Uncanny Sound

One topic that’s always piqued my interest is the use of 8-Dimensional Sound to enhance immersion in video games, specifically horror games as well as the importance of sound design in relation to player fear. One small example of this that I’ve personally experienced is in an interactive lost-phone game called Simulacra developed by Kaigan Games, released in 2017. The entire game is played from the view of a phone screen, with a basic living-room layout in the background. The player barely even notices the background most of the game, but as the story progresses and the phone becomes more and more corrupted, the player will start to hear very subtle sounds that seem to utilize a dimensional stereo feature (you can hear the sounds and your brain can locate where they would be in a 3D space). Some of these noises are very low whispers, just barely noticeable. One, however, that stood out to me is a knocking sound that sounded so realistic that I actually thought someone was knocking on my door. This sent a shiver down my spine and genuinely freaked me out for a moment. This is the kind of sound design I’m most interested in for horror games.

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“The audio Uncanny Valley: Sound, fear and the horror game” by Mark Grimshaw of the University of Bolton could serve as a significant guide to enhancing fear through sound with the usage of the Uncanny Valley, a psychoanalytical theory first studied by Masahiro Mori. The term, “Uncanny Valley” refers to the dip in the graphical relationship between familiarity and human likeness in robots/artificial characters, as can be seen in Figure 1 (Grimshaw, 2009).

Uncanniness seems to be directly related to negative feelings of fear and unease. Grimshaw’s paper, “points out the theory’s focus on appearance and movement to the exclusion of sound and suggests that there is an uncanny in sound that might, in the future, be used to modify the Uncanny Valley theory” (Grimshaw, 2009). In simpler terms, Grimshaw believes that research into the uncanny sound design would prove extremely useful for use in horror video games. The goal of Grimshaw’s research is to “identify attributes of sound that contribute to the uncanny” in hopes of carving the way for useful sound algorithms to not only enhance immersion but to retain the same fear-factor throughout multiple play-throughs. By the conclusion of his paper, Grimshaw defines seven contributing attributes to uncanny sound (see Figure 2).

While these aren’t always guaranteed to work (some might accidentally give off a comedic feeling, depending on context) these attributes are noteworthy for game developers and sound designers to pay attention to.

My capstone project is most likely going to be an Augmented Reality Horror Game for Android and (eventually) IOS. Mark Grimshaw’s research into the sound specifics of the Uncanny Valley theory might prove to be extremely useful as I plan on utilizing sound design to the fullest extent, recommending headphones for play, whilst implementing the 8-dimensional sound design. I’d like to be able to achieve the same fear I felt while playing Simulacra but with an even more realistic sense by making my game in augmented reality similar to Kaigan Game’s previous successful horror lost-phone game, Sara is Missing (Kaigan Games, 2016).

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References

Grimshaw, M. (2009). The audio Uncanny Valley: Sound, fear and the horror game. Games Computing and Creative Technologies: Conference Papers (Peer-Reviewed), 1–7. Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/18ae/5832b64a3d8d145e5f0156e49b3eb0cf49d3.pdf

Kaigan Games OÜ. (2016, October 23). Sara is Missing. [Video Game]. Southeast Asia, Malaysia: Kaigan Games OÜ. Game located at https://saraismissing.itch.io/sim

Kaigan Games OÜ. (2017, October 26). Simulacra. [Video Game]. Southeast Asia, Malaysia: Kaigan Games OÜ. Game located at https://store.steampowered.com/app/712730/SIMULACRA/

Mori, M., MacDorman, K. F., & Kageki, N. (2012, June). IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 19(2), 98–100. doi: 10.1109/MRA.2012.2192811