The video game Left 4 Dead is begging to be mentioned when one talks about creative ways of using diegetic and extra-diegetic sound in games. The survivor side of the game plays with high reliance to soundscapes, sound cues and music. So much in fact that you could say beyond the very basics of survival, everything in the game boils down to listening to what’s happening in the game.

L4D uses both character level and player level audio to support the game play. The very basic soundscape of L4D is made of player level music (well, more like long synth chords, most prominent at start of levels, to open up the level) and character level ambiance sounds of the environment like crows and sounds of thunder. This creates a very strong base mood for the game.

The second way sound happens is through the sounds of the player characters. First of all, they produce the sounds that you’d expect – when you shoot a shotgun, you hear a shotgun sound. When you move around muck, you hear squishy footstep sounds. But beyond these, the characters comment on the environment actively, even without the player telling them to. When they get attacked, they scream for help. When they notice one of them is low on health, they tell the other character to heal up, etc. This is fully happening on the character level. The player can intrude on the character level and command his character to say some of the pre-scripted things, for example to call out that there is a boomer ahead, around the corner even if the character is unaware of it. There is a player level audio bit to some of the character actions as well – getting attacked by a special infected will cause a dramatic song (again, mostly synth chords) to boom out from the loudspeakers. Also, worth mentioning that the characters’ dialogue sometimes dips into the metadiegetic level of story-within-a-story when they reveal things of their past or when their comments tell the story of the infection, as well as telling the player what the character-level story is (in the “We have to follow these tracks to an abandoned military base” style). (thanks Kham for pointing that last one out)

One of the ways people grief when playing Left 4 Dead is to make their character repeat some stupid line of their repertoire like “PILLS HERE” every second or so, causing the other players lose their ability to keep the character level separate from the player level, falling into disbelief of the whole character level of the game in the progress. Not to mention it’s annoying as hell when someone keeps shouting “PILLS HERE” in your ear.

The third way, of course, is the other actors of the game besides the player characters. The helicopter flies above you and use a megaphone to tell you to head to Mercy Hospital. A gas station explodes with a thundering roar. Infected people whimper and moan. And then there are the special infected. Each of them having a distinct sound following them. The smoker coughs, the boomer gurgles, the hunter snarls and then screams when he’s moving. The witch cries and sobs, and the tank roars. And when you hear the multitude of gnarls a horde of normal infected generate, you know there’s a lot of nasty heading your way. These are all character level sounds. When you turn your head in the first person mode, you notice the sounds move left to right and right to left, allowing you to pinpoint a boomer hiding behind the corner a long time before you see it, or hear the witch getting closer as her sobs grow louder. And spotting the specials before they are upon you is really the only way to survive on the higher difficulty levels, when things get tough in the game. On top of those, the witches, tanks and hordes also have a player-level musical theme, that emphasizes the mood of the situation – with the witch it’s a surreal melody that gets piano hits when the witch is almost agitated and turns into a panicing cacophony when she’s out to get you. With the horde, you get a couple of creepy chords a moment before the screeching starts and the masses start flowing. And with the tank, it’s a very doom-inspiring track that makes the player scared enough when the big bad things is coming.

There is a fourth level of audio in the game, if you happen to get into a team that is doing it. The game supports voice communication between the players via microphones. As any conversation between real people, this sometimes is just silly chatter to lighten up the mood. Sometimes it’s completely unrelated to the game, and sometimes it’s a repetition or extrapolation of something the characters could have communicated on their level. For example, a player might say “a hunter got me” to the microphone, even if the audio cues of the character level in the game could have given the same information to the other players (the characters shouting “A hunter got Francis” and Francis screaming “Get it off me”). Thus, there is a player level communication going on about the game as well as the communication that happens via the detour of the character level. And then there is singing. There always needs to be singing to the microphone. I have no idea why.

On IRC, I “hang out” on about a dozen channels these days. There’s one that’s actually quite active, but sadly, the activity is something that doesn’t really concern my life a lot anymore – it’s the channel for my old main subject’s student group. Then there’s a “nowplaying” channel, where music I listen to gets pasted on, in real time. Pretty much like last.fm does. Sadly, haven’t found a spotify-mIRC plugin, so not much of the music I listen to these days actually gets pasted there. And it’s very rarely someone listens to something there that grabs my attention. Then there are a couple of “legacy” channels – channels that used to be active, but have gone into some form of a hibernation in the past years. I join the channels, and hope someone would talk about something, but the best they can do really is paste a couple of links and not really comment on anything. Some of the channels I’m on are only about organizing games these days. RPGs or Online Games, depending on the mood and time. But there is nothing really interesting to chat about there either. And on the rest of the channels, people hang out because it would be impolite to leave the channel as the two or three other people you know would take offense. Some of these channels are silly to the point that the people on the channel won’t talk to you on the channel, but start a private conversation, killing any hope of some conversation happening on-channel.

In case it doesn’t show, I’m thinking of quitting IRC.

On MSN the situation is actually much better – While there’s only a handful of people I talk on it, the conversations are much better. Even if there’s not a community feel to the conversations, they at least seem to exsist. But there are a lot of dead contacts there as well. I don’t even know why I have half of the contacts I do, anymore.

Facebook, as Larsa put it the other day, is something that you thought you would hate, but is actually quite great when you got into it. For me, it’s not that important, except for the few people I keep touch in through it. There are of course downsides to every coin, but mostly it’s a very “cute” system of staying in touch with people without actually staying in touch. Or to internet-stalk your ex-girlfriends, if you’re into that sort of thing. The only thing that really bothers me about it is the careless way some people seem to regard their own personal information. Somehow there’s been an abundance of memes going round that, when seen by wrong people, can be used for malice. Like provide the reader with information like “your mother’s maiden name”, something that is used quite commonly as a user verification question.

City of Heroes has seen some turmoil in the past few weeks – the EU offices are being shut down and moved to the US, something that might cause horrors to the EU players. But that’s something that only time will tell. Meanwhile, a small group of people that I know only through the game provide me with lots of great humor and good cheer. The group of us (all many-year veterans of the game) do a couple of hours of teaming every now and then and catch on on the latest gossip. Stories of what has happened to one another (who has gotten married, who has been in a drunken bar fight this time) and to those that we haven’t seen online in a while (but someone in the group happens to know in real life). Compared to the other communication channels, the fact that I haven’t met any of the people I play these days with in real life makes it quite unique compared to the others.

Which leads to Left 4 Dead, another game I’ve been playing actively. The main difference between CoH and L4D crowds for me is the fact that there is voice chat in the game. The people I play with vary from those I know in real life to those I’ve never met. But not having to rely on keyboard to expres yourself, and the game being very action-oriented, changes the communication quite a bit – most of the things said are very much related to the gameplay, which leads to text that’s very, very shallow – I have no idea what’s going on in the other players’ lives, whereas in CoH someone might curse his girlfriend’s cat or other small things that are in no way relevant to the game, but are quite intimate.

I also mentioned Second Life. I’ve been a user for so long that they’re actually paying me to log in every week, but I’ve never really “got” the environment. I guess it’s all those flying obscenities that man can imagine that keep me distant from it, but I must admit, there are some good things here and there – “specs of light” as one might say. One is a garden decor store a friend of mine runs there – a shop full of very “normal” things for sale. It’s almost unnerving to see someone sell a well-crafted rock when you’re mostly used to seeing … well, unnerving things. And another thing I’m going to have to buff is the Second Life Shakespeare Company, that try to provide some meaning to the damn place.

None of these really beat human interaction on a “real” level. A phonecall from a friend usually means a lot more than him pasteing you a link of people walking across a road.