It is odd to hear sounds behind you, but it is actually on the screen in front of you. But that’s precisely what happens with Dolby 5.1 and gaming. We have grown to accept it. But it is artificial.
In VR, you want to hear a character coming up behind you. If a character is 100 feet away talking, you want to feel and hear them as if they really are that far away IRL. That is why the concept of spatial audio in VR is huge.
Spatial Audio
Sound is incredibly important in gaming. Yet, some developers do not realize how imperative it is. They’ll work on a game for a year, then show it off without sound. “Audio design is extremely important,” Dan Shimmyo says. “And if you are not thinking about audio early, I feel like you are failing to develop your game.”
In VR, audio is vital because players need to hear where sounds are coming from. Shimmyo describes a perfect example of this using zombies. “You want to be able to hear a zombie coming so that you can protect yourself and deal with them as quickly as possible, expecially when they’re coming/sneaking up behind you. And what could be more terrifying that sitting in a dark room but you can hear these zombies coming from all sides?”
If a player is holding a lightsaber in their hand, they should be able to hear sound like it is really there. Spatial audio is a fantastic part of the immersion of VR. There is a significant difference between looking at something two-dimensional and hearing a sound over here on stereo. It may work, and we may accept it in regular gaming. But in VR, we want technology to advance to full immersion for the best possible experience.

The gaming industry has understood the value of communities. There are many community managers in every video game company. They tap into the folks who follow their games for the folks who invest in their products.
“That’s brilliant,” says Malik Forte, “because you want people to play your games again and again. If you implement micro-transactions, and they keep coming back, you, the developer, make more money. “
A lot of games nowadays are about persistent online experiences. You play those games for a long time. The developers keep releasing content for the games.
Players look forward to all those content updates and additions. They see the game grow and mature.
It is like planting a tree and seeing it grow. Games are the same. Therefore, so many video game communities are passionate and dedicated to the developers and the game.
Forte’s been a part of several game communities like the Overwatch community. Overwatch is a team-based shooting game in which the players fight over objectives. Blizzard Entertainment, a veteran game publisher/developer, created the game.
“It wasn’t about me knowing the developers, the game, or the characters,” says Forte. “I got to know several people who were passionate about that game.”
The Overwatch community is one of the biggest of any video game. Community members love Overwatch and its characters. The community has people who passionately love the game, love watching other people play it, and love talking about it. They’re so invested that they make fan art and dress up as those characters at conventions.
Overwatch became more sophisticated on the competitive side, too. It became a whole league and made it to the Barclays Center for the grand finals in 2018. It’s been on television.
It is the community that made Overwatch a phenomenal success. “You see that with many games that top the sales charts,” says Forte. “If you go on Twitch,” Forte continues, “the most-watched games have the strongest communities.”
Establishing a community is crucial. You hire a community manager to keep that excitement going. With video games, it’s super imperative to have somebody in your company who focuses on your game’s community.

We intend to reach all types of gamers, from little kids and casual participants to hardcore esports and gaming enthusiasts, inclusive of age, gender, ability and socio-economic status.

We need to make sure we reach our full gaming and esports community. Our approach—that we love to play games ourselves—makes community engagement easy for us. We love that people enjoy our game, but we prefer to engage one-on-one with them ourselves, to see how they interact and feel when they’re playing it.

For us, it’s not about the numbers, it’s about making sure that people enjoy the game and feel part of a genuine community. You can see how much passion people have for the game. But it’s also important to understand their interaction with the game itself and what they take away from the experience.

While many gamers will give verbal feedback while they’re playing, you can learn a lot from non-verbal clues, as well. We pay attention to their body movements, their gestures and the expressions on their faces as they’re playing our game. You can learn a lot from this feedback.

Within the gaming or esports community you’re building, gamers will talk amongst themselves about your game. They might have great feedback to move your game forward or set it in a great new direction. It’s key to build that community where your gamers are willing to engage. It doesn’t take many people, either—your community could be as small as five people.

Thankfully, we have a core group of people in our community who are extremely passionate. They provide us with great ideas and direction on where the game could go.

When it comes to the gaming industry, I think a lot of people focus on the size of a community. When we thought about our community, we tried not to think about the numbers—whether we had hundreds of thousands of followers or somewhere in the millions. We only wanted to make sure our community was genuine.

Even if there were only a handful of people following our game, we wanted them to know we cared about their opinions and their passion for the game. This is why you often see us in public—we want to meet gamers wherever we can. We want to know who they are, what they enjoy and what they might want to change. We’re open to feedback and want to provide online gaming education.

In our experience, being genuine about our intentions, getting out there and involved in the gaming community, means working together.

