I’m sorry for not answering to your critique before, but I just recently came across your blog. First of all I want to say that I appreciate that find my article important enough to criticize it, but I also need to point out a few shortcomings in your critique, which doesn’t really grasp what the article is all about.

“Here’s my critique, which I think is focused on the sort of simplifying distinctions a lot of game studies people make (especially in assuming a sort of average player when referring to the player)”

This article does not assume “a sort of average player”. If you read the last paragraph of “The Battleground and the PvP Systems”, you will see that this article is based on “a study of video recordings of four empirical players' performance in AB, WSG and EOTS”, in which four max level characters are being played. These are experienced players, who also were consulted on my analysis before the article was published. So even though this is a common criticism of gamestudies, and a weakness of many analyses in the field, the research in this article is in not based on the “ideal player figure” that you describe in your critique.

“I’d bet there are WoW players out there who gain an advantage from being able to tell such things. And if not audible, then certainly the visual clues of what spell is being cast are identifiable by players. And the difference between such spells is integral to countering them (dispel, heal, remove curse, etc.) or at least understanding how they will change the combat situation. It is this ignorance of the depths of gameplay and player experience that often makes me annoyed by academic game studies.”

One of my primary goals of this article is to do exactly what you criticize the field of gamestudies for – namely to take into account the “depths of gameplay” and analyse a very specific game context and show how the and the player’s understanding of the situation affect how we interpret a specific sound. If you read the line you are quoting in context, you will see that I argue that we need to understand auditory signals in a broader context. What I write is that not all information available in an auditory signal is of equal importance at all times, and that there are some situations in which players do not need to know exactly what spell he is being attacked with. As a matter of fact, less experienced players may not even know all abilities of all classes, and even less distinguish between them. It is still possible for those players to understand the urgency of the situation.

“Here again the intelligent player will likely register, even in the midst of heavy fighting, the sound that means another base is being assaulted, updating his mental conception of the game with the knowledge that there are enemies assaulting the other base, and responding appropriately tactically (perhaps by running over to the other base after finishing his current fight, perhaps by running over there now to help, knowing the other situation is more critical).
It’s possible of course that he may not register the sound given all the other sounds he’s paying attention to; here the foreground-background distinction makes more sense (although I’d argue it has to do as much with fundamental attentional limits than a conscious choice)”

Again if you read closely, what I write is not that the player doesn’t hear these sounds, but that he immediately is able to filter out which sounds are more relevant for the situation that he’s in. The relevance of a sound is something that every player needs to evaluate in every situation, and his understanding of how well his team is doing is an important feature in deciding what sound should be interpreted as the most important.

“What a surprise! These sounds, like every other property of the game, matter. They contribute to background noise which may make the above-mentioned interpretation of other sounds more difficult. (even if selectively ignored, there is probably some neuron dedicated to processing taken up by ignoring sounds, though perhaps at less cost than of distinguishing them)
There are also gameworld sounds which do have relevance: the plane flying over in de_train in Counter-strike 1.6 which indicates locational shifts (or the lightning in de_aztec which does the same). I am nitpicking here, but there are perhaps situations in which even the wood chopping has direct relevance to players’ actions. A blinded character (or player) could pick out his location in relation to it (as he can with any repeating sound that fades with distance and has a rather definite direction).
And I do think, however selective hearing and memory, that the player remembers locations in some way in relation to all their properties; the lumbermill without the woodchopping would not be quite as well remembered and thus played in.

In this case the usability is not fixed, every one of these possible consequences depends again on very specific details of game situation which are interpreted by the player. While these may be relatively realistic in a very general case, there are often situations where a DoT means death and direct damage may not, or where the other player being attacked is more important to the outcome of the fight than you are (or where you are healing him and thus keeping him alive is important), etc. etc. blah blah blah.”

Of course background sounds (“gameworld-generated sounds”) do matter for the game. What I argue is that in WoW’s PvP Battlegrounds, they do not provide any usability-oriented information that affects the player’s choice of actions directly. In this specific example, wood chopping does provide information to the player that he is at the lumber mill, and the sound also has atmospheric qualities that may affect player behaviour. But it does not provide any specific information to the player that he needs to take into account when guarding or fighting at the lumber mill (with the obvious exception of being able to separate the sound of wood chopping from the sounds produced by enemies).

I’m also fully aware that other games have similar sounds that do have direct relevance for player actions. This is, however, a game specific analysis in which this kind of sounds don’t affect the player’s sense of urgency.

