Emergence in Game Audio

In this article, lead audio designer Gina Zdanowicz explains how audio designers can achieve epic soundscapes while still complementing emergent gameplay.

It’s no secret that over the years game audio has evolved from sound chip generated blips and beeps with simple musical melodies to three-dimensional SFX with epic sound tracks. In the past, game audio has been viewed as a backdrop to the game’s visuals. However, more recent advances in game audio demonstrates that sound is no longer a subtle component of the game experience. In fact, sound is one of the key factors for total player immersion into to 3D virtual environment. Interactive soundscapes are the vehicle that forms the interactive partnership between the player and the game. Game audio designers are tasked with immersing the player into these 3D worlds and keeping them there by creating a unified soundscape made up diegetic (actual) and non-diegetic (commentary) sounds for both linear and interactive segments of the game.

As emergent game play becomes the more desired technique in game design, the outcome is a globally designed game system comprised of rules and boundaries for player interactions, rather than scripted paths and events. Players can use basic elements of the game such as the story or strategic moves to play the game in a way that was not specifically designed or implemented by the game designer. What does this mean for game audio designers? Simply put, game audio designers need to create techniques to adapt to this emergent and highly user interactive medium.

Emergent game design encourages replayability as each time the player plays the game they make different decisions, which changes the game as a whole and results in different possibilities for action and endings. Additional sounds and music are needed for the action brought on by these different choices. For example in the game Scribblenauts, the player can choose from over 10,000 pre-programmed words to create objects that will be needed to complete tasks in the game by writing it out. For instance, if a player wants a saw, they simply type or write, “saw” and it will appear in the game. The player then has the freedom to use and move the saw around in any strategic manner possible. What’s interesting about this from an audio perspective is the fact that there are so many unique sound effects associated with the magnitude of objects that can be created by the player. The same magnitude of sounds can be found in larger more open-ended game worlds but the draw in Scribblenauts is both the ability to create objects and to see and hear them in action on screen.

As game play choices and games become more filmic and realistic by nature, game audio designers adapt film audio techniques to achieve an epic and adaptive sound for their game environments. In the past, one of the biggest problems facing game audio has been the endless repetition of SFX that are triggered constantly along with short pieces of music which loop endlessly through the game without changing.

With increased memory available on modern consoles, game audio designers are filling their games' soundscape with a variety of sounds that greatly improve the quality of this new generation of games:

• Crisp dialog that cuts through the mix: Drake’s Fortune Uncharted 2 Among Thieves recorded all dialog while capturing the physical performance for the game on the Mo-Cap stage. Having all of the actors read their lines together on a single stage added a more definitive spontaneity to the scenes that you just can’t capture when recording lines separately in a sound booth. 

•  Minimizing repetition using alternate SFX: Game animations such as footsteps, effort noises or armor movement can become very repetitive if there are only a couple of sounds, which are constantly triggered for each of those animations. Adding subtle variety to footsteps in a game can break up that repetition quickly and make walking around the game world more enjoyable for the player. Good Foley, ambient loops that change subtly with the environment as well as flow consistently between in-game and cut scenes and attention to the little details enhance the games audio and immerse the player fully into the world. It can also provide more information to the user about their environment that they may not have been aware of.

• Mixing the soundscape with enough dynamics: God of War 3 is a great example of a dynamic soundscape. The carefully mastered mix allows the sound elements to change subtly as Kratos moves through the world. Action in the distance sound closer as the action moves into what was the foreground. Ambient tracks mixed in a way that allows action in the foreground to supersede while allowing the music track to add emotional depth to the scene.

• Adaptive musical score: Adaptive Musical scores “adapt” as the game play changes and evolves based on the player’s choices. The use of branching music systems or stems allows the layering of musical or percussive tracks layers that can be flown in over the core layer to add enhanced tension or a positive vibe to the over all mood. Layers are used to build intensity as the player needs to be directed to move forward and additional layers with more tension and maybe more rhythm will be added as enemies approach and surround the players’ character. Layers of music can also build intensity, as the player’s character health is low. Real time DSP effects can be used in conjunction with these musical layers to filter the sound to give the effect of a dizzying loss of life. Layers can then be stripped away to lighten up the mood a bit by removing some of the rhythmic tracks and pulling back on the intensity as your player regains health or kills off the surrounding enemies and gets back to exploring the game and moving onto the next stage. L.A. Noire is a great example of using musical cues that adapt to changing game play or to lead the player to the next action in the game. During the first mission or tutorial phase the player is instructed to search for clues. On-screen text informs the player that the music will fade down when all clues in that location have been discovered and musical chimes will indicate objects that can be examined. A small chime indicates objects that need to be inspected further. Once the tutorial phase is over, it is up to the player to follow the musical cues through the game.

