A Game Design Vocabulary – Anna Anthropy

The pitch of these sounds communicates three things. Most importantly, it tells the player that her actions are having a cumulative positive effect, that she should continue doing what she’s doing. It also tells her when the effect has plateaued. Finally, when the bonus times out and resets, so does the pitch of the sound, so when the player hears the pitch drop, she knows the chain has been broken.

The sound that accompanies any fruit tells the player, concisely, where in the game’s reward structure she currently is. And the expectation of successive notes combined with the disappointment of the pitch resetting creates a strong drive to perform well and not break the chain. Sound as Texture Sound can also be used as texture. In Dig-Dug (1982), a little tune plays whenever the player is moving, digging through the dirt.

The tune stops as soon as the player stops moving, giving way to silence and the sound of prowling monsters. In Dig-Dug, the player is hunting monsters, building passageways to try to goad them into the range of her weapon. If the player isn’t moving, it’s because she’s waiting for a monster to come into range so that she can attack it.

But the proximity of a monster is also a dangerous opportunity for that monster to catch the player. The sudden silence, the interruption of the little digging tune, builds the tension. Something similar is done in Lesbian Spider- Queens of Mars, also a game where the player alternates between chasing antagonists and lying in wait for them.

A little melody plays when the Spider-Queen is moving and goes silent when she’s not. In Knytt (2006), the predecessor to Knytt Stories (discussed in the next section), a soft scampering sound accompanies any of the protagonist’s motions—her running, jumping, and climbing across the strange caverns and crevices of an alien world. This little sound—a gentle rustle in scenes that are otherwise silent save for the sound of wind—does a lot to emphasize the hugeness of the world, the smallness of the protagonist’s intrusion upon it. When the player is still, the sound goes away, and the austerity of the planet’s near-silence is restored.

This sound helps to characterize the relationship between the player and the world. Fotonica also uses a sudden change in the texture of a scene’s sound to great effect. It uses sound to strengthen the player’s empathy with the protagonist, to help her better inhabit the game rules. When the player is performing well enough, maintaining a fast enough speed as she runs, a golden haze falls over the screen and the scene’s musical score becomes muffled.

The running and jumping sounds that accompany the player’s movement, always present though normally quiet, now come to the forefront.

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Click the link to view the print-fidelity code image. To return to the previous page viewed, click the Back button on your device or app. 1kitap1.com/en A Game Design Vocabulary Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design Anna Anthropy Naomi Clark Upper Saddle River, NJ • Boston • Indianapolis • San Francisco New York • Toronto • Montreal • London • Munich • Paris • Madrid Capetown • Sydney • Tokyo • Singapore • Mexico City 1kitap1.com/en All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or service marks have been appropriately capitalized.

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Book Information

• Unique ID: db2f8d03cea6ee2b
• File Extension: .pdf
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• Title: –
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• ISBN: 9780321886927, 0321886925
• Pages: 408
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 386.31 minutes
• Total Words: 77,263
• Total Characters: 455,787
• Average Words per Page: 189.37
• Average Characters per Page: 1117.12

Most Frequent Words

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