Playing with Sound: A Theory of Interacting with Sound and Music in Video Games

by Karen Collins

An examination of the player's experience of sound in video games and the many ways that players interact with the sonic elements in games. In Playing with Sound , Karen Collins examines video game sound from the player's perspective. She explores the many ways that players interact with a game's sonic aspects—which include not only music but also sound effects, ambient sound, dialogue, and interface sounds—both within and outside of the game. She investigates the ways that meaning is found, embodied, created, evoked, hacked, remixed, negotiated, and renegotiated by players in the space of interactive sound in games. Drawing on disciplines that range from film studies and philosophy to psychology and computer science, Collins develops a theory of interactive sound experience that distinguishes between interacting with sound and simply listening without interacting. Her conceptual approach combines practice theory (which focuses on productive and consumptive practices around media) and embodied cognition (which holds that our understanding of the world is shaped by our physical interaction with it). Collins investigates the multimodal experience of sound, image, and touch in games; the role of interactive sound in creating an emotional experience through immersion and identification with the game character; the ways in which sound acts as a mediator for a variety of performative activities; and embodied interactions with sound beyond the game, including machinima, chip-tunes, circuit bending, and other practices that use elements from games in sonic performances.

Genres: Music, Video Games, Nonfiction

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 11, 2013

Reviews

[Mark Poulsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book expanding Collin's previous framework for understanding sound presented in Game Sound. Here she focuses on reception of sound, specifically detailing the unique character of interacting with sound rather than being a passive listener. Multimodality and embodied interaction are central to this understanding, and one main point is that we must understand when interaction and sound work together; synchresis but without images.

There is also a lot of work detailing the social, cultural and interpersonal traits of video games. Here sound is not a formal property but a mediator and method for social interactions and co-creation. It is then central that when the player experiences the game, the setting, social dynamics and so on are hugely influential, and not just that, but the player is actively "embodying" the interactions with sound creating a multitude of interesting things to discuss in game worlds from live performances to importance of whether one uses voice chat or not. This was just a veeery short recap so it does not substantially cover the concepts explored in the book.
Give it a read, but I recommend also reading ethnographic investigations of online and social play such as Communities of Play or Play between Worlds. They offer a very useful basis for understanding this perspective on multimodality, embodied interactions with sound and the importance of sociality in these dynamics.

[Cristina Aguilar · Rating 3 out of 5]

El comienzo tiene ideas muy buenas, pero más adelante deja de tener importancia el sonido, para perderse en términos de interactividad sin más. Es una pena, para los pocos libros que hay sobre el tema.

[June Bash · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of the research and theories put forth were certainly interesting, but I felt that much of it went beyond the proposed scope of the book and would have fit better in a more general video game theory book rather than one focused on video game sound and music. To a certain extent it's understandable, as it's necessary to have a certain amount of background in the theories revolving more generally around video games, but they quickly began to overwhelm the segments about game sound. I may also admittedly be a tad biased as I was interested in the book primarily for its commentary on game music, whereas most of its commentary was on game sound. Still, I enjoyed most of it.