Thursday 25 October 2012

A Brief (Audio) History of Video Games


A short instrumental video composed of recognizable, distinguishable sound files from various popular games made over the years - a homage from all games from Pong and the era of Atari to Assassin's Creed and Metal Gear. The video is little more than this but it still accurately depicts the changes gaming has gone through in the short period of 20 or so years, and makes me wonder what the future heralds. From genre, gameplay, and elements like the UI - and of course, the sound and music involved, everything about gaming and games over the last few decades is celebrated musically in this three minute long clip. 

The entire song is composed only of sounds made in video games, many of which the majority of gaming audiences will recognize. I think this is a warming testament to the power that sounds have in gameplay, considering that some of them we will hear over and over and over again, they need to sound good enough to be heard as often as they will be. For example, the sound of a basic attack must sound satisfying and gratifying enough to hear over and over again, whereas the sound of obtaining some sort of reward or earning an achievement must have higher gratification. Now the sounds themselves are conditioned to reward us with this gratification and I think this why listening to the song in this video communicates so well with many gamers.

There is also a similar track focusing solely on the PC game platform.


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