“He saves a little face here in his explanation of the table, but again underestimates how much player interpretation is going on. If the fire mage hits your teammate for 11000 damage instead of the 6000 he has been hitting for, something is up. And that something is again a relevant piece of information which may be critical in winning a fight against the frost mage.”

This is covered by the fact that I say that urgency information should be seen as different points on a continuum, and not absolutes. I also discuss the very case of critical damage later in the article.

“This guy doesn’t really get it, does he? Teamwork is all about paying attention to your allies actions and reacting appropriately in order to win. And teamwork is what wins games in many cases. Maybe Kristine Jørgensen plays Battlegrounds selfishly and unaware of her teammates, but despite a large population of players who play this way, there are many for whom teamwork is a virtue constantly practiced.”

Again you need to take a closer look at what I write. I never argued that ally sounds do not provide important information to the player – here I argue that ally sounds do not have a direct proactive or reactive relationship to player actions. Proactive and reactive sounds are defined as sounds that relate to player actions (re-active sounds are direct responses that are heard immediately after the player has taken an action, and pro-active sounds of events that happen to the player immediately after it has happened to the player), so your critique misses the point here. I never argued that sounds of notification don’t provide important information to the player, only that they are not directly related to player actions the way reactive and proactive sounds are.

“Nope. The difference of capability between a mounted and non-mounted character is huge. An ally mounting thus indicates an important state change which will register in the players actions, if he is a good teammate. I don’t see how this is spatial information, as the presence or absence (and specific location) of allies is also key to what sort of actions a player undertakes.”

Well, the capability difference is limited to speed, since mounted players are not restricted from casting spell, although if they do, they are dismounted. It is indeed a state change as you point out, but I’d still argue that the most important information this sound carries is related to the sense of relative presence since it informs the player of the movement speed of the allt. If mounted and the player is not, the ally will at some point disappear from the relative presence by way of travelling away from the player.

“Turning off the speakers, playing music, etc. Many game players, to signal that they don’t have the advantage of audio, change their in-game names to indicate it. (ex. [nosound] playername or [music]playername)”

Indeed, but my argument was concerned with audio in the world in general, and not games in particular. Also, WoW does not have the [nosound] feature.

“Seperating these two functions is strange. Learning a game is a continuous process that involves association of audio and visual. Continued association of sounds and visuals lead to a model of results which is applied when playing; learning the meaning of a sound is not independent from learning what generates it (and there are intermediate steps in the continuous process of learning which sounds mean what). “

Again, you should take a second look at the article. The aim of the article was to study the auditory features of WoW’s PvP Battlegrounds, and one of the main points is that sounds are highly contextual. Obviously, this does not exclude the importance of visual elements, but an academic article of 8000 words can’t do it all.

Well I got the thorough academic beating I deserved. Thanks for the response. I guess I was reading too much between the lines and taking lack of comment for lack of awareness.

I would still maintain that some of the writing is unclear.

"The player is therefore allowed to ignore the fanfare" Ignore here is what I picked on, because it is ambiguous whether you mean process as important for later but keep fighting current opponents or ignore in the sense of "might as well not have heard it". I see now you mean the former, but I don't think I was wrong to assume you meant the latter.


If you read the line you are quoting in context, you will see that I argue that we need to understand auditory signals in a broader context. What I write is that not all information available in an auditory signal is of equal importance at all times, and that there are some situations in which players do not need to know exactly what spell he is being attacked with. As a matter of fact, less experienced players may not even know all abilities of all classes, and even less distinguish between them. It is still possible for those players to understand the urgency of the situation.

In response to this I would say there are very few situations in which knowing what spell the enemy is casting isn't useful. At the minimum it likely gives you talent tree information (what type of mage is he?). And understanding urgency isn't the same as knowing the correct response to the enemy's action. Urgency in my mind is a simplification of these player reaction matters (which overall you have dealt with pretty well). The good player sees the enemy casting sheep on a friendly target and prepares dispell (I don't know WoW that well so I may be wrong about exact abilities). The less skilled player merely sees the enemy casting a spell. Some players are new to the game or simply very unskilled and perhaps don't even register enemy actions other than as a sign of their presence (or not even that). Thus one action may register as urgent to one player and not as urgent to another (given the exact same context). I also disagree with a split between notification and urgency information, because I think it simplifies things. "However, notifications distinguish themselves from urgency messages by not demanding an evaluation on part of the player. " I would say that nothing doesn't demand player evaluation, especially when the fact that the enemy is taking your flag may be more important (in determining players courses of action) than the enemy hitting you with a sword.