The Importance of Audio in Video Games

Video games are not often the subject of study for sound and culture analysis. This is counterintuitive considering the social and technological impact games have. Audio in video games are not simply meant to create a specific atmosphere, this is only one aspect of audio being addressed. Music and game sound have the potential to bring the player into a situation that they feel is incredibly real. Player immersion is what makes games very memorable, and this becomes much easier and smoother with well constructed audio. Video games today like to focus on the visual effects, but audio and video must be mutually important for the sake of the game. Video games are rapidly approaching a level of quality that is cinematic, and consequently audio is being overlooked.

Long after a player has finished playing a game, they remember the music. Audio and sounds are worked into the memory of the players during game-play, and the player will better remember the game for that reason. There are at least two different ways memories are stored in the brain. These are short-term memory and long-term memory. Information from short-term memory is eventually passed onto long-term memory if a certain event persists. If a player spends several hours a day on a game, the game music will eventually be worked into long-term memory. If the player hears the music outside of the game, they will often be able to place what game the song came from, and when it occurs. However, this will only happen if the player is consciously aware of the song during game play. In a way, this means that subliminal messaging won’t ever work. A game will need the full attention of a player; they can’t be trying to focus on multiple things at once. In a dichotic listening test...

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