Essential Functions For Sound In Educational Games

I took an interpretive phenomenological approach to examine what it is like to experience sound while playing educational games. I asked six people to play three educational games, over 18 interview sessions. I collected interview and video recording data and used phenomenological research techniques to code 1,738 meaning units across three games. I organized these meaning units into constituents of meaning for each game studied, and derived 76 constituents of meaning across three games. I used a 7-step reductive process to derive essential meanings to situate a discussion about sound in each of the games studied and aggregated eight shared essential meanings to represent various ways in which sound affects participant experience of playing educational games. According to participant responses, sound conveyed a sense of the game’s interface in addition to the environment in which play was situated, supported the presentation of characters in the game and worked to communicate the game’s narrative to the player. Music in the games studied helped to provoke thought and also conveyed an emotional context for play. Sound supported players’ overall engagement in these games, but the absence of sound removed this engagement. Critically, people noticed when the visuals that they saw did not match the sounds that they heard, thus highlighting the importance of synchretic pairing of sound and visuals. These essential meanings represent the potential for designers to apply sound in ways that functionally impact player experience and engagement.