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Within the Sound of Silence
By Corvus | February 18, 2008
This month’s Round Table topic is ambient sound in videogames. As Chris has so aptly summarized for us in his entry, proper use of ambient sound is perhaps the single most important tool for creating an immersive videogame experience. Yeah, I know. There went my post right out the window too. Serves me right for only coming up with a single topic idea when I knew Chris was going to say it better, and first. So I got me to thinking about ambient sound in the real world and what’s missing from our game sound-scapes.
Okay. Do me a favor. I want you to stop reading and go into the quietest room in your house. Close the door. Shove a towel or rug against the crack at the bottom of the door. Don’t turn on any lights. Take note of the time and close your eyes. Keep them closed for five full minutes. Don’t count the seconds. Don’t worry about looking like an idiot. After all, no one can see you. Just, listen. Keep your eyes closed for five minutes and listen. Then come back and keep reading.
The obvious question to ask you now (and feel free to answer it in the comments if you want to) is, “What did you hear?” The question I’m really curious to know the answer to is actually, “How long did you actually keep your eyes closed before your brain told you that five minutes had passed?” I’d be willing to bet that it was either far less, or far more than five minutes–probably less.
Let’s take a look at the first question, “What did you hear?” Silence, clearly isn’t silent. We don’t live in a silent word. There is always noise. Even in a sensory deprivation chamber, your own body betrays the silence with its heartbeat, the rasp of air against your bronchial tubes and the slight rustle of hair on skin.
With more and more technology in our homes, we’ve added the constant mutter of computers, DVD players and videogame consoles to our silence. Traffic passes by on the street, airplanes and helicopters thunder overhead. What we consider silence is essentially non-intrusive sound–white noise. We have become so conditioned to this omnipresent, low pitched roar that we don’t even notice it anymore… until it’s gone.
When the electricity goes out in the middle of the night, it’s often the sudden decrease in white noise that wakes me. An entire neighborhood without electricity is much quieter and the effect is almmost palpable. Perhaps due to primal instincts, alert to the silence that precedes a predator on the hunt, I find myself hyper-aware of sound in these situations. Then again, perhaps it’s not instinct but your sense of hearing marveling at its respite.
So what does this have to do with videogames? Well, even before a single background loop of audio is played, most games have already gotten the most basic element of ambient noise incorrect–the silence. It’s pretty well established in other storytelling media that what you choose not not to include in your composition is often as important as what you choose to include, if not more so. Videogame worlds feel empty, in no small part, due to the complete absence of noise within their silences.
It would be interesting to play a game that used ambient noise, not just for immersion, but as a game mechanic. Rather than have a predator’s growl alert you to their presence, have a decrease in ambient white noise be your first signal. Rather than find a generator by following signs, find it be following the low hum to its source.
I’m going to toss this out to you now, as there are plenty of games I haven’t played and it’s quite possible that you could steer me towards some that do use the sound of silence.
Feel free to answer on your blog and submit your post as a Round Table entry!
February 18th, 2008 at 9:59 am
You know what would scare the ever lovin’ crap out of me would be walking through a jungle or forest and suddenly all the birds and other fauna go dead silent.
That actually happened to me in the woods once. Then I heard the wolves howl, and then I got the hell out of there. Not a good place to be at the time.
I agree, it’s what you don’t hear that scares you.
Interesting sidenote and very related. I live pretty close to a major international airport. Not enough that the sound bothers me but we do see planes constantly overheard. On 9/11 when they cancelled all the flights, no jet noise. That was so painfully out of place that I actually felt ill most of the day.
February 19th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I would like to agree with the comments made about the sudden silences, be it the vast reduction in electromagnetic hum with power outages (which makes going partially solar and being able to drop off the grid during the night so appealing – but that’s a digression) or nature going silent right before you turn around and find the bear that wants to eat you slyly grinning it’s beary grin.
I would posit that this use of silence, or not, in games is equally misused in film. After all isn’t film, particularly good film, a mind game? I think there is often actually an ‘increase’ in sound to accompany the approaching doom with the use of the soundtrack ‘suspense’ music.
In my game experience most recently (WoW) I notice the same effect. When approaching danger – the ‘scary’ music starts; when approaching safety – the ‘happy’ music. Although there is a lot of ebb and flow to the sounds surrounding the environment from footfalls to to the sound of rain, the game seems to lead you by the entrance of sound (music) as opposed to a lack of it.
February 19th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
To some extent, this is the same question of dynamics that has haunted recording engineers for twenty years.
How good is the consumer’s stereo? Will they notice when things become more quiet? Will people understand the idea behind “white noise” in an environment, or will they think that your game has buggy sound code? Will they even really notice a change in white noise levels, given that their sound card is probably doing a nasty resampling job on your audio before pumping it out through a cheap, noisy amplifier circuit (or two, or three, depending on the signal chain)?
I run into this all the time when recording interviews for work. Between the room noise and the recording chain, there’s all kinds of extra sound–and while it may be realistic, I’ve got to filter it out using ReaFIR before I hand it over for evaluation, because the brain’s selective hearing means that people expect “clean sound,” even if that’s not what they would have actually heard if they were there.
That said, just because there are technical reasons that removing ambient noise isn’t appropriate, it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong about the broader point. I think people in film have known this for a long time–I’ve been watching the Wire lately, and its soundtrack is notable for both its absence and its careful placement in the ambient audio of a scene (diegetic sound, in other words). The lack of soundtrack can add a lot of tension to a character moment. Games aren’t real big on this yet, but they will get there.