Guitar Heroes - by SNDR

In the design research investigation Listen! the multi-disciplinary collaboration between game design and audio design students is researched. The research focuses on gathering more insight in the creative design process of game audio and presents general recommendations and pitfalls for the development of game audio.

Some of the research outcomes were presented at DiGRA 2011 and the submitted paper can now be downloaded below. This is a Utrecht School of the Arts Creative Design Practices Research Program project.

• Download from the DiGRA library
• Download Listen! – Improving the Cooperation between Game Designers and Audio Designers
• Alternative link: http://bit.ly/gameaudio

IEZA framework can be used to conceptualise the communication by means of game audio

The URL is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEZA_Framework

1. Het bijzondere verhaal achter de prachtige menu-muziek van Killzone 3 [T]
2. Mooie gamesmuziek: mag dat? [T]
3. Lost in translation: begrijpen developers en componisten elkaar wel? [T]
4. Interactieve gamesmuziek: de adaptieve oplossing [T]
5. Vier initiatieven en events over gamesmuziek [T]
6. Beluister 5 unieke, muzikale pitches [T]

What it’s about:

1. The remarkable story behind the beautiful menu music in Killzone 3. Composer Joris de Man about the music in Killzone 3. [T]
2. Beautiful game music: is that allowed? Discussion about whether game music should be ‘beautiful’. [T]
3. Lost in translation: do developers and composers understand each other? [T]
4. Interactive game music: the adaptive solution. Using adaptive music in games. [T]
5. Four initiatives and events about game music in the Netherlands. [T]
6. Listen 5 unique musical pitches. Compare five tracks of the pitch for one game. [T]

The game studio FluffyLogic invites you to create some original music for their new social game Ur Zoo.

The lucky winner’s music will feature in the game and their name will appear in the game credits!

See: http://www.fluffylogic.net/2011/07/ur-zoo-social-game-music-competition/

Pointer to a symposium in the Netherlands:

VIDEOGAME MUSIC: PLAY, FANS, SPACE

13 September 2011
Utrecht University, NL
Music is vital to videogaming. A game soundtrack draws players into the game space’s atmosphere with heroic melodies, exotic drums or spooky white noise; it enables them to identify characters and situations through leitmotifs; it warns them for imminent danger and helps them navigate through fights with 3D sound clues. Videogame music is also very popular outside the direct gaming context. Game soundtracks are commercially successful and are performed by full orchestras at game music concerts. Fannish engagement with videogame music has led to worldwide communities creating game music remixes, mash-ups and parodies.

With internationally renowned speakers from the fields of game studies and game music research, game designers and students, this one-day symposium at Utrecht University seeks to outline an agenda for videogame music research. The symposium investigates music’s contribution to three important domains of videogaming: Play, Fans, and Space. In addition, a game music workshop will enable researchers, students, designers and gamers to join forces in the development and study of videogame music.

Keynote speakers
Karen Collins (Waterloo University, Canada).
http://www.gamessound.com/
Mads Haahr (Dept Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin, Haunted Planet Studios)
http://www.hauntedplanet.c​om/
Joost Raessens (Utrecht University, Center for the Study of Digital Games and Play (GAP))
http://www.gamesandplay.or​g/

Where and when
13 September 2011, 9:30-17:00
Sweelinckzaal, Drift 21, Utrecht, Netherlands
Admittance free

Edit – a day report written by Maria Koomen can be found here:
http://newmediastudies.nl/magazine/videogame-music-symposium-play-fans-space-overview

28 July the music of Iron Grip, the game by Tim van Geel, componist and designer ISOTX.
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/tim-van-geel/10/5b0/890
15:30, Dutch Game Garden, Neude 5, Utrecht

Sign up: martine [AT] dutchgamegarden.nl

The example movie contains an explanation of the music system used in the Xbox-game Shortburst. It’s pretty self explanatory and shows the flexible system in real-time.

The description of the video:
“cell-based music”, or “horizontal resequencing” in a browser-based, simple, nln-player, with the music for the Xbox-game Shortburst.
The web-version of the nln-player was built with the Schillmania Soundmanager 2 library, php and javascript. The idea was to shift the focus from organising the musical material with, often complex, data-structures, to a very simple model in which the limitations for the composer were greater, but the administrative work and the needed understanding of (meta-)data was much less.
This same framework was used for the implementation of the interactive music in XNA5 for an Xbox game, Shortburst.

More information on www.greencouch.nl and www.nln-player.com

Footsteps Retro Sound Study from lost lab on Vimeo.

