Soundless Guitar Hero...not that fun
my friend mandi and her husband raymond came to visit for the weekend--yay--and while they were here, we took the obligatory trip to our local gamestop. raymond owns a gaming business. while we were in there, a few nerdy looking boys were playing various games around the store, including a dude playing guitar hero like mad--with no sound!! first of all, is that cheating? second of all, i'm really intrigued by the sound element of video games. so i'd like to take a quick poll: is the sound on a video game essential to your success/enjoyment of the game?
anyone who has the ability to play guitar hero needs a therapist.
Comments
yes...
depending on the game.
i tried to play bioshock while my sound hardware was goofy... and thought it was junk.
issue resolved, i started over, and learned that bioshock is anything but junk, but it's desperate for sound.
but for games like world of warcraft? not so much. i'm not playing WoW for the immersion - in fact, immersion in that game is unusually independent of graphics and sound. i frequently turn the sound off and play music instead while WoWing it up.
a therapist? good thing i'm out of guitar hero practice... i can't afford therapy.
Seconding Nick on this one,
Seconding Nick on this one, totally dependant on the game.
In some games the sound can be an integral part of the play mechanic. For example, there's a whole genre of stealth games where the goal is to sneak around and be, well, stealthy. You need to hear the enemies' movements (via footsteps perhaps) and be able to hear how much noise your own avatar is making.
At other times, the music that accompanies the game can be incredibly important to the emotional/affective experience. This is no different from a movie that employs music to a successful mood heightening purpose. The Final Fantasy RPGs come to mind as games with incredibly important soundtracks as far as the experience goes.
And then there are times when, no, the music is bland or repetitive and really just gets annoying (older NES games are notorious for this evilness).
Guitar Hero without sound sounds ridiculous. Go play Simon Says.
Another "that depends"...
With all the talk of visual rhetoric this discipline does I think we forget that the senses often work in tandem. And we forget about auditory rhetoric. Musak anyone?
I think your question raises (at least for me) other questions related to the dominance of visual culture. How is sight privileged (in games) even when the objectives appear to require other senses? Why do we ignore the other senses when we (in "real life) cannot separate them out into neat categories. I think we ignore (in huge ways) the importance of senses working together to create knowledge and to "read" texts. I've felt this way as I study visual rhetoric (and it's one of the reasons I abandoned studying it more).
To answer your question, though, there are games--like ALL of the ones I'm currently playing--that don't need sound to play the game or even to enjoy it. One has lots of "magic" sounds (as I like to call sounds that bling and chime), crackling fire, and paper turning. The sound makes the game "feel" more "real." Two of them can become annoying with the SOUND THEY COME WITH...but I'd like to add that I never do ANYTHING devoid of sound. And more often than not, I choose to fill that sound space with music of my own tastes. Some people have the TV on, some have a fan for white noise, etc...
Parts of the rabbit game that I've played at Wiindy's on the Wii REQUIRE sound to play; you have to listen for something and then respond. And as Wiindy & I have discussed, the Wii seems designed to include more senses than other games. At least sight, touch, and sound. W & I think these extras add something to game play--but what that is remains to be investigated. It would be interesting to have a game with taste and smell...ew.
And Guitar Hero does seem rather diluted if there's no sound. What would Lars and Matt (Anderson) bop their heads to while they play?