Audio games as educational tools: Design principles and examples

Audio-Games (AGs) are electronic games that mainly (or exclusively) implement auditory means to express the game´s plot, mechanics and content. AG players need to concentrate on perceiving sound, in order to understand and play the game. Recent developments in the field of edutainment suggest that AGs can be implemented not only as entertaining systems, but also as valid tools for research and education on any curriculum related (but no limited) to acoustics and sound studies. This paper will first discuss existing approaches to organizing the sonic content of an AG. Then it will propose a methodology for designing an AG for educational purposes. Finally, a case-study consisting of the development of two educational AGs related to the issue of noise will be demonstrated, on which the proposed methodology is applied.