Audio immersion in games — a case study using an online game with background music and sound effects

Abstract

Immersion is term that is often used when describing how good a game is. However, there are different concepts of immersion and different opinions on what causes a player to become immersed. Previous studies have shown that immersion is an area of game development that has attracted great interest from gamers and researchers. Studies into areas such as player immersion have successfully shown that players can become immersed through graphics and audio features of games. Audio immersion is often overlooked in place of graphics and there is a general assumption that a game with high-quality graphics is more immersive than one with simple graphics. This paper reports on a study into the effects of audio features on player immersion. This was achieved by creating a prototype game that makes use of different applications of audio within gameplay. The effects of audio in the prototype were assessed via: (i) the creation of an online game with four levels (with and/or without sound effects and background music); and (ii) an online survey, which asked players to quantify how much they felt immersed when playing the game. Links to both were e-mailed to over 100 computing students, and completed by 30 recipients. The survey results show that many of the 30 players felt that the background music and sound effects increased their sense of immersion.