Theoretical Framework 3: The Sonic Game Space.

In the last article, I established video games as fiction, rules, and (trans-)media. The first two are embodied in Juul’s depiction of video games as half-real and grounded in narratology and ludology.

In this article, I’ll discuss these concepts in more detail and establish and introduce the theoretical concept of the sonic game space to discuss and understand the different functions of sound in the game space.

What is the sonic game space?

Let me first explain what I mean by the game space. The game space is the immersive space that emerges from the player interacting with the video games’ fiction and rules through gameplay.

Thus, the game space is the sum of the player’s interaction with the game as an object and the mental construct created by the player.

Sound fills out this space as sound connects with the player in the 3-dimensional Euclidian world – beyond the 2D graphical projection of the game on the computer monitor.

In his book Half-Real (2005), Juul gives a few examples of how narratives are connected to the game space, mainly through time.

Fx game time can be compared to the discursive time in narratives, and fictional time is comparable to story time in stories.

He also mentions how the player wants to identify with the protagonist in video games and that the characters’ goal becomes the player’s goal (Juul 2005:160). This is comparable to how we identify with the main characters in books and films.

Of the connection between stories (one type of narrative) and fiction, Juul writes:

Fiction is commonly confused with storytelling. I am using fiction to mean any kind of imagined world, whereas, briefly stated, a story is a fixed sequence of events that is presented (enacted or narrated) to a user. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is a story and a fiction, whereas a painting such as Georges Seurat’s La Grande Jatte is a fiction but not a story since it only presents one moment in time

(Ibid:122).

According to Juul, fiction can be viewed as any imagined world – even if said world is frozen in time.

Video games aren’t stories but fictional worlds where stories might unfold, and you interact over time.

Contemplating how video games are both objects and activity

There’ll always be a gap between the fictional world created in the game and the fictitious game space as the player imagines it through gameplay.

The fictional worlds of video games will never be complete. It’s up to the cognitive and interactive processes of the player to complete them.

This is similar to how the reader fills in the blank spaces (gutters) between two panels in a comic book, which might jump in both time and space. Or how the audience pieces together the meaning from the Kuleshov effect in films.

When Juul and others write that abstract games don’t project a fictional world, the graphics, sound, text, etc., doesn’t represent something else.

Let’s take Tetris as an example. A tetramino is just that – a tetramino – and doesn’t represent anything else. It’s not a virtual representation of an actual soccer player fx.

This is an understanding of fiction as something inherent to the game. The tetrominoes are fictional.

However, this approach doesn’t consider the fictitious elements that a player may imagine. It’s viewing the gameplay situation as the player interacting with the video game as an object and not considering the mental construct that emerges through this interaction.

As soon as you imagine the tetrominoes as falling bricks or LEGOs, which are falling due to some type of gravity (like I’ve always done), you’re creating your own ideas about the game.

It is still an abstract world, but it is a fictitious one.

If I were to draw a parallel to basic communication theory, you’d never know how the recipient will receive, interpret and act from your message.

Likewise, if a game is viewed as a message, you never know how it is interpreted and viewed in the gamer’s mind.

Because of this, I suggest video games are viewed as both object and (inter-)activity when we analyze the function of sound in the games.

Why sonic game SPACE?

The game space is the mental construction that emerges when the player interacts with the fictional worlds, rules, and narratives in video games. The interaction occurs through gameplay.

So why the concept of space?

First, video games – however abstract they may be – are a type of space the player can reach into and manipulate with agency.

Even if the game is entirely text-based or a 2D pixelated platform game, it still creates a type of space defined by rules that is separate from real-life.

Often 2D scroller games try to give the illusion of space by utilizing tricks such as parallax, where you have one or more different backgrounds moving at different speeds in relation to the player character.

In Tetris fx, the tetrominoes fall in a type of container, which defines demarcate the on-screen action. But the space is also the mental construct of the gameplay.

So “space” makes sense as an umbrella term containing multiple linguistic metaphors often used to describe video games.

Fx, the Norwegian video game researcher Kristine Jørgensen uses terms such as “transdiegetic space,” a “gameworld,” a “virtual environment”, and also a “gamespace” (single word).

All of these are linguistic metaphors for a space related to video games. I’ll get back to Kristine Jørgensen’s research in the next article.

Second, space is embodied in sound. No sound can be heard without space for the sound to travel in. And sound needs time to travel through the space and be perceived by the player. Thus, sound is closely connected to space and time in video games.

Notice that sound differs from audio, which refers to the audio files (data) on a storage media.

Closing Thoughts

In the conclusion of Half-Real, Juul writes, “I’ve called video games half-real, but an alternative term would be half-fictional” (Juul 2005:199).

This duality between rules and fiction is essential to understand sound in video games. The fiction gives the player hints about the rules, and the rules help support the fiction.

Together, rules and fiction let the player piece a coherent game space, which happens when the player interacts with the video game as an object through gameplay, which I find is best described by Arsenault and Perron’s concept of the “magic cycle.”

Understanding video games as half-real is also taking into account both the narratological and ludological discourse, which I find is essential to understanding and analyzing sound in video games.

My approach to this analysis is player-centric – as opposed to developer-centric – because we – as well as the players – don’t have access to the algorithms, sound engine, game engine, and developer ideas implemented in the game when viewed as an object.

What we can observe and discuss, though, is the gameplay situation and the sonic game space which emerges from this.

In the next article, I’ll break down the concept of diegesis and open up a discussion of whether or not it is useful for understanding sound in video games.