Trigger Happy
experience as immersive and (deceptively) “authentic” as possible.
This concentration on “real” sounds in general parallels what movies do. But just as a film with terrific abstract sound design, like David Lynch’s Lost Highway, is highly refreshing to the ears, so I think this attitude of “realism” is narrow-minded in a videogame context. The best audio engineering now seems to be constrained to highly generic videogames such as space shoot-’em-ups or science fiction racers, where the fantasy world can justifiably be accompanied by fantasy sound, all manner of lovingly crafted blips and whooshes. An instance of particularly good contemporary work is in the otherwise rather shallow shooter Omega Boost, where, if you bump into enemies, a grating metallic clang enhances the momentary discomfort, and spacecraft whoosh past you to fabulously alien stereo effect. The sonic mayhem (with these effects unfortunately competing with a musical score of Japanese heavy metal) effectively increases the level of sweating tension in the player.
Such a strong division between games that enjoy “real,” sampled sounds and games with an invented sonic architecture, I think, is unfortunate. Surely, if
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