Virtual reality is a big thing in today’s world. While it’s still beyond the reach of many gamers – hello, huge price tag even for second-hand systems – it’s got a lot to offer, and more and more people are managing to get hold of these systems for at-home play. VR offers benefits that hardly need any introduction when it comes to their immersiveness. Feeling as though you’re actually standing in the world is every gamer’s dream. Being able to look around your living room and see tropical forests, dusty deserts, or strange planets sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi – but no, it’s here and it’s very real.
We’re not there on the other senses yet, of course; although haptic feedback is certainly a thing that many game controllers use, we haven’t figured out ways to realistically mimic temperature changes, the feel of solid objects, the smell of food – and perhaps fortunately, sensations like pain when your character gets shot. That said, when it comes to audio, we’re definitely at the point of success; sound effects have been incredibly realistic for years, letting gamers enjoy immersion on the audible level as well as the visual one.
But that leads us to a question. When we’ve got the visual immersion down so perfectly, does the importance of the other senses matter so much? After all, humans are a very visual species. Do we really care about the rest of the feedback in our VR worlds?
Answer: yes, audio still really matters. It’s time to find out why.
Sound Effects For Game Cues
Let’s take the online casino as our example of why both music and sound effects are still absolutely key to the experience of gaming. Say you’re in a VR casino. You’re playing your favorite game and watching the ball spin or the cards shuffle or the dice roll… but there’s no noise to accompany it. This doesn’t just dent the experience; it’s actually oddly unsettling. Our brains expect a sound, and when no sound is forthcoming, they don’t quite know how to handle it. The sound is actually a huge part of our understanding of the game; it tells us when a win has occurred, when a lucky card is drawn, when the dice fall in our favor. Without it… well, try playing your favorite casino experience on mute sometime and you’ll see what we mean.
For example, imagine you’re playing Omaha poker. At your favorite casino website, you’ll likely quickly adjust to the sound effects that you can expect, and your brain will automatically translate these into info about the game. If you’re playing online Omaha poker at Ignition casino, you’ll very quickly memorize the sounds that accompany wins and you’ll start to respond with excitement whenever you hear these. Indeed, our brains code sounds on a very fundamental level – as you’ll have realized if you’ve ever had just a couple of notes from a song set the whole tune playing in your head.
So we’re not just depending on the audio for immersion, but for information about the game. The sound effects tell us what’s going on and make the whole process more engaging because we’ve got clear signals – just as important as the visual aids – to keep us up to date about what’s going on.
But what about in the VR world? Well, in a place with so much immersion, it’s actually even more important to have audio clues to help you understand what’s going on. It’s positively disorienting to be in a silent VR world, without any guidance from your ears as to how the game is progressing.
Music For VR Games
It’s not just the sound effects, though. The music is key too! It’s playing many major roles, one of them in creating an overall ambiance that makes the game immersive. If you’re playing in a brick-and-mortar casino, you’ll notice sound is all around you – and that’s true online too.
Take slots as a great example of this. Pretty much all slot machines incorporate music, and that’s true both digitally and physically. Music gets us engaged and enthusiastic, helping us lose ourselves in the world of the game. If you check out this Thundercrash Slots Review, you can hear how peppy, vibrant music is being used alongside the sound effects to help the player enjoy the game to the max.
And that translates very much to VR – again, perhaps to an even greater degree. If a casino wants to create an experience that is immersive, having games and machines that you can walk up to that will play a catchy theme, just like in a brick-and-mortar casino, is pretty vital.
Now, do we think VR video games will all have a background soundtrack going on? It seems pretty likely! When you look at all the major, mainstream titles that have been released in recent years, you’d be hard-pushed to find many that don’t incorporate cheerful or despondent tunes, often changing to fit the narrative arc. Music is a key to helping people feel certain emotions, meaning that it’s a vital asset for game developers everywhere when they consider immersion. Music, as Keeley Moss helps us understand, is a crucial element of storytelling, another facet of this time-honored human activity that helps us enjoy games to the max. It doesn’t have to be a complex, sprawling narrative to work – music aids us on all levels, whether we’re seeing the world as a wrap-around 3D immersive image with haptic feedback enhancing the experience, or simply looking at a few pixels on a screen.