As game audio evolves, so does the technical aspect of sound design in games. Audio designers have the ability to handle implementation of audio by using middle ware such as Fmod or Wwise with little to no programmer involvement therefore generating more control over the soundscape. Creating audio for interactive game segments can be a challenge as the players’ actions are able to alter the course of the game constantly and the sound needs to evolve along with those changes. Audio middleware such as FMOD helps the audio designer overcome the issue of repetition in game audio by enabling the creation of a dynamic sound environment while optimizing resources of the game’s platform. It also allows the audio implementer to see what is happening to the layers of music as situations develop in the game. It unveils a sort of behind the scenes look at the process from the viewpoint of the middleware. This allows the audio implementer to be sure the music flows seamlessly from simple to percussive and complex and back to simple again with out any hiccups or a break in the sonic soundscape, which would quickly draw the deeply immersed player out of the game world.


Gina Zdanowicz is the Founder of Seriallab Studios, Lead Audio Designer at Mini Monster Media, LLC and a Game Audio Instructor at Berkleemusic. Seriallab Studios is a full service audio content provider supplying custom music and sound effects to the video game industry. Seriallab Studios has been involved in the audio development of 40+ titles in the last few years.

May 2010: Emergence

May 2010's topic was submitted by game designer Pascal Belanger.

I heard the most troubling thing from a narrative designer last year, which went like this: "If we are going to make art, we can't make emergence". I must say I was shocked about this. I could not believe that he would have that narrow a view about art and/or emergence. The first thought that came to mind was: What about Emergent Art?

I thought the statement was nonsense but some people around me seem to think otherwise, except that when asked about it they seem to take sophistic approaches to the question.

• What is emergence to you? 
• How do you deal with it? 
• What place do you let it take in your games/design? 
• And in your opinion, can we make emergent games that would still be art? 
• Or even better, are there any valid existing examples of such games?

Reference:
Jesper Juul on Emergence vs progression: http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/openandtheclosed.html

Game On! Can Playing Games Drive Adoption of Sales Force Automation

In this article, market analyst Lauren Carlson gives examples of how one might gamify sales force automation software.

There has been a lot of buzz lately around this term "gamification." But what is it? Gamification is the process of adding elements of games to non-gaming activities to encourage action or participation. Essentially, it is about making menial, repetitive or boring things a little more fun and engaging. Experts in the field of gamification have discussed introducing this concept into several different areas including education and e-commerce.

What about adding gamification to an area of enterprise software with traditionally low levels of engagement and adoption: sales force automation (SFA) software? The connection seems logical. Sales people and gamers share that same fiercely competitive nature. Perhaps the addition of gaming elements to SFA software would encourage sales people to learn, use and master the software.

Software Advice, a free online resource for software buyers, sketched out some pretty neat ideas for adding gamification to SFA software. They show how adding badges, leader boards and time v. completion charts can enhance the SFA software user experience.

I. Badges

II. Data Quality

III. Goal Tracking

Lauren Carlson writes about various topics related to CRM software, with particular interest in sales force automation, marketing automation, and customer service. She has a background in the music industry, and when she isn't writing about software, you can find her running at Town Lake and singing at local venues. She is a graduate of the University of Texas with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Spissify Da Gamify

In this article, game designer David Calvo explains spissitude and why the gamification of life needs to be more transcendent to truly affect us as human beings.

“When the fat gets thinner, the thin dies.”
Darryl. F. Zanuck.

I often get the same question, when I talk about my job. From mothers, teachers, activists.  Don’t you think games are dangerous? Don’t you think they worsen the problems of our world, isolating individuals in immersive realities, while letting the bad guys take care of the REAL reality? Don’t you think the Roman Empire was destroyed by breads, and games? Don’t you think the gamification of brushing your teeth is a bad thing for humankind?

This is the Godwin point of all discussion about games.
This is how I usually get out.

*

Why do we play? Let me try my hand at a definition. We play because we want to be engaged in play. All the stuff you hear about FUN, JOY, MEANING, is an extra layer of an evolved discourse. I love game discourse, but when dealing with people who don’t play, we have to rely on old jedi tricks, like tautology. Here is one: Play is play. It is what brings the animals closer to humans, or the reverse. Otters playing hide and seek. It is an instinct. It is not rational. It is. Here is something Reason should not get a hold on. Ever. It is NATURE. Get it Mum? It’s like pissing. Don’t do it, you’ll die.

