Sound in Games
Psychology of sound in games: The psychology of sounds in games is used in order to make the player/players feel more involved and attached to the game by using sounds to trigger emotive responses from the players. These responses are different depending on the genre of the game and the different techniques used in each one. For example horror games aim to create and build up suspense and an increasing fear factor in the game, along with a tense atmosphere that keeps the player gripped. They use sounds that tend to be very slow and eerie and low in pitch along with sound effects in relation to the environment that are aimed to make people feel something creepy is going on, like creaky floorboards and doors, and other noises. All these are merged together to create the atmosphere, which will then change when something happens, like something could appear in front of the player, accompanied by a loud noise, to make the player jumpy. Sound psychology is also used in films and TV, not just games, but is used to create the same effects and draw out the same emotions from the viewers. Sound is an important part of any good game or film, a horror film isn’t as scary when there’s no sound, and an action packed 1st person shooter, doesn’t feel as thrilling to play if you turn all the sounds off.
Source of sounds in games: Sounds in games are put in using 2 different methods. The company either buys the sounds from sound libraries, or will use Foley artists to create the sounds. Foley artists recreate sounds using lots of different objects, like barrels or crisp packets. They aim to mimic real sounds, so real that anyone who watches thinks it’s the real thing. Foley artists are used in most areas of the industry; games, films and TV all use them. They don’t use them just because the can though, there are good reasons. For films and TV, recording everything at once wouldn’t work, if the main character goes to a bar, gets out to talk to a guy then drives off, his voice will be drowned out by background noises such as other vehicles, people and even animals. This means that the voices are recorded in a studio afterwards, but if they put the voices straight into the film, there would be no background noises, which wouldn’t sound right. So the Foley artist would be called in to recreate those background noises, like the animals and footsteps, but not any mechanical noises, that’s what the sound effects editor does. Another reason Foley artists are used is make props, like swords, sound realistic. This is because props aren’t real, what looks like a proper sword in the finished film will have actually been a plastic prop. The Foley artist then makes sounds to sound like what a real sword would make during the actions it does, so when 2 swords collide the sound you hear has been made by a Foley artist.
Game music: Games have lots of music in them nowadays. Music in games is one of 2 things, either its original music made by a company for the game, or as is more common now, it’s licensed music that has been done by a band that is used in the game. Original music was used a lot in older games, as companies had less money to use. But as the industry grew, big companies have enough money to use licensed tracks from real bands, and now games use them a lot, from adverts for the game to in game radio stations packed full of them, in games like Grand theft auto, and even games that are based around the tracks like Guitar hero. Original music still exits though, game companies still make them as they can be good if the game sells well, as the song can be linked to the game, like the music from Mario, which a lot of people would recognise. Whereas if a game used a licensed track it’s not linked as well, as that track could be used for a number of different things.
