The Psychology of Sound

In all forms of media sound is used to create a certain feeling or background that links with the media used, below are how use of sound psychology, has effected me through media.


you look at films like Lord of the Rings or Dragonheart, Big fantasy pieces of music that want to immerse you into that large fantasy world; this also rings true to many fantasy style games like world of warcraft and fire emblem; large orchestral tunes, can vary due to situation but are used to add that overall immersion.

When it comes to psychology no genre is better at exploiting it than the horror genre; panicking or subtle. For example Amnesia the Dark decent uses sound to constantly keep fear in the player, using the environment and music, to build paranoia and suspense making the player scared by their own shadow, and with the characters own scared screams.

Lots of games make good use of sound to keep you engaged when you are doing basic tasks, for example to huge sound tracks in Starcraft 2 keep up the pace as you build units and your base up, and then change to add to the tension as a game gets going.

As for music, a lot of heavy rock I have listened too (artists like "Disturbed) often seek to enrage me, or get my blood pumping, get adrenaline flying around the body. games make use of this aswell, especially action games like devil may cry, where the music has to keep up with the pace and violence.

Music and sound is a key part of games design, and all those iconic characters would be nothing without their sounds behind them, like Mario or Halo.

Below are some links to youtube videos:

Warcraft Music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXhAKAHSe7k

Amnesia trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1nY_5-UrY4

Starcraft 2 race theme music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcghLSIpZlM

Disturbed - Indestructible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj2vU2nr5Jw

Devil May Cry 4 song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOpe2zborw0&feature=related

Halo 3 theme
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om0M6Ol8FjQ