I don’t want to create a sub category of games, that would be more “playful” than others, but why should we add a new layer on reality to make it fun? Reality is not played. That’s why it’s not a game. We need reality. We need patience, we need boredom. We need constraints. I’m pretty sure nobody likes constraints, but I’m also sure a constraint with a cherry on top is still a constraint. The balance between what is played and what is lived is a neat tool to keep us on the edge of ourselves, perpetually changing our assertions about the world, one side challenging the other.

I know I sound like my father: oh, keep it boring, keep it real. Life is tough, eat your soup. I do think we need to change the world. I’m, as Steffen Walz put it, part of the Californian Sunshine School. I love Jane. But what experience has taught me is that we cannot help something that doesn’t want to be helped. Reality and its tenants are OK with the states of things. They want fear, tsunamis, nuclear toasters. People want comfort, entertainment, washing-machines. How can we change their perspective on life? By making more cows?

*

I often feel something is missing from games. Something essential. But is this something missing from the design or from our appreciation of play? A little of both actually. What matters is Interdependence, and to define the space in between life and play. Because we have forgotten how to see it, and designers have never known how to turn it into gameplay. This thing has no name, it is a monad, in the pythagorician sense. Ludeme has often be quoted as the basic unit on which design is built. This Monad would the basic unit on which Meaning is built. Not symbolic meaning. Not systemic. Spiritual meaning. Let’s give it a name. Spissitude.
Now, that’s a big word.

Spissitude is a dimension where dwells the invisible. It was theorized by Henry More in the 17th century. Spissitude is everywhere. It is part of everything. It is the secret place where 5D dwells, observing us, appearing briefly as slices of saucers in the skies. It is the place where dwells the Soul, this HUGE part of us, immanent or transcendent, who cares? It is a massive realm, untapped by our human activity too busy surviving, not allowing itself the luxury of spiritual self-actualization. Of course we need to survive. But can we survive only on bodies? Can we survive in the dark, grey areas of this shrouded world? Ask David Foster Wallace.

Now, I have a writer’s perspective on this, I believe games are texts that can be interpreted in many ways, not always obvious. Call it postmodern hermeneutics. More was a theist, I’m not, but I can see his point. I am no church goer, I am an agnostic. I believe in an invisible grace that makes things greater than the sum of its parts. Where is the friggin’ soul? The spine of what we do, why we do it. Fun is no longer relevant, in my opinion. Reality has become a trap. And we, as designers, are part of it. We cannot design Soul, we cannot create it from nothing. We need constraints, we need a source. To channel Soul, we need something more than a process.

*

I was one of the people to see Brian Moriarty at the last GDC, talking about how true Art is devotional, and the rest is Kitsch. I don’t agree. I don’t agree in the split between high and low. I disagree that we should worship. But he was making a big point, in this era where believing in the invisible is an insult for the Empire of Reason we’ve built. We need something to devote to. We need a goal in our game to make games. What can we devote our craft to? We have no Gods. We have no horizons. We can’t even believe in reforming the system, except by adding extra rewards to it. Where does lie this new motivational trigger? Rapture is not a moment, Rapture is now a place. This is Real. How can we unmake the Real?

This is for me the true essence of the so-called Gamification of life, which I would call the Vivification of Games, as someone brilliant put it before me. Bring Life unto Us. Grace cannot be engineered. Because Grace belongs to what we do and how we do it. It can’t be a “layer”. It is not a by-product. It is inside. It matters. It is personal. It is an individual relationship to something. In Arts and Entertainment, traditionally, Soul comes from the creator. The Uber director. The mastermind. But games are also collective, right? We can have powerful creators, telling strong narratives or branding this or that kind of games, but wouldn’t it be more compelling to deduce a soul from all individuals ? A noosphere of games. A cloud of ourselves, FROM ourselves, to connect with a higher sky. Immanence, bridging transcendence.

If gamification is adding an external motivational pull to our daily activities, to our suffering, then here is what I choose : every game is a prayer for a better world. As all prayers, Games will not change the world. It will change us. Make us humans again, in this vast pool of green goo. What kind of world do we want? Would making a game out of brushing my teeth bad for civilization ? A vast majority of us don’t brush their teeth to prevent them from rotting. They brush their teeth to have a nice smile. This is seduction. The act of brushing one’s teeth has already become a Game. We need to consider the essential place of Play in our lives. Not make it our lives. Because to live is to play the biggest game of all: how do we learn to play death?

