Haehn, L.; Schlittmeier, S.J.; Böffel, C. Exploring the Impact of Ambient and Character Sounds on Player Experience in Video Games. Appl. Sci.2024, 14, 583.
Haehn, L.; Schlittmeier, S.J.; Böffel, C. Exploring the Impact of Ambient and Character Sounds on Player Experience in Video Games. Appl. Sci. 2024, 14, 583.
Haehn, L.; Schlittmeier, S.J.; Böffel, C. Exploring the Impact of Ambient and Character Sounds on Player Experience in Video Games. Appl. Sci.2024, 14, 583.
Haehn, L.; Schlittmeier, S.J.; Böffel, C. Exploring the Impact of Ambient and Character Sounds on Player Experience in Video Games. Appl. Sci. 2024, 14, 583.
Abstract
Elaborate sound design, including background music, ambient sounds (sounds describing the game world), and character sounds (sounds generated by the character’s actions), plays a pivotal role in modern videogames. However, the influence of these different types of sound on the player experience has not been extensively researched. This study examines the influence of these sound types on immersion, avatar identification, fun and perceived competence. In two experiments, participants played League of Legends in four different sound conditions. The first experiment revealed a non-significant trend in the effect of character sound on avatar identification. Ambient sounds, however, were limited in this experiment because the task restricted participants’ movement across the game map. Consequently, we adapted the task to allow for a wider variety of ambient sounds in the second experiment. Here, a significant impact of character sounds on immersion, avatar identification, and fun, was observed, as well as an interaction effect of character sounds and ambient sounds on fun. Furthermore, we observed a trend, though not statistically significant, suggesting that ambient sounds may influence the player’s sense of flow. These findings underline the distinct effects of different sound types and we discuss implications for the design of sound in video games.
Keywords
subjective immersion; avatar identification; video games; ambient sounds; character sounds; soundscape; audio-visual interaction; game experience; sound design
Subject
Social Sciences, Psychology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
