Mobile Games and the Music Factor
Star Wars creator George Lucas famously said “half a movie is the sound.” But is the same true for mobile games?
According to a survey from audio platform Appington, around 73 percent of mobile gamers play with the sound switched on.
Spencer Hooks, director of the games business at Dolby says that if players aren’t listening to the mobile game, devs probably aren’t doing it right. Over the last few years, Hooks has challenged the mobile game devs he’s worked with to elevate the art of sound on mobile devices.
But how can devs elevate their mobile game’s audio to actually make a difference to the game’s bottom line?
Learn from those who came before
Singapore-based studio IMBA Interactive provides sound design for games like casual titles Zen Koi and the popular kids series Dr. Panda. Co-founders Sharon Kho and Gwen Guo believe that in order to create successful mobile game audio, devs must learn from other games.
The games that made the IMBA team stop and listen? Role-playing game Transistor and puzzler Limbo — two acclaimed titles which both made their way to mobile.
Guo says Transistor is a great example of both composition and implementation: “When players go into the ‘turn mode’ — which is when you plan your combat moves — the instrumentation fades into the background but the vocals come to the foreground.”
This tactic is one that allows story progression to pair with design and could ultimately affect user retention based on a more immersive experience.
“[The music fade] is something sound designers, composers and developers can pay more attention to,” Guo adds. “Instead of just providing a linear chunk of music, think about layers and how they can be implemented dynamically to make every experience different.”
Think about the device
One of the biggest challenges for mobile games when it comes to music is that it has to sound satisfying on a tiny device — similar to the challenges of designing a game or integrating ads for a mobile audience. Koukoi Games, developer of action game Crashing Season, worked hard to ensure that players could hear the entire spectrum of sounds in its game, particularly at the low end.
“The bass sounds simply cannot be properly replayed through basic mobile device speakers, often resulting in a tiny, treble-heavy sound,” says Koukoi’s marketing specialist Matti Luonua.
“One way to make the low frequencies sound better and make them easier to hear is to use saturation, which brings the higher frequencies of the bass sounds to the front,” he says. “This makes the ear realize that the bass sounds are there, even though you still can’t hear them that well.”
Luonua says that Koukoi reworked pretty much every sound from the early build of Crashing Season, to give the game more depth and “oomph”: “As the game development progressed, I found myself appreciating all the little details in the character animations. The game felt more complete as the newer sounds came in.”
While good sound is undoubtedly linked to game quality, it’s really hard to validate that with hard data.
“We don’t have data on our ROI per se,” says Guo, explaining that it’s really hard to attribute revenue growth to good audio, since audio usually plays a supportive role instead of being the main draw. “But validation comes in the form of awards, good reviews and testimonials,” she adds.
Sound can convey a story
Game designer Tim Garbos — the man behind the acclaimed iOS puzzler Progress to 100 and new interactive short It Ain’t Over Til the Fat Lady Sings — says devs should focus on audio being both useful and immersive. Some games, Garbos believes, shouldn’t necessarily rely on sound (particularly games that become everyday experiences like checking social media).
“Interacting with a game should feel just as responsive in the audio as it looks on the screen,” Garbos says. “In a puzzler like Progress to 100 you immediately need to feel if something is right or wrong. That feeling can’t necessarily be communicated only through visuals.”
Garbos explains that the audio designer he worked with, Martin Kvale, made the player feel immersed in the game by “painting with sound” to help enhance the abstract puzzles and turn them into connected scenes.
As long as there’s a reason and relevance to the sound, mobile game music may be an important differentiator for mobile game devs looking for some extra, as Luonua says, oomph.
