Sound in Video Games

Before we get started on the piece, I'd like to thank our friends over at GamerDino for featuring this piece as a guest post. They've been very kind to feature us there and we'd appreciate it if you give our friends there a visit.

Introduction
Sound. It's always been a key component in video games. Without the technology we have today to motion-capture performances to deliver facial expressions and body language that convey emotion, the game designers of yesteryear had to utilise sound as a means of tugging at the player's heartstrings. From music to voice acting to ambient sound, this article will attempt to explore what makes sound such an important component of the video game experience.

Music
In the early days of gaming (purely text-based games and games with text rather than cutscenes driving the story), this involved using music in a thematic approach in order to elicit specific emotions from the player. For situations fraught with danger and excitement, the music would be fast-paced and present a sense of immediacy in the situation, making the player tense up and ready themselves for a battle. When the situation mellows and players are free to move uninhibited through the world, then a relaxing yet upbeat tone would play, a theme that would inspire the player to explore and relax now that the battle was over. For some players, the transition between musical themes also served a useful function in that it warned them that the situation was changing and they needed to prepare for what was about to happen. For example, in the Splinter Cell series, there would be a dead silence to indicate that you were being stealthy but once the "suspicion" theme started to play, then you knew that the enemy AI was on to you, allowing you time to react and try to become part of the shadows once again. If the enemy did detect you, then alarms would blare and a loud, raucous musical theme would come on, providing a sense of urgency that causes the player's heart to race as they frantically scramble to the nearest cover of darkness and try to shake enemies off their tail.

Music is still an extremely important part of game design today because the best soundtracks have the ability to elicit a visceral reaction from the gamer. Good music in any form has the ability to make people feel something. Be it making them feel happy because the rhythm is upbeat and the lyrics celebrate the awesomeness of life or making them feel sad because the melodies are depressing and the lyrics even more so, good music has the ability to elicit emotions from a normal human being. When applied within a context, music can be even more powerful. With a good soundtrack, it becomes easier for a player to immerse themselves in the world and develop an emotional connection with the game, replacing pixels on a screen with a whole new virtual world complete with fictional characters you can relate to or bond with. This is of course, before the advent of voice-acting but even today, with voice acting and motion-capture performances, music still plays a pivotal role in bringing the world of the game alive.

Voice-Acting
It's no secret that voice-actors are some of the most underrated performers in the arts, at least, until recently. Before, we couldn't even care who voiced what character but now voice-actors are celebrities in their own right. This recognition of their work is fully deserved and can be seen in the various campaigns to bring back original voices of characters in a franchise such as David Hayter as Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid V or Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell: Blacklist.

Without the advanced technological advancements that allow us to capture facial expressions and body language, voice-actors had to do all the heavy lifting when it came to creating emotional performances and really lending depth to a character. While visuals tend to impress people more than audio, for a long time, it was the tireless efforts of voice-actors and their directors that brought our favourite characters to life. Until recently, it was possible to hear the same voices over and over again in various video games as the video game voice-acting industry seemed a little small as evidenced by the large body of work of big names like Nolan North, Laura Bailey, Troy Baker and Jennifer Hale, names you would most definitely come across if you play any AAA blockbuster video game. With video games becoming a multi-billion dollar industry, we're starting to see more and more Hollywood actors making the transition to voice-work and mo-cap performances. That is not to say that the thespians of Hollywood are only in it for the money, it just means that game publishers are now able to afford the price-tag of talented Hollywood A-listers, bringing in a whole new dimension of performances in video games.

With the proliferation of motion-capture technology and the ability to bring characters to life through the mapping of actor's faces, voice-acting may well become a doomed profession as time goes on and game-makers turn to mo-cap and advanced facial mapping. Or maybe not. There are a lot of games out there who still animate faces traditionally and still use voice-actors to convey the character's emotions and little foibles. It's difficult to tell how voice-acting will be affected by this new trend of blending the cinema with the controller because the future is unpredictable, but for now, I think voice-actors are finally getting the recognition they deserve and should continue to do so far into the future.

Sound Design
This part of the video game is probably the least acknowledged component as it is often goes unnoticed. The best ambient sound design is subtle, creating an atmosphere of sounds and noises within the environment in order to create a living, breathing virtual world utilising minute details that people don't tend to notice but really will have a big impact if they aren't there or are poorly done. I'm one of those gamers that loves realism, ironic, I know. Someone who plays games tends to do so to get away from the real world, so, wanting a game to be realistic seems a little silly. But realism really adds to the experience for me as it forces you to confront real(-ish) situations and think up real-world solutions to possible real-world problems. It's a form of learning without actually realising it. For a game to be realistic, it of course has to have realistic sound. That means leaves should rustle in the wind, the ground should crunch when you march through the jungle or snow-infested landscapes towards your objective, water should have a lapping sound when you silently approach a dock as you infiltrate an enemy's base etc. etc.

Good sound design can mean a range of things. It might mean creating all-new sounds to match impossible worlds and impossible things like a space-ship or a steampunk robot or it might mean recording real-world items and the sounds they make and replicating it within a game. For example, Bioshock Infinite features a floating world with wondrous flying buildings and monstrous enemies. The sound design is exquisite for this game as you hear the soft, subtle whine of the buildings as they travel through the skies and the loud and brash mechanical gears that operate the half-man half-machine monsters you constantly face in your attempts to rescue Elizabeth. This lends authenticity to the experience, it makes you feel like such a thing could exist and if it did, it would sound exactly like that.

On the other end of the spectrum, Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter have both taken the sounds that real weapons make and put it into their games to give a sense of character to their weapons and vehicles. The roaring 7.62x51mm NATO round in battle rifles and sniper rifles sound heavier and more distinct from their smaller 5.56x45 mm NATO round cousins in smaller, more compact assault rifles, giving you a sense that these weapons are really different. In both games, the level of detail in sound design is just bonkers as firing in confined spaces, guns sound deafening and really block out other noises while in wide-open spaces, you can happily fire away without feeling your ears might fall off from all the noise. Another good example would be Gran Turismo 5 where all the cars sound fantastic. They really sound like cars and they give off the impression that they have an individual character, letting you hear the difference between a straight-six engine, a V6 or a V8. And the squeal and screech of tortured tyres as you will yourself around a corner too fast, letting your back-end slide as you attempt to push in to first place.

The point is, all these little details that the developers and sound designers focus on tends to go unnoticed but it does play a very important role in making your experience just that much better. If you take a run-of-the-mill average shooter (not naming names), the guns all feel the same and have that same laser-weapon like quality to the sound. It's not something a lot of people care about but for me, it goes to show how much the makers of the game care about the product when they pick up on the really fine details and work on them exquisitely even though most people couldn't care less.

Conclusion
Please remember that I'm no expert in sound design or sound engineering or music or any of the like, I just wrote this piece up as a tribute to one of the cornerstones of a good video game, hoping to raise awareness about how important sound really is and how good it can make a game, and by extension, a gamer, feel when used properly. For those reading through my convoluted mess of nonsense, thanks for tuning in.