Psychology in Video Game Sound Design: Dynamic Sound Frequency Associations and Gap Effect

Abstract

This thesis contains a study on video game sound design with applied psychological theories. The goal of the study was to improve the effectiveness of sound design by applying psychology. In this study, two specific psychological principles were tested. First, the coherence of the association between sound frequency and visual size/ object distance was put to test in the first part of a short video game. Second, the extent to which the gap effect, or the gap in sound, induces tension in the player was studied in the second part of this short video game. After participants played the different parts of the game, they answered the corresponding questions in a questionnaire as the tool to measure their experiences. The results indicate that the coherence in the associations between dynamic sound frequency and size/distance are unclear. However, the results regarding the experienced immersion and enjoyment of the game with the dynamic frequency were relatively high. On the other hand, the gap effect did not prove effective in either inducing felt tension on the participants nor in improving the immersion and enjoyment of the game.