Rachel Simpson is an experienced composer and sound designer living in Dundee in Scotland with over 15 years in game development. She create music and sound effects for various media including video games, television, animations and any other media in need of unique, creative audio. I’m also a performing and recording musician.
She work draws from Jazz, Classical and Pop music with a strong harmonic basis and includes a long standing collaboration with Dundee recording artist Andrew Wasylyk, performing on his 3 most recent records (including the Scottish Album of the Year nominated The ‘Paralian’).
Rachel Simpson. 2022. Rachel Simpson. [online] Available at: <http://www.rachelsimpsonsound.com> [Accessed 19 May 2022].
I could feel during Rachel Simpson’s talk that she is a very good artist. She has created music for many games. I also learnt a lot of technical aspects of her experience in creating music during her talk. I also got to see some of her sharing and advice on sound effects. Rachel Simpson in Sweetgrass AR: Exploring Augmented Reality as a Resource for Indigenous people mentioned that “AR has the ability to reveal and criticise settler colonial images while evoking relational ethics and Indigenous ways of knowing in the context of Indigenous- settler interactions. However, it also has the potential to spread disinformation and commodify Indigenous Knowledge.”
This critical thinking is also a topic that is being researched throughout week24.
I read some of the articles given by week24 starting with 5 key considerations for ethical virtual reality storytelling – Caroline Scott. in this article there are five things to look out for in vr and they are
- Make a risk analysis
- test your material as you go
- Co-create with your audience
- Get active feedback from your audience
- Diversify your teams
While I agree with some of the above points, I have also looked up some other sources on this topic and I believe that there are several factors that make games ethically problematic. The first is the subjectivity of the creator of the game; VR is primarily a simulation of reality. The extent to which virtual reality is used in the gaming industry, how realistic it is, and whether there is any subjectivity on the part of the creator. To analyse these questions we need to return to the level of VR’s rendering of reality. The size, shape, colour and perspective of objects in a virtual scene are designed by the creator. Is the realism in the design of the scene, different from the reality? How does this subtle variability affect people’s understanding of how real things are? Perhaps it is not a question that people care about. But it is incumbent on the game producer to explain to people what details have been left out and what details have been designed. Obviously, game creators cannot avoid their own subjectivity permeating the production process of virtual games, and both the motives and biases of the creator will be reflected in the VR gaming process. Maintaining objectivity in VR games is a code of ethics for game creation teams and is about a clear understanding of the facts.
The second is virtual reality technology and emotional sensitivity. the strength of VR games in their ability to shape stories is significant. the high perceived focus of the game’s backstory by VR technology can lead to emotional sensitivity. People are immersed in the narrative space constructed by VR games, concentrating all their attention to highly perceive everything in the game. If the content presented in a VR game is pleasurable in nature, then this can easily contribute to people’s emotional cohesion. The potential impact of VR on people includes the potential to have an emotional impact on them. When people focus all of their attention on the virtual space, it intensifies their emotional responses to the game story content. The speed of people’s emotional reactions in virtual spaces is much greater than in real spaces. To avoid the stimulation of emotional reactions in virtual reality technology, it is necessary to manage the content of virtual reality game and follow the appropriate balance to avoid the risk of emotional generalisation.
As a sound designer the most important ethical principle I have to respect is originality. I think it’s not just sound designers but all those who work in the arts that should respect this code of ethics.