gamer pumped up and excited, making them drive faster.

Sound in games can help the gamer become connected and lose themselves within the game; the term for this is escapism. The way sound does this is by having atmospheric sounds within the background, for example when playing a game where you are in the countryside you can hear a bird chirping, this makes the game become a lot more realistic, which is what the creators of the game intended.

Foley Artistry

Foley is the reproduction of sound effects that are usually heard every day, which are added into post production, this is to enhance the quality of sound in video games and films etc. Some Foley art is so well integrated into things that it mostly goes un-noticed by the audience; it helps to make the scene seem more realistic, without it the scene would just seem un-natural and quiet. Foley art was created by a man called Jack Donovan Foley in 1927; he was part of Universal Studios during the silent era. After Warner Brothers made their first film with sound in, Foley became part of the sound crew; the microphones used then could only pick up dialogue so background sound had to be put in after the scene was shot. The main purpose of Foley art is to complement or replace sound that is recorded on set at the time of filming; this is also referred to as field filming. It is created by a sound artist that mimics the actual sound source in a recording studio; it can be a very tedious and time consuming process, it is broken down into three categories; feet, cloth and props. The “feet” category is the sound of footsteps within a film or game etc. The cloth category is made up of many subtle sounds, such as the sound of your jeans when you rub your hand against them. The prop category is the sound that the props make, such as cups or glasses clinking together when being collected.

Sound Libraries

Sound libraries are databases which contain different sound effects that are recorded to be used and placed in films or video games etc. The sounds can be both created and built into certain programs or they can be downloaded and placed into the library. Different sound effects can be put into different sound libraries, such as the sound effect of your footsteps are placed into a separate sound library than that of the sound effects created by atmospheric sound, such as a birdsong.

Original Development

Original development is the sound that is created by a company to be used specifically for their product; this is usually done so that they avoid copyright infringements. An example of a company creating their own soundtrack for a game is big names such as Treyarch for their games like CoD: World at War.

Stock Music

Stock music or production music is an alternative for the use of popular or well-known piece of music in a production; it is cheap because it isn’t necessary to obtain permission or pay a fee for an instantly recognized piece of music.

Game Music

Video game music refers to any music or soundtrack that is the background of a video game. The music can range between being a simple beat to being an orchestral piece of music; usually it is the older games that contain the simple sounds. The music in games is so important nowadays because it can help to tie in with gameplay and cause different emotions. As video games have evolved the game music has become more complex and is now beginning to sound like something out of a film. The purpose of music in games to cause different emotions for the gamers, it is also to cause tension and make the game seem more interesting, especially the cut scenes. Different games contain a different genre of sound, a horror game such as Slender will contain scary sounds and the genre of those sounds will of course be horror, the use of these noises is to make the game feel scared and uneasy while playing the game, which is what the game is intended to do. Video games such as, Super Mario Bros contains music that is calming and genuinely puts you in a happy mood; this is exactly what the game is intended to do.

However, games like Dead Space 2 will contain music that will cause tension, suspense and ultimately frighten you, this music for example starts of slow and almost has an aura within the music that something bad might happen or something will jump out at you and scare you, this is exactly why the game developers used this sort of music within the game.

Legal Issues

IP (Intellectual Property) is the law in which you claim executive rights on your creation, there are many different types of IP, such as copyright, patents, trademarks, registered designs and circuit layout design rights. Copyright protects artistic expressions; anything can be protected by copyright now, it stops people from essentially stealing your ideas. Patents are there to protect the features and processes that make something work, helping the inventor to profit from his/her inventions. Trademarks are signs that help to distinguish your inventions from those of your competitors; usually it is a word or a logo. A registered design is the law that protects the overall visual presentation of your product; it forms the basis of an infringement action against others.