This paper explores acousmatic experiences in digital games. Understood by Schaeffer as “a sound that one hears without seeing what causes it” (1966), the acousmatic has been analysed in relation to a number of different cases (Kane, 2014), but remains understudied in digital game studies.
Thanks to an extensive use of spatialised mixing techniques, the virtual environments of digital games are a contemporary venue for acousmatic situations. Sound designers consistently use “3D audio […] to localise the sound behind the player, [allowing] to focus simultaneously on the fore and aft perspective” (Miller, 1999), thus generating potential for acousmatic listening experiences.
This paper addresses the localisation of sound in a virtual acoustic space experienced in a virtual environment through a discussion of acousmatic situations and modes of listening (Collins, 2013). Examples of digital games with acousmate sound, defined as “sound that one imagines hearing” (Kane, 2014), are also introduced.
This paper is contextualised within the Schaefferian tradition and the writings of Film theorist Michel Chion. Acousmatic situations are presented as a frequent occurrence in player’s experiences, providing an original theoretical perspective to the study of sounds in virtual environments

This dissertation explores the hypothesis that audio is a necessary characteristic in achieving a sense incorporation in virtual environments, and that audio helps to develop a sense of inhabitation through the knowledge that the player gains while traversing that same environment. It is argued that the construction of a believable and coherent virtual world through certain audio techniques enhances the sense of inhabitation. Audio is an understudied feedback stimuli in any discussion that relates to the subjective phenomenon of presence, immersion, or incorporation. Therefore, this dissertation promotes audio as one of the basic, and an important, feedback stimuli that, in conjunction with visual and haptic feedback, promotes the sense of inhabitation which will ultimately lead to incorporation.
Discussions relating to presence, immersion and incorporation are featured within this study. This, together with a comprehensive account of game audio, provide the basic literature for an auditive analysis of Gordon Calleja’s (2011) Player Involvement Model. The six dimensions that make up Calleja’s model are discussed from a sonic perspective which then leads into a definition of sonic incorporation. This form of incorporation is defined as “the psychological and mental state that enables the player to feel an existence within a projected environment through the audio emanating both from the projected environment inhabited through an avatar and the physical environment where the player has a bodily presence.” Sonic incorporation is achieved through certain audio techniques that breed life and coherency into the projected environment. Since audio is an under analysed characteristic of games within the current literature relating to the aforementioned subjective phenomena, sonic incorporation is developed with the aim of filling the gap found in current literature. The inclusion of sonic incorporation in other immersion models that lack sound analysis would help to complete an inconclusive discussion. Sonic incorporation should also act as the sister term for Calleja’s (2011) term of incorporation and, if anything, add value to his detailed and robust model.