Reverberations: how modern video game design relies on audio and haptic communication to enforce rhetorics of procedure and play

Modern video games are increasingly becoming a more mature and respected form of storytelling and art. The way in which games can interact with players provides those players with a control over their product that is unmatched by literature or cinema. Games communicate with players in many direct and indirect ways. This paper explores how audio and haptic modes of communication are employed by different types of video games to support both elements of gameplay and the themes and rhetoric that a game possesses. Specifically, this paper focuses on how Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild express different aspects of control and procedural rhetoric through audio and haptic communication. This paper also takes into account philosophical concepts of play, widening the scope of the paper to consider why video games are an essential pastime to generations of players.