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The State of Game Audio
The extent to which a game's sounds and music can affect a player's enjoyment is often overshadowed by other characteristics, such as graphics or gameplay. That said, I'm sure most players have had an experience where the audio really contributed to making the game great, whether it was an epic soundtrack, excellent narration, or just intuitive sound effects. Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running a feature discussing the state of game audio in today's market, discussing how far it has come, and where it's going.
"Games present some unusual problems, like the mix having to adjust itself to suit a situation created by the player, rather than the static vision of a single director. Game designers have to have a flexible attitude towards factors such as the amount of time spent listening to the same piece of music and the potential for sonic overload if too many game sounds are played simultaneously. ... CryTek's Florian Füsslin explained that Crysis' lavish soundscape was defined primarily by what information the player needs to hear. 'We often went for the concept "less is more" or let's better say "important things first." We used a pretty solid priority system which cuts quiet or unimportant sounds in an audio busy situation like combat. Together with the right mix we were able to provide a dense soundscape in all situations players might run into.'"
Portal still holds my vote for best videogame audio. It really helped build the game's atmosphere.
Some games on the the other hand, just slap a stupid rock-techo-pop beat on it, just for having something. (I'm looking at you C&C3)
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
Sure it can. On PC games I always turn music off- I'd rather hear Vent (in online games) or have an mp3 player on. I can't remember the last game I actually kept the music on for, other than guitar hero.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
As I see it, the only thing missing is a decent 5.1 channel headset to hear it all on. Sure we can all afford 5.1 or 7.1 channel speakers, but most of us can't blast them while playing.
I've listened to more than a few 5.1 channel headphones. None of them meet my expectations. Game audio was meant to take advantage of multi-channel digital sound. Since 90% of the gamers I know use headphones or headsets, isn't this the next logical step? Most of the 5.1 headphones are only 5.1 virtual channels. Those few that are real 5.1, are so disappointing. The Razer barracuda HP1 set was just a complete waste of money. I'm waiting for the first company to come alone and make a true 5.1 channel digital headset with a removable boom mic. Then my games will come alive finally.
necessary features include these:
dolby digital certification.
very low impedance drivers.
comfortable closed circumaural design.
digital coax plug for phones.
discrete voice drivers and standard phone jack for them and mic.
robust and discrete woofer driver. Sony's 50mm HD driver used in its upper end MDR 7xx/9xx series should do the trick.
discrete synchronized positioned drivers for center channel.
positioned drivers for FL/FR.
discrete positioned drivers for RL/RR.
onboard DD decoding and DTS decoding.
high quality amplification components.
one of the real problems that most of the 5.1 phones face is their common ground conductor. This leads to joint stereo and muddies up the positioning.
If I had the time and the cash, I'd build a pair for myself, but they'd most likely be analog.
They're using their grammar skills there.