Sound Knowledge: Replacing Graphical User Interfaces in PAYDAY 2

Stephen Tatlow

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract

Payday 2 seems superficially similar to many other first-person shooters and stealth games. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) contains typical shooter indicators for health and ammunition alongside typical stealth-game indicators for suspicious and alerted enemies. However, Payday 2 also omits or limits a number of elements found in GUIs common to these genres, such as player radars, objective markers and ability timers. Instead, these commonplace GUIs are replaced with auditory interfaces.

This paper deconstructs two levels from the co-operative first-person stealth-shooter Payday 2 to demonstrate how auditory elements can be used within interactive media to replace elements of user interface that are conventionally visual. It examines music, dialogue and sound to build an understanding of how players must interact with the audio of the game.

To successfully navigate the game world and find ludic success, players must develop an understanding of the game audio in what seems similar to the knowledge described by Bourgonjon as “video game literacy”. This may help to immerse players more completely within the game following principles of Grimshaw and Ward, and allow us to establish a basis for examination of immersive audiovisual environments such as those found in virtual reality.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusUnpublished - Apr 2018
EventLudomusicology - HMT Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany
Duration: 13 Apr 201815 Apr 2018

Conference

ConferenceLudomusicology
Abbreviated titleLudo2018
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityLeipzig
Period13/04/1815/04/18

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