A Scoping Review of Auditory Interventions in Games and Gamification

Audio is a fundamental design component in crafting lively, immersive game worlds and gamified systems. Implemented through sound effects and music, it can enhance narratives and emotions in storytelling and provide dynamic feedback. Despite its central role, empirical findings on the impact of audio on performance, behavioral and experiential outcomes seem mixed and a structured overview depicting the current state-of-the-art in the field of gameful systems is lacking, yet required to understand when and how audio works. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review targeting audio interventions in games and gamification with a focus on implementations, measurements and reported effects. Across 119 publications, we identified a broad range of audio manipulations, study and intervention designs, as well as reported evidence. We found that effects vary across audio, game and outcome types, and that the evidence base in the domain of gamification remains comparatively sparse. With this review we contribute a systematic overview of prior experiments, map reported evidence to user performance, behavior and experience, and identify potentially moderating factors in audio effectiveness. This advances current methodological knowledge in the field and represents a first step towards a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying audio effectiveness.