Sound Design

Sound in a game refers to the audio elements, including music, sound effects, and voice acting. It plays a crucial role in the overall player experience by adding depth, emotion, and atmosphere to the game world.
Sound is important in a game because it can greatly enhance the player's immersion and engagement. It can provide important information, such as the location of enemies or the proximity of danger, and create a sense of tension and suspense. The right sound effects can make a game more believable and engaging, making the player feel as though they are truly in the game world. Music can also set the mood and tone of a game, and can help to convey the story and emotions of the game.
In this lecture Frenado Gimeno talks about the importance of sound in games and how they have a deep impact on the gameplay and player's immersion. I have a lot of respect for people who make sounds or background audio for music; I've always been curious about how they came up with such beats. The thought of such beats or audio being created always fascinates me.
What is sound good at?
  • Creating Immersion
  • Spatial Awareness - Example Bullet grazing, grenade falling near you.
  • Area Mapping - Navigation in an open world game.
  • Gameplay cues - Enemy detecting you, Boss fights.
  • Affecting the mood - cutscene of pwering up, death of character
  • Cinematics - Dialog heavy cutscene
  • Game Feel - Gun sounds
  • Core Gameplay - Guitar Hero, Horror Games
  • Reward Association - "Fatality" in Taken, Casino Games
  • Pace Setting - Timer Countdown
  • Transitions - Loading Screens
  • Announcing Information - Tutorial, Hints
  • IP/Brand Recognition - "Boy" from Kratos
  • Establising a brand - Netflix startup
  • Upping the quality bar
Some of the minimum requirements for a game are
  • Dialogue
  • World Ambience
  • UI Interactions
  • Action Feedback
  • Player Movement
  • Reward Sounds
  • Non Diegetic Music - Music added to the world, example boss fight sound
  • Reflections
  • Diegetic Music - Music originating from the world
  • Transitions
Later on we had an interactive session during the lecture to find out what type of sounds were made while playing a trailer of Bioshock Infinite. I was amazed at how many sounds were played in the span of 30 secs in that video. It just shows you how hard sound designers had worked just to create a sense of immersion.
After this he played some of the sounds he had made and thaught us how to use Audacity to manipulate sounds which was very interesting.

This lecture gave me ideas on how to use audio in game design to manipulate the emotions of the players and how sound is very essential in desigining a game.

References - https://www.vecteezy.com/free-vector/vector Vector Vectors by Vecteezy.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Game Design Final Project

Image
Update - 3rd December 2022 We were given the final assignment which is basically our final project for the Game Design Module and the theme for the assignment was Impulse . When I first got to know the theme of the game I was pretty excited, and the very first thing that came to my mind was impusle based descision and the first game that came to my mind was, Its a multiplayer puzzle game,  The game requires players to work together to defuse a virtual bomb. One player is tasked with defusing the bomb while the other players have access to a manual that describes how to defuse the bomb. The player defusing the bomb must communicate with the other players and follow their instructions in order to succeed. Update - 11th December 2022 We had a team meeting to discuss some of the ideas we could potentially use for the project, they are as follows: I suggested that we do a narrative game where each choice determines the outcome of the game, the theme of the game would be like   Host...
Read more

Digital Prototype of Simple Game

Image
Update - 9th November 2022 Our group was given our first assignment, which was to create a simple digital game prototype. The theme for the game was Personal hygiene . We had a group meeting to talk about the ideas of what type of game should we design. Some of the ideas which were discussed were  Creating a learning game which focuses on basic hygiene such as brushing teeth, washing your hands. Create an open world game, where the player travels around the map defeating monsters which were based on the diseases and viruses usually affecting one's personal hygiene. The core mechanic for the game was that the character was in third person collecting collectibles or power ups lying around in the map which would help them defeat specific monsters.  For example: If the player sees a bacteria, the player can walk to the can of disinfectant collectible pick it up and start sparying at the bacteria in order to defeat it. But this idea lacked win/lose conditions and the implementation...
Read more

Analouge Prototype Week 1

Image
Hello all and welcome to my blog for "Game Design Module". In this week we were tasked with designing an Analouge prototype of a game. The only criteria for us was that the players shouldnt require a computer or any digital gadgets to play it. We gathered our team to discuss on what type of game should we make that was fun, interactive, engaging and also easy to understand the game rules once they start to play the game. We came up with a bunch of ideas that would be fun to play, I came up with an idea of a game where the map is moving and there is a car that moves in the map collecting fuel and tries to avoid the obstacles. The reference for this idea was I once saw a youtube video of a guy making the mario kart game with a cardboard and playing it. The advantages of my idea are: The map moves.  The car is controlled with a stick. The design looks cool. The disadvantages of my idea are: The game can only be played by one at a time. The maps becomes repetitive. One has to kee...
Read more