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Apologies for the wait between uploads, made a video about video game sound design. There's a lot of extra sounds and games I didn't talk about for the sake of not making the video like 40 minutes long, so I might revisit the topic in the future. Hope you enjoy!
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This, is unpacking, a game all about, unpacking. Through clever environmental storytelling this game tells the story of someone’s life through moving into brand new homes over the course of 20-ish years. Now THIS, is the sound of an air freshener can on the tile floor of a bathroom, and here’s that same can on a sink, and on the lid of a toilet, and even on top of a toilet. See what makes unpacking so special on top of the qualities previously mentioned, is that this game has over 14,000 sound files for all of the things you organize in this game. Game cartridges, plushies, pots and pans, colanders, soap bottles, every single thing you organize in this game has so many different sounds for every possible thing you could set them on. All of this, is sound design.
When it comes to things that make or break a game, there’s a hierarchy of things that people actually care about, or should care about. Things like Music or Graphics are less important to a game then the story, or just the overall gameplay. That’s not to say that these aspects are, useless, but like everything, they have their place. Sound design falls somewhere, eehhhh (on screen of the text just flying everywhere). See, depending on the game, it can be something that goes completely unnoticed, and that’s seemingly by design. If you’re noticing the sound design in a game, 9 times out of 10 it’s because something is out of place, or even seemingly not what you expected.
With that out of the way, Let’s take the most recent call of duty for an example where sound design is important to the overall experience. Modern Warfare II is a prime example of a first person shooter, shooter being the important thing here. When you’re shooting a gun in one of these games you want it to, well, sound like a gun. A sound that’s powerful, yet succinct, and depending on how strong the weapon is, it might even linger through the air to convey that an incredible “boom” just took place. This whole experience would be ruined if you fired the Signal 50 and it didn’t sound as powerful as it looks. Go too far with realism on this though and the game wouldn’t be fun, no one would want to play if after 30 minutes everyone had tinnitus, it’s a delicate balance of making the gun sound powerful enough, without just playing the audio of the gun at it’s proper volume without editing.
But it’s not just gun sounds that can ruin the gunplay experience, it’s everything else around it. You can have the best sounding gun ever put in a video game, but where’s the audio for, fiddling with the gun, handling it, reloading it, the impact. Each one of these things is a separate sound, or sounds, that need to be added to create the full experience of just firing a weapon. Going past this, FPS games also need to balance feedback you get from using that weapon, it’s not just the sound of the gun going off, but the sound of the headshot at the other end that gives you that rush of dopamine. The sound of that melee, that rank up, that headshot motivates you with each and every hit of serotonin that it gives you, again and again throughout the gameplay loop. Is the game a failure without these things, no, but when done well it’s a significant enhancer to the experience.