Psychology of Sound and Game Music
For the Psychology of sound. Psychology sound is base on the set mood, and emotion of the video game where give impact to the player example happy mood, sad mood, mystery mood and much more. Therefore, the video game that will be judge in terms of the sound of the music is “Outlast”, that one of the best horror game that can be play in console and PC. Fig.6 shows the poster of “Outlast” game.
Figure 6
Furthermore, this game will be describe in terms of the selected scenes that mention below that are base on the:-
ü Intro
ü Outro
ü Cutscene
ü Jumpscare
While in terms of the Game Music where use to add more feelings inside the video game such as the uses of loudness inside the game example the volume of the background music are start to become high or low and the uses of any instrumental or timbre sound use such as violin, piano and much more that use to make it more dramatic on the scene. As a result for the each selected scenes above will be explain base on:-
ü The mood of the sound
ü Loudness of the sound
ü Timbre of the sound
INTRO
Now for the first one will be explaining on the Intro, talking about the mood of this scene which are this scene give horrific and mysterious type of mood. Where in terms of the loudness will be, the background music of this scene are slowly volume up and volume down. Also there used sound effects when the player click the button, that can be heard "bam" sound to give more scary feels to the player. Therefore, in this scene also can be heard in terms of the timbre. Where the scene use violin music that played slowly and sometimes hit the high pitch, that can makes people goosebumps when hearing it. Video 4 below shows what the sounds like for the intro of "Outlast" video game.
Video 4
OUTRO (END CREDITS)
While for the outro or end credits scene, can be heard from Video.5 below in terms of the mood it give the same mood horrific and suspend mood. This is because of the loudness of the sound, where from the start only the loudest one is the acapella sound that slowly change and add the upbeat music that also slowly loud follow the sound of acapella. That they combine the sound of acapella and the fast beat to make more suspend. Therefore, this scene that made it much scarier due to the timbre that they use, where one of the instrumental that can be heard clearly is the sound of drum. That played every few second, that create attention to the player.
Video 5
CUTSCENE
Furthermore, will be judging for the cutscene of the video game. Video.6 below shows one of the cutscene from the video game. By hearing from the Video.6 below, the mood that can be given to this scene is horrific and mysterious mood. This is because of in terms of the loudness that makes it mysterious. Where, can be heard from the starting of the cutscene, are the sound effects of the car and the sound of the radio itself. However, after a few second further, the loudness of the radio changing due to lost signal and the background music of this scene being to be loud This is really shows that, the sound itself like telling the player that, the character are already near or arrived at the scary and mysterious place. However, talking about the timbre, it the same like from the intro scene due to they use the same music for the intro and the first cutscene of this video game.
Video 6
JUMPSCARE
For the last scene that will be judge is from the jumpscare scene or from the chasing scene of the video game. For this scene is quite different to others scenes, where the mood is more into panic type of mood because of since the character been chase by someone automatically, the mood is more into panic. Meanwhile, in terms of the loudness, for the few from the Video.7 below can be heard that the sound of the character quick breathing that shows the character feels afraid and panic as well as exhausted from running. But after a few second, the sound of the enemy can be heard. That also change the loudness of the scene which the background music started to play that telling the player, the enemy start to chase the character again and also telling that the character need to run away again. In addition, on that part also can be heard the sound of the enemy slam the door that shows the enemy are coming near the character place. Furthermore, in terms of the timbre of this scene. It quite hard to tell what specific instrument that they use that create the panic sound. However, it safe to say that they used mostly all the orchestra instrumental which they combine to create the panic emotion.
Video 7