Visualising Game Audio: Increasing Audience Engagement Through the Ambient Display of Video Game Soundscapes

This paper presents an audio system originally developed by the authors as a multiplayer, audiovisual instrument-environment, here repurposed as ViGA, a real-time visualiser for spatialised game audio. ViGA translates directional and environmental audio cues into dynamic visual forms, offering players, spectators, and audiences an intuitive and ambient graphical representation of in-game sound, and, by extension, the emergent rhythms of gameplay. Drawing on influences from video game visualisation, audiovisual synthesis, historical colour organs, visual music, music visualisers, and ambient display design, the system situates itself at the intersection of creative computing and real-time telemetry rendering. In this paper we outline the design rationale and technical architecture of the system, including its data mapping, visual language, and rendering strategies. We then present early use cases of ViGA though the video game Counter-Strike II, highlighting its potential to enhance spatial comprehension, engagement, and aesthetic experience.