Adding Sound

Abstract

Sound is one of the final touches that you need to add in order to make a complete, market-ready game. In mobile gaming, sound often plays a secondary role. There are several reasons for that.

• Mobile games are mostly casual. People play mobile games while traveling, in long lines, at airports, and in dull meetings—places where sound might actually disturb others.

• If the player has headphones, most likely he’s listening to the music he likes—songs from his huge MP3 collection.

• Sound consumes battery life , so even though the amount of actual power loss is very small, some users would rather save it for something else.

• The lack of sound doesn’t hurt the playing experience for most casual games. In desktop games like Counter Strike, players know the location of the enemies just by listening to their steps. In games like Fallout 3, sound is a way of diving deeper into the game world. In contrast, casual games are perfectly playable in “muted” mode.