Ashley Friedland | What on Earth Happened: An Auditory Video Game

 
“What On Earth Happened: An Auditory Video Game” explores the inversion of audio and video in narrative video games. It investigates the use of audio as the driving function of a video game instead of graphics.
Games today are heavily based on graphics. Audio is often seen as a supplement to them. There have been several studies done on the influence of music in video games. Literature like Rod Munday’s “Music in Video Games” and Helen Mitchel’s “Plug-In to Fear: Game Biosensors and Negative Physiological Responses to Music” illustrate just how powerful music can be. If that’s the case, why does audio seem to take a backseat to visuals? Games like “What Remains of Edith Finch” and “#WarGames” started to put more emphasis on their audio. The first has the main character narrating throughout, acting as a guide. The second is several narratives playing at the same time, allowing the user to choose which ones to watch and listen to.
Players will put on headphones and play this game. An introduction narrative will play to provide a small amount of context. The player will then be allowed to maneuver the play space. Five different narrations will play in the space, starting and ending at different time intervals. Each describes a natural disaster that the person has experienced. After about four minutes, all narrations will be complete and the player will be called back by the introduction narrative voice. An ending narrative will play, closing out the game. Each player will experience this game differently, because each person will maneuver this space differently. Throughout the whole game, there will be limited visuals. The first 33 seconds show only a black screen while the introduction plays. A flashlight then turns on when it’s referenced. The player then moves around with this flashlight, lighting a small circle of light on the ground, plus any wall they come into contact with. Once the ending narration starts, the flashlight is turned off and the player is plunged back into darkness until the end narration finishes, ending the game.
Players must rely on the audio to play this game; the visuals are supplementary. This is to explore if audio can truly be the main focus. Confusion and frustration can bubble up from the lack of visuals, but that is expected and welcomed. Hopefully, those players will reflect on how heavily visual the games they play are. This project sits in the friction of the relationship between visuals and audio. It continually produces questions about this relationship, not only in games, but in films, art, and social media. With VR becoming increasingly popular, what will audio’s role in it (de)evolve into?
One thing that was an unexpectedly large part of this project was the prompting of players to move. Originally, it was something that was set to the side, expecting users to on their own have the urge to move and explore. Because this was proved to not be the case, certain visual and audio effects were put in place to help prompt the users to move. Visually, a “flashlight” was turned on near the end of the introduction. For the audio, the first narration was placed farther away so it was quieter. These ended up helping most of the users.