Game Sounds: Heightened Expectations From Gamers
Video game sound development goes hand in hand with video game hardware development. In the early days, limitations in the hardware made even simple sound effects challenging. Even simple melodic sounds were difficult to play.
Remember Atari’s Pong from the 1970s to 1980s? Back then, this hugely popular game’s sound was a monosyllabic sound effect, composed of beeps.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the development of FM chips and PCM sound hardware enabled various sounds to be implemented and played. This revolution led to a decline in hardware prices, and a dramatic increase in video game console usage.
Since 2000, the spread of multichannel audio, such as stereo and 5.1 channel sound, allow sound to come from the front, back, left, and right. Having this capability provides directional, and locational, awareness of a character in a video game. The realization of spatial sound enhances the game and opens a new era in virtual reality.
From the perspective of production, there is relatively more freedom in game sound size, length, and types than in the past. As of now, the gaming environment is expanded into a variety of platforms including PC, console, mobile, and VR. As a result, hardware and software are also being developed alongside the other innovations.
With the users need for diversified sounds, many changes have also been made when it comes to audio settings. In the past, the environment settings for in-game sound had only extended to sound effects, background music, and overall volume controls. These days, however, the setting values for audio settings are being subdivided. In the case of World of Warship’s audio settings, it not only offers about 25 audio settings, but it allows individuals to customize the music, voice, environmental sounds, battleship engine sounds, and explosion volumes. Moreover, Call of Duty has a setting called “Midnight Mode” which compresses loud sounds, such as explosions, reducing ultra-low and ultra-high sounds to better accommodate users when gaming late at night.
Game Sound Production Method
One of the traditional methods in producing sound effects is known as thefoley recording. In the past, a real car was needed inside a recording booth with numerous microphones in order to record a vehicle engine sound to produce the actual engine sound. A lot of human and material resources were invested to produce such realistic sounds.
Due to the amount work needed, sound libraries were sold to overcome these hurdles and were frequently applied to actual game sound designs. Since these sound libraries only existed in such file types as WAV and MP3, however, sound details for gear shifting, acceleration, and break responses were limited, oftentimes unable to adequately provide adequate sound expressions.
Since then, developments in plug-ins and audio middleware allow for real-time adjustment in responses for such things as vehicle models, speed, gear shifts, and brakes. This makes it easier for sound designers to produce the sound they want in the game even if they are not proficient in coding. Sounds used in popular games such as Overwatch, Elden Ring, and Halo have all been produced by audio middleware.
The technical developments in game music have improved drastically. In the past, video game music was produced by frequency modulations to imitate instrumental sounds like 8-bit music. These days, plug-ins that sample real instruments are rapidly in development.
The virtual instrument, Hans Florian ZimmerStrings, is a program that involves Hans Florian Zimmer, a composer and music producer, famous for such scores in movies like Inception, Interstellar, and Dark Knight. This program took samples from a cinematic orchestra with 26 microphones as well as from 344 players. When choosing such virtual instruments during game music production, sound designers can produce sounds that are very close to the sounds in real life or even create unique sounds.
In addition to video game localization, LQA, and GM, Latis Global also provides professional video game services. These services include game sound production, and multilingual video game voiceover. With numerous experiences in global video game expansions, please contact us at any time, for any questions you may have, be it game sounds or otherwise.
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