David Calvo is a writer, cartoonist and game designer. he spends his life between France and the USA, busy building bridges between dreams and real time earth. His work can be found on metagaming.org.

May 2011 Poll

Please vote for the May 2011 topic! As always, feel free to suggest more topics!  Look at the submission guidelines for Topics and Blog Entries.

You'll see the poll to the right. The choices are:

• Emergence
• The International Scene (Games and Game Culture Not in U.S.)
• Open Source Games

Emergence (from Pascal Bélanger)
What is emergence to you? How do you deal with it? What place do you let it take in your games/design? And in your opinion, can we make emergent games that would still be art? Or even better, are there any valid existing examples of such games?
Jesper Juul on Emergence vs progression: http://www.jesperjuul.net/text/openandtheclosed.html

Open Source Games (from Brandon Van Every)
What happens to game designs when the underlying production process is collaborative and not commercial?
 
Please vote by April 30.  Thank you!

Living on a Gamified World?

In this article, game developer Dan Bahamon considers how gamification can help improve people's lives.

I agree that most people think of achievements when they hear gamification, and I do agree that these little achievements will help many people to organize and learn about things that are good for them and the community, anywhere from getting kids to eat vegetables to reducing water over usage, awarding points and rewards will really help build these core behaviors.

Now the term "gamification is the million dollar question, because up to now it seems something an app could handle, so it would be called "applification" or something like that.

I've been thinking, and perhaps there are two game elements missing from this, a clear big end goal and enemies. This reminds me of the Ted Talk by Jane McGonigal.  She talks about making massive online games to get people working on a big goal like low fuel usage.  This would resemble something closer to gamification in my opinion, but to be honest, there is still some doubt on my mind. One belief I have that I really think is true is that people will not reach their potential if they are not emotionally involved with what they are doing. So some world wide problems might not motivate many people to play.

The only goal of gamification is to help society improve. So I would suggest that instead of looking at games to solve big problems in the world, we turn to games to help each and every human reach their goals and dreams. Thus making a better world.

Perhaps the closest example to help you visualize what I'm thinking it would be something like second life. But much more elaborate and with real life opportunities, with careers people can pursue, sort of like Warcraft, but with the difference that you are given real tasks and you are evaluated on performance.

So for example, Let's say I want to be a police officer, and I'm 10, going out of my house at 1 am to fight crime is not a possibility, but with the use of games, there can be events like car chases, robberies and more, could be either simulated or user triggered. And as I play the game I gain badges or ranks that allow me to play or do different things in the game, and by the time I'm 18 I would have already understood many of the challenges and difficulties of this career, helping me make my decision on what career to choose. This career changing decisions are easier to make in game when young than during midlife chaos.

This sort of reminds me of Wannado City, a wonderful place where kids get to run around in a kid-only "city", and they are given jobs they choose, like being chefs, police officers, scientists and many others.

In conclusion, gamification should promote and encourage people to be who they want to be and to follow their dreams, It should help them understand what they say they want, and track their experience that will later be rewarded by real life jobs. It is a big dream, it would definitely take a world wide collaboration to accomplish it, but that didn't stop Wikipedia from being the top encyclopedia on earth.

Thanks for reading and I would love to hear opinions, There is nothing more productive that teamwork.

Daniel Bahamon is the founder of Impudia games. His goals are not only to entertain and engage players around the world but to use this technology to help kids around the world learn by playing.

April 2011: Gamification

What does it mean to gamify? Does this mean that the world is full of activities, sites, and programs that can be "gamed"? Is this good or bad?

When I was first introduced to gamification by its proponents, I thought it was very similar to what David Michael and I supported in our book, Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform. We could see that game design could be used to improve the learning experience. So, it was very exciting to hear tales of increased engagement and changed behaviors.

But lately, when I hear about point systems to various things, I wonder: Are we trivializing what we want to emphasize? Is gamification about a point system, badges, or a way of thinking?

Maybe you've seen Jesse Schell 2010 DICE speech in which he describes a Big Brother'ish world where all our actions are tracked and measured in order to award points. Is this where we're headed? Or is this so not what gamification is about?



I want to hear from you. What's your opinion on gamification?

• What exactly is gamification?  
• Is gamification beneficial?  How so?
• Is there anything wrong with gamification?
• Is a gamified future inevitable?