What is the first thing that some players do before starting to play a game? Probably they would close the door and put on their headphones so that the terrible noise and distractions of the real world would be blocked out from the experience they are about to engage in. Sound in games has an enormous role in the experience of games. How is one supposed to be terrified when some unseen object is creating all sorts of havoc behind the avatar's visual field?
Horror games make creative use of sound to keep the player tense and keep alert around every corner s/he traverses. Collins mentions Dead Space, a horrific game which kept me pointing my gun at all times in the fear of finding something as I turn around. In Dead Space, one can hear a random pipe falling from the distance, this has completely no effect on the game, but while roaming around in a monster infested space station, hearing that sound will instantly make me move around to find where the sound came from and what caused it.
Similarly to what Carpenter & McLuhan said, we as humans have always relied on sound to alert us of an event which we are not currently looking at. As we hear a sound, we instantly look around towards where we think the sound game from. Games use this to direct players' attention towards particular objects, or just to terrify someone with a loud abrupt sound.
Collins discusses how receiving aural feedback from the game via the actions players take within the virtual environments help in creating a connection between the player and the avatar. She discusses how the avatar is an extension of our body reaching into this virtual world. I think this is true, even the fact that the player has a voice which in some games you can choose what the player says, it gives a sense of connection between the in-game character and the player.
I remember being annoyed while playing Dragon Age because the player did not voice out the my conversation choices. A mute character is a shallow one, which is why I generally do not like playing first person games. How can I connect with characters that do not talk? It really does not let me empathize with the character that I am playing.
Stockburger emphasizes on how sound in games gives us a sense of space which is beyond the flat monitor that we receive visual information from. When we hear a sound which we perceive as far away in the virtual space, it gives a certain depth and believability to the environment that the avatar is inhabiting. It also helps us make sense of all the aural input that we a being subjected to by the game. Unlike what McLuhan says, we as humans select what to listen to. Our ears are subjected to all the sounds around us, but our brain focuses on the closest things to us even though its not necessarily so. We may be supposedly listening to someone talk to us but rather listen to a conversation that is going on behind you. We do this also in games, we block out certain environmental sounds in order to focus on the more significant ones.
When we play games we purposely block out aural stimuli coming from our current environment in order to focus on the environment our avatar is inhabiting and we delve into this space which is visually consistent but aurally three dimensional and dynamic.
