Awareness

	The card's front face	The card's back face

Synopsis

Sound promoting awareness for some gameplay aspect.

Relationships

Context:
Gameplay File:M385px-Gameplay-front-v20.png.
Relates to:
Emotional Script , Narrative .
May use many, including:
Character Soundprint , Failure , Achievement , No Can Do , Hurry Up! , Window of Opportunity , Beacon Locator , Identification , Ouch! , Imminent Death , Seeking for PC , Unaware NPC , ....

Description

Sounds of Awareness expose aspects of a circumstance that demand some degree of attention, relevant to Gameplay. These stimuli may either evidence a problem, inform about a state, emphasize an opportunity, or reinforce a positive happening.

Many of the sound explorations in a game could be classified as Awareness. Still, some of the explorations approach very specific problems for which also specific solutions have been found. Those include Failure, Achievement, No Can Do, Hurry Up!, Window of Opportunity, Beacon Locator, Ouch!, Imminent Death, Seeking for PC, Unaware NPC. Even PC's and NPC's Character Soundprint serves the purpose of informing about the character's closeness, Identification, health state, etc.

To a certain extent, sounds of Awareness are mostly unidirectional -- that is, they output something. Yet, if these sounds are designed in a way that they effectively produce changes in the player, namely in terms of the Emotional Script, they may be instrumental to shape the players input.

Examples

In Tomb Raider Underworld, the signaling of checkpoints is done exclusively through sound (a Sound Effect). In Crysis, the warning of critical energy, that for instance voids the invisibility feature of the PC's suit, is communicated by the equipment through a voice message Dialogue. In Assassin's Creed, the identification of nearby guards is signaled by a pulsing Sound Effect.

Tomb Raider Underworld: Checkpoints are (exclusively) signaled through sound.

Shadow of the Colossus: A sound warns when Wander ought to find a resting stance, otherwise he will lose grip and fall, most likely to death

Crysis: [pending] The voiced warning makes the player learn that the suit's invisibility is about to be compromised.

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Assassin's Creed: A pulsing sound tells that there are attentive guards nearby. Blending with the crowd, as when sitting in a bench, diverts their attention (and consequently the sound mutes).

External Resources

References to the role of sound as a display