Proceedings of CGAMES’2007

One of the aims of modern First-Person Shooter (FPS) design is to provide an immersive experience to the player. This paper examines the role of sound in enabling such immersion and argues that even in ‘realism’ FPS games, it may be achieved sonically through a focus on caricature rather than realism. The paper utilizes and develops previous work in which a conceptual framework for the design and analysis of run and gun FPS sound is developed and the notion of the relationship between player and FPS soundscape as an acoustic ecology is put forward (Grimshaw and Schott 2007a; Grimshaw and Schott 2007b). Some problems of sound practice and sound reproduction in the game are highlighted and a conceptual solution is proposed

Player Relationships as Mediated Through Sound in Immersive Multi-player Computer Games

This essay examines the relationship between player and diegetic sound FX in immersive computer game environments and how this relationship leads, in large part, to the contextualization of the player within the virtual world of the game. This contextualization presupposes a primarily sonically-based perception of objects and events in the world and, in a multi-player game, this ultimately leads to communication between players through the medium of diegetic sound. The players’ engagement with, and immersion in, the game’s acoustic environment is the result of a relationship with sound that is technologically mediated. The game engine, for example, produces a range of environmental or ambient sounds and almost every player action has a corresponding sound. A variety of relevant theories and disciplines are assessed for the methodological basis of the points raised, such as film sound theory and sonification, and, throughout, the First-Person Shooter sub-genre is used as an exemplar. Such games include the «Doom» and «Quake» series, the «Half-Life» series and derivatives and later games such as «Left 4 Dead». The combination of the acoustic environment, the interactive placement of the player – as embodied by his virtual, prosthetic arms – in the environment and the sonic relationships between players produces the acoustic ecology. An exposition of this multi-player communication and the resultant acoustic ecology and player immersion, is the main objective of the essay

Survival horror games - an uncanny modality

This study investigates the relationship between the perceived eeriness of a virtual character with the perception of human-likeness for some attributes of motion and sound. 100 participants were asked to rate 13 video clips of 12 different virtual characters and one human. The results indicate that attributes of motion and sound do exaggerate the uncanny phenomenon and how frightening that character is perceived to be. Strong correlations were identified for the perceived eeriness for a character with how human-like a character's voice sounded, how human-like facial expression appeared and the synchronization of the character's sound with lip movement; characters rated as the least synchronized were perceived to be the most frightening. Based on the results of this study, this paper seeks to define an initial set of hypotheses for the fear-evoking aspects of character facial rendering and vocalization in survival horror games that can be used by game designers seeking to increase the fear factor in the genre and that will form the basis of further experiments which, it is hoped, will lead to a conceptual framework for the uncanny

A PSYCHOLOGY BASED FRAMEWORK FOR CULTIVATING AND RESPECTING USER ATTITUDES

In social and cognitive psychology, theories related to human attitude change are well established. In recent years, it has become increasingly common for those who seek to change attitudes towards computer based information systems to employ attitude change notions that originate from psychology. In this paper, the findings of those who have employed ‘attitude change psychology’ to understand or change user attitudes, are synthesised to create a prototype framework by which it is proposed that user attitudes could be cultivated as part of a system implementation. Operating as a summary of existing knowledge, this frame work also unveils significant areas of empirical deficit, providing a basis for future investigation