Visit: http://blog.lostchocolatelab.com/2010/03/footsteps-informal-game-sound-study.html

The obligatory thesis word cloud about immersive audio

The word is out: I hereby present you my PhD thesis! After the final writeup in 2009, it took some time to get my viva arranged in August 2010. Sorry to keep you waiting…but now, it can be downloaded via this blog.

This thesis addresses the role of audio for immersion. Yep, the I-word…almost just as Impossible as it is Irresistible to designers. Yet, I’ve tried to come up with some useful theory for those who want to know more about the design of sound, music and speech in games and the conceptual decisions that are involved.

Let’s get things straight. This thesis does not:

• tell you which frequencies to amplify in order to make your music more immersive or explain you how to record immersive voice recordings (it’s not a cook book).
• provide you an answer to the question which psychological processes can be linked to immersion. There’s a lot of valuable literature available that investigates this subject.
• give you a final answer what to do when your game isn’t ‘immersive enough’. Game design is a discipline and you normally can’t fix game design flaws with audio!

Now what does it do? This work addresses the design decisions with respect to audio and immersion. I hope it offers audio designers, game designers and design researchers that are interested in the conceptualisation of game audio some illuminating insight into this matter.

Now go and create some Captivating Sound!

PhD award

ABSTRACT
This thesis explores the relation between game audio and (computer) game immersion. The main contribution in this research is a framework for the conceptual design of game audio in relation to immersion. A model for game audio is presented defining the communication by means of game audio during active gameplay. This model, named IEZA (Huiberts & van Tol, 2008), defines four conceptual domains of communication of game audio. IEZA was developed to enable a more detailed and consistent investigation into game audio and has been evaluated as a design resource in educational, academic and practical settings.

Immersion is considered to be one of the key factors making games worthy to play. The unity that seems to exist in the fact that many parties value this phenomenon is more apparent than real: there is a lot of dispute on the scope of immersion. Several classifications of immersion are compared for a better understanding of the nature of an immersive experience. The three‐dimensional SCI‐model by Ermi & Mäyrä (2005) is considered as valuable representation of the multi‐dimensional character of immersion.

Audio is an important constituent of most games and its role for immersion in games has hardly been investigated. In this thesis, audio is studied using the IEZA‐model and the SCI‐model, and several design issues are described. This yields a conceptual framework that describes various audio design issues that can be used to reflect upon conceptual decisions relevant for the design of audio in relation to immersion. This framework can be used for a conceptual analysis of design and is relevant for audio designers as well as game designers.

My PhD was a part-time PhD study at the University of Portsmouth in collaboration with the Utrecht School of the Arts.

Download the PDF here.

View the video files.

Huiberts, S., Captivating Sound: the Role of Audio for Immersion in Games. Doctoral Thesis. University of Portsmouth and Utrecht School of the Arts, Portsmouth, 2010.

A notification about your experience with this subject is warmly appreciated. Please send me a message using the contact form or use the comment form below.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all who supported the writing of this thesis: Jan IJzermans, Richard van Tol, Barbara Lotti, Tony Kalus, Adriaan Braat, Chris Creed, Han Onno ter Hoor, Micah Hrehovcsik, Rens Machielse, Paul Newland, Dan Pinchbeck, Dick Rijken, Hans Timmermans, Gerard van Wolferen, the other members of the Music Design Research Group, the gamers and moderators from the forums (Tweakers Forum, the 3Dgamers Forum, the Insidegamer Forum, the Gamers‐Forum, AudioGames Forum), the participants of PUGS, Espressofabriek and Hans and Riet Huiberts.

Extant - Zombie Audio Game

We released a tech demo for Extant in October 2010, a few days prior to Halloween. The demo allows players to wander freely through an atmospheric, monster-infested world, exploring sites and buildings while fighting off zombies and collecting pickups such as ammo and medicine.

Extant is based on concepts developed back in 2002 for an audio game prototype named “Dark – A Garden Wander”, created by Sander Huiberts, Richard van Tol and Hugo Verweij. One example of such a concept is Moby, the protagonists dog, who can guide the player to certain areas and objects using an innovative command menu.

Through this tech demo we explore the design possibilities of an audio-only game space that is intuitive, immersive and easy to navigate. We found that a space based on spheres meets such requirements best. For example, players wander around on a spherical-shaped world, in a fashion similar to Mario on a small planet in Super Mario Galaxy. This approach frees designers from having to add spatial obstructions in order to constrain the players’ free movement to a specific area. Spatial obstructions can be quite a design challenge in audio games, since walls are usually silent and one does not want the player to constantly bump into them. Each building and site is circular as well, allowing the player to enter from any direction.

The Extant tech demo can be download for free at the Creative Heroes website.

Discuss Extant at the AudioGames Forum.