Stargate Worlds: Audio Clues During Gaming

Sound Designer Nick LaMartina has posted a blog about music and sound within Stargate Worlds. His aim is to make sure that quest clues, for example, are not only visual but auditory as well:

SnakeCharmer brought something up recently on the forums that I agreed with, and I felt it would make a good blog post. He noted:

"Players are given more visual clues than audio clues, because in the past developers have conceded that a fair number of players eventually turn the music and/or all sound down and listen to their music."

I feel that he's right, and that's exactly the problem.

Let's say you're helping design a product. The part that you're designing tends to be the first thing that customers rip out to replace with an after-market part. You know this, and it's been this way for years.

Now let's think about this. What is your motivation? If you go to work every day with the assumption that no one cares about your work, that it's replaceable, and that it will be the first thing to go, are you really going to come in every day ready to blow people away? Are you going to be motivated to do any kind of noteworthy work if you assume people will just toss it away anyway?

No, of course not. You'll come in, drag your feet, and put only a minimal amount of work into it because hey, people don't want this anyway. They might not even notice if we took it away in the first place.

So then your customers will treat your work exactly as you expect them too. You'll meet their already very low expectations. They'll see how lackluster and boring your part is, they'll strip it out, and they'll put something else in to replace it. It's a never-ending cycle. You don't create good work because they won't appreciate it, and they won't appreciate it because you don't create good work.

Well I think that's crap.

The solution, I believe, is to create something new, better, and fantastic. Don't wait for them to become interested. Give them a reason to be. Look at the problems, be creative to come up with unique solutions, and re-define the purpose of this particular part. Maybe, just maybe, it's disposable because it was created to be disposable. Maybe the fact that so many people find it disposable is because it's been designed wrong from the start, and maybe if we really take the time to sit down and ponder why this part is here, maybe then it can be redesigned to be useful, elegant, and appreciated. It might even be totally unrecognizable when it's all finished and done, but it will be a step in a new direction that we haven't gone before, and since we know the old way isn't working, we can feel pretty confident in labeling this as "progress".

And that's a lot of maybes. So maybe I'm wrong. But judging from the enthusiastic reactions I've gotten so far, I'd say I'm right.

And I'd say you all have something very special to look forward to.

Many players game with the sound off so, in a sense, this will force them to turn it on. Good thinking.