Abstract
'A Living Forest' is an application that was built for the purpose of examining the role of ambient
sounds in open-world video games. It explores the potential of ambient sounds to contribute to
the narrative within games, provide player feedback and create character perception, while
maintaining a satisfactory level of audio-visual correspondence. The design of the application
was based on the input from multiple game sound designers from leading companies like Ubisoft, Guerrilla Games
and Pitstop Productions. All of these sound designers were interviewed
exclusively for this research. In the interviews they explain that, in open-world games, ambient
sounds are difficult to use for the purposes stated above due to the unpredictability in player
behaviour.
Taking this into account, the application uses an adaptive ambience system that is designed to
be able to minimise the risk of producing unwanted sounds, meaning; sounds that have the potential to
cause distraction to the player or cause clashes with any music tracks.
By trying out different settings in the ambient sound system and testing them in different virtual
environments, this research project concludes that ambient sounds can be a powerful and
flexible tool in informing narrative, providing player feedback and creating character perception
in open-world games and that there may be unexplored anwsers to the challenges that prevent game designers
from using ambient sounds as such. It suggests further experimentation and play testing to assess the
effectiveness of the solutions it proposes, and promotes a game audio approach with a smaller
focus on music and a broader role for ambient sounds.
Click here to download the research paper:
Graduation_Project_Koen_Schram_2022.pdf
Click here to see the application:
itch.io