In other words, I’m there to help you and you’re there to help me.

This is part of the reason we’re out there in the community, taking part in events where we can. If we return to the numbers, this single action—reaching out to engage without our gaming community—has come back to us, two-fold. The gaming industry is willing to talk—make sure you are listening.

 “We were incredibly close with a community team. They’re part of our larger team, and we’re talking to the player every day it’s important that we’re talking the same language. What the community managers do, Destiny players support. Our social media managers, they’re the ones at the forefront,” Says Garrett Morlan.

“They have to tell the story on a daily basis when something changes really fast or we make a quick fix because of community sentiment. They’re the ones that have to listen and take it to heart. They also manage that conversation, and they take it very seriously. They are also the ones that get beat up by the internet.”

They’re the faces. They’re the ones that write the blog articles every week, and they’re the ones that communicate. The community managers are incredibly important. Not only are they our friends, but they’ve become friends and comrades to the players. But, they kind of get beat up when the players aren’t too happy.

“But we work together as our global team, and we help them bolster their message from a visual standpoint. We make sure when they’re going to communicate about a certain gameplay activity or a certain weapon that we not only just show them the weapon, but we make it look it’s absolute best,” Says Morlan.

“We make it feel right. We don’t change anything because the weapon’s already super awesome. We put it in a setting. We make it prepped and ready for a blog article or a social media blast. It’s not just a cut out of a weapon. We make sure that all of our graphics match the quality bar for everything Destiny across the board.”

That means when Destiny player support needs to send out a quick fix or a community message that the graphics feel polished and clean and hit that quality bar that’s equal to everything else.

“We work on key art for our games, the poster, a game box art, the commercials that we make, the trailers, events, things you would see at a trade show booth, at E3. Eevery single thing.”

Community is another one of those key cornerstones to what we do when we communicate our world. The graphic design is always a pillar of that. Quality to community is its equal.

User Experience (UX) Design has a strong overlap with social design. That said, social design has its own skillset that requires an incredible amount of innovation and an understanding of what games mean to gamers. While there are many incredible social designers, they aren’t necessarily all UX designers and vice versa. Still, social designers have a lot to contribute to the field, especially with the amount of user testing they do.
“We do need to really understand how people work and how our audience works,” explains Jami Lukins. “We can be good predictors about how we can influence player behavior towards things that we think will create a sense of community, create camaraderie, create positivity.”
Indeed, the social aspect of gaming underpins a lot of gaming culture in general. It brings people together around shared experiences, teamwork, and community. Part of social design is about creating spaces for people to fully express themselves using game elements they can form connections around.
Lukins goes on to explain how this happens:
“If you let people be themselves and express who they are, that somehow brings people together. I can look over there and see, oh, man, they got that piece of gear. I know they really love that particular activity in the game. I also really love that activity in the game, but I got this version instead of that version.”
Those kinds of interactions can create instant connections between strangers, all in an environment that encourages sociability. The trick, Lukins reveals, is to build these interactions around consistent themes, language, and iconography.
“It gives people a common language to be able to talk about the game and have playful competitions over the game.”
Social design is about giving people shared interests to gather around and appreciate. At its core, it helps people find a common flag to play the game under.

Many gaming audiences today prefer the social aspect of gaming almost as much as the gameplay itself. For many gamers, the ability to socialize with their communities is the most important part of the whole experience.
“It’s a social experience first, it’s a piece of meaty game design second,” explains David Jaffe.
Games like Dota or League of Legends resonate more as “gamer’s games” but this hardcore focus on gameplay can turn a lot of people away, especially if that’s not what they’re looking for. Game designers are tasked with finding the balance and understanding the experiences that draw their audiences in, to begin with.
David Jaffe details the pitfalls of neglecting the social aspect of gaming:
“It’s very easy to become a game designer and fall in love with play mechanics and nuance and strategy and tactics. And there are games out there that you can make that speak to an audience that will care about those things. But if you’re making mainstream titles, it’s kind of like trying to be a four-star Michelin chef, but you’re making a menu for McDonald’s. There’s nothing wrong with McDonald’s, and there’s nothing wrong with Ruth’s Chris Steak House either, but you have to know who you’re cooking for.”
Knowing your audience is a core feature of good game design. For example, the community aspect is especially prioritized in multiplayer games that rely on coordination, group strategy, and cooperation. There is, of course, a balance between catering to an audience’s needs and presenting something fresh that can be appreciated in its own right.
“You have to engage with the community,” says Jaffe, “but you also have to understand that you’re not a short-order cook for the community. . .Your job is to sit there with the development team, the publisher, and sometimes the license holder, and go: this is what we are making.”