The audio game laboratory: Building maps from games

Audio games demonstrate an emergence of interactive parameter mapping sonifications that potentially optimally display geographical information and a large number of simultaneous data variables. Our preliminary investigation of audio games is in response to a call for more research on parameter mapping sonifications, such as the best way of presenting auditory legends for representations, effectiveness of spatial audio, map comprehension techniques, and finding optimal sonic variable mappings. We also present a proposed set of auditory map interfaces observed in audio games. Commercially available interactive interfaces and audio games – that have been shaped and informally “tested” by the selection pressures of a demanding consumer market – can serve as examples of potentially effective conventions informing future work in the auditory display research community.