The importance of sound in video gaming cannot be stressed enough, as sound, like the sound around us, is what gives life to the reality of the world around us. The same is true of life-like or moving visual media like movies, videos, and interactive games; without sound, the medium would be incomplete, and the experience would be next to lifeless, as sound provides the sense of being there.

The Effects of Audio in Gaming

In the real world, we react to sound as part of our daily lives. Through sound, we can determine the environment around us and how we should react to it. If you're in the middle of a deserted road and you hear the chugging of a motorcycle coming closer, you become aware of an approaching vehicle and can take steps to assure your own safety in relation to it. You naturally move to the side of the road to let the vehicle pass.

So, imagine if you are in a game and you can't hear anything, you just suddenly see the motorcycle and its rider in front of you, by which time you can barely do anything as you find yourself thrown across the road as everything goes dark, and you may never wake up again. Game over. This alone shows how important the sound effect could have been in making things happen differently.

Sound effects in gaming provide a number of useful and important functions, as they are environmental signal indicators, as in real life. They provide spatial awareness of things that still cannot be seen, as in the example above. In gaming, sound also serves as feedback for actions, like reloading your handgun or opening a door; each action has its appropriate sound. The game has to inform you through sound that you did this or that, so when you step on a banana peel while walking, you'll hear the sudden "swish" as you come crashing to the ground.

Games, especially the scary ones, use sound effects and music to elicit certain (to be expected) reactions from you. They are designed to make you tense, scared, and shaking, thus establishing the reality and psychological situation in which you, as the player, find yourself. Sounds like the pitter-pater of rain, a blood-curling howl in the distance, the nearing sobs of the Witch in Left4Dead, the dragging of a chain close by, and all manner of sounds when combined with the extreme creepy environment of the game will surely give you goose pimples and elicit the feeling something or someone is watching you from behind as you sit in front of your PC or gaming console.

Then, a pin suddenly drops, and you scream!

Such is the satisfying feedback of sound effects that when you open an old book in the game, then flip through the pages, the partnered sound effects of the action (you could really hear the paper) make you feel like you are really flipping through a book in real life. Firing your 9mm pistol with the boom, the twang, and the splat as your crazed opponent goes down in Resident Evil, plus the groan of course, provides you with events happening in sequence and simultaneously as you hear and see them both. The complete reality is there.

Some gamers, especially those with poor vision, rely on sound to help them navigate through the game (UI and Gameplay), and play like everyone else. What they lack in detail, they try to make up for with sound. To this, sound effects, background music, and other audio cues provide not only a way for a complete and as realistic an experience as possible, but also as an aid for those who can benefit from it.

The Making of Sound

Usually, video gamers and movie watchers in general take sound for granted. However, sound practically plays the most important role in reinforcing the medium's reality, and creating these sounds is a whole lot more than what meets the eye.

The creation of sound effects for the live or moving visual medium goes way back to the 1900s and a movie stagehand (by general trade) named Jack Foley. During those times, movies didn’t have sound and were thus called "talkies" as when the characters communicated, it appeared as captions on the screen (this was the time of Charlie Chaplin). Foley and his team of stagehands were tasked with creating synchronized sound effects for on-screen actions as part of Universal Studios’ push for innovative cinema. Thus, the sound effects were applied to the 1929 film Show Boat as live audio tracks. These sounds included footsteps, crashes, door sounds, and other audio effects for the film's events.

This is where it all began, and Foley’s amusing and practical methods for creating recorded sounds became the foundation for cinematic sound design and engineering, simply known today as “Foley”.

From Movies to Games

Foley Effects, as these sound recordings are called, are recordings of everyday sounds that are used in both film and gaming to provide the realism of sound to the medium. In real life, a tank moving through a dirt road will sound exactly like a tank moving on the ground. In films, productions do use real tanks or mockups, and when a real tank sound cannot be obtained, the film production, or, as in games, the developers will turn to creating and recording Foley sound effects. Anything that they can get their hands on that sounds just like a tank moving on a dirt road, they will use to simulate the actual tank sound.

So yes, commandeering the tractor from the neighboring construction site, and recording it as it moves on the ground does sound like a tank. This is just one example, but audio developers are an innovative bunch, and as mentioned, anything and everything that can be used to simulate the needed sound is definitely on the table. These may include rubbing 2 kitchen knives together to simulate pulling a broadsword from its sheath during Skyrim combat, or knocking on wood to simulate footsteps. Removing the plug from a water-filled sink can sound like a gigantic water spout pulling ships into itself, and tearing a sheet of paper will provide a tearing sound useful for a number of things, so yes, that’s how simple and complicated it is at the same time.

Recording is just a step in an arduous process, as the audio will have to be polished and edited before being implemented into the game, to be triggered at certain points within the gameplay as dictated by the game’s design. With the sound-effect legacy Jack Foley created (before computers and video games were even a thing), modern-day video games can bring to life sounds that make things feel real, even if in reality the audio guy was just banging 2 pans together in the kitchen.