Building a Community of Audio Game Designers - Towards an Online Audio Game Editor

Abstract

We introduce the Online Audio Game Editor (OAGE) which we have conceived to (a) advance our understanding of audio games in general, (b) to investigate the audio game design process, (c) and to build a community of audio game designers. Thus, OAGE constitutes a fully-implemented prototype to create, play, and (later) share audio games online. Our intention is to iteratively extend this editor to respond to the users' feedback and needs. Through a process of reflective analysis and adaptations, we aim to uncover more of the very core of audio game design, a genre of computer games which is currently under-researched. In contrast to wide-spread video games, little is known about proper design processes in audio games or valid guidelines to aid their development. We show how OAGE is intended to serve as a research vehicle to recruit audio game designers as participants (a significant challenge due to their small number), to catch up with the state of knowledge about video games, and also to promote audio games.