4.1 Acousmatic Function

The acousmatic function^[4] designates situations in which a sound unambiguously attributed to a visual object is audible without the corresponding object being seen. Michel Chion describes comparable manifestations in film with the term of the acousmatic: In a film an acousmatic situation can develop along two different scenarios: either a sound is visualized first, and subsequently acousmatized, or it is acousmatic to start with, and is visualized only afterwards.^[5] In current 3D games the players often have the task of establishing a transition from acousmatic to visualized sounds themselves by steering the viewing perspective in the direction of a sound, for instance, to see which object evoked it. Unlike film, where these kinds of situations are clearly defined during the sound editing, the permanent oscillation between acousmatic and visualized sound sources, which is controlled by the players, is essentially responsible for dynamically locating the player in the simulated game space. In some cases this is even elevated to the predominant game principle, for instance in games of the Metal Gear Solid series (Konami 1998–2008), where players have to hide from adversaries which they can only hear at first.