You are Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, a SPARTAN-II super soldier fighting for the UNSC on an unknown ring structure. As you sit on the Pelican drop ship waiting to land on a nearby beach filled with Covenant Grunts, Elites, and Jackals eagerly awaiting your arrival to the battlefield. Sitting next to you is Private Riley, as you approach your drop off you can hear over the roar of the Pelican engine and Private Riley's squeals of terror the distinct sound of Covenant plasma weapons being fired in your direction whooshing past and slamming into the side of your heavily armored Pelican. As you get closer the pleasant music that is playing in the background has gotten progressively more energetic. When you land an explosion of sound ensues.
I would argue that the visuals of a game draw the user in, but the sound has a greater impact on how "real" the game feels and keeps the user playing. It was interesting to me that many of the scholarly databases provided by the Bentley library provide very little information at all about video games. It is very possible that video games do not interest many scholars, or perhaps scholars don't find video games to be research worthy. I did find what appears to be a great book titled Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design, which conveniently doesn't seem to exist at the library.
Marty O'Donnell is the man responsible for much of the audio that goes into the games developed by Bungie. In his interview for halo.bungie.org he talks about the importance of sound and how it can more deeply immerse the player.
"A dark room is spooky, but add a creaking floorboard and rats skittering in the walls and it becomes really creepy. Add a bit of low ambient music with the sound of faint whispers and you can't help but start looking over your shoulder. Life isn't silent but you are always gating the sounds around you. Games that have sounds that skip, drop out, or have periods of silence tend to loose my attention. That's one of the reasons we even have sound during loading screens."
I did however find some books in the library on video games that include some research on sound. Game Development Essentials: Game Project Managementdoes include a history of sound and discusses sound in games. All quotes and research, unless otherwise noted before, will be out of this book for the next few paragraphs. The book starts with the early era of sound in games. The use of "low-cost samplers, sequencers, and waveform editors" along side with "actors [who] lent their voices" allowed video games to talk to the audience using "quality sound via MIDI and 16-bit stereo on the consoles and PC."
This video give you a look behind the scenes and a glimpse of what went into making the music for halo. As Marty mentioned in the interview, he would first look at the game and then he would start thinking about an appropriate song that would go along with and be a companion to the game play. He wanted the soundtrack to be a part of the narrative and for the player to feel as though they were creating their own soundtrack without knowing exactly what it was they did in order to trigger the change. This idea of having the music and sounds as an integrated part of the development rather than at the end is also known as "L.A.T.E." (Late Audio Sounds Terrible). The book suggests a sound design document (SDD) in order to successfully embed the music. The SDD is a document that is made before the game has even been started. It allows for the music developer to understand the underlying aspects that make up the game and to better adapt the music to properly effect the players emotion.
The main purpose of the audio director and sound designers is to "help define the mood and tone of the game" through sounds, samples, and music. Any object in the world can be used to create game sounds. People like Dee Baker can mimic natural sounds with their voices. Other things from kitchen utensils to rope can also be used in various fashions to make new sounds that are not found in nature.
Sound gives the game life. As Marty had mentioned earlier life has sound. There is never an absence of sound in life so there should never be an absence of sound in a game. "Sound effects can [also] help give direction" in a game. "The groan of a beast behind a locked door" can give subtle hints to a player who may otherwise not know where to go next. The simple addition of ambient noise, such as wind in an outdoor environment, or the sound of light bulbs to an indoor environment can make the gaming experience infinitely richer.
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