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How to create an atmosphere in video games ?

After dissecting what “ambience” actually means in my previous article, we concluded that ambience cannot be deliberately created in reality. However, fortunately for video game developers, it is possible to invent one from scratch, both before and in the game engine. Today, we’re going to look at how this can be done. But first, let’s return to an essential point that precedes its creation: why is setting the right mood so important?

The importance of atmosphere in fiction

Emotional vector

Setting the right mood is one of the most important ways of conveying emotion, which is the ultimate goal of any work of art. Finding its interest in a limited but certain duration, the appreciation of an atmosphere allows us to feel strongly the place where we find ourselves. As a result, contemplation and exploration are highly enjoyable, because they have been given an identity. The grandiloquent graphic style of the Little Nightmares horror games expresses this idea well, proposing a gloomy yet bewitching and marvellous tone, as we saw in my video on the use of the marvellous in Little Nightmares (french).

little nightmares mood

Little Nightmares delivers strong emotions at all times, thanks to a strong artistic identity

Influence on behavior

In a video game, it’s obvious that it’s the game design that will mostly guide the way we play, just as a specific activity or visit to a place will impact the way we behave. However, the emotion generated by the atmosphere of a situation will also have a certain impact on our behavior. An evening out with friends, with lots of people and loud music, will encourage us to speak loudly; unlike a church, where the silence of the people will invite us to do the same. Similarly, we won’t walk at the same pace in a gloomy or enchanting place.

It’s a virtuous circle: the function of a place will impact on our emotions, and therefore on the way we behave; in turn, our behavior, reflecting the desired ambience, will reinforce it.

Important at all times

Highlighting a mood at different moments in the same work will not necessarily have the same impact as at another. So it’s a good idea to know how and when to use it, to suggest different shades of emotion.

Opening

Atmosphere is important from the outset, when it’s used to introduce a new location or situation. When, with controller in hand, a level opens onto an area previously unknown to us, the atmosphere generated by it will enable us to form an idea of what we’re about to face, and so prepare ourselves accordingly with the help of suppositions (that famous subjective interpretation we talked about in my previous article). The Dark Souls games use this process to great effect, with panoramas showing not only the path ahead, but also the types of enemy we’ll be facing.

beauty of elden ring

FromSoftware, the art of presenting a new level

Maintenance

Then, maintaining this atmosphere will help regulate our feelings, especially when there’s no action to speak of. In a horror game, for example, the right combination of darkness and sound design will go a long way to scaring us, even if there is no enemy presence. Our ability to interpret and imagine will do the rest. Most developers will tell you: the fear of the unknown, aroused by the atmosphere, will be far more effective in scaring us than the most hideous of monsters.

Memory

Last but not least, the atmosphere is not only of interest within the work itself. But also… afterwards. In most works, a common thread seeks to draw the viewer from point A to point B, in order to explore various facets. We find this in the narrative of a film, where the character will evolve; in a video game, with increasingly difficult levels; or even in music, with an intro, verses, chorus and so on. So, when we come face to face with a game, film or music, we’re going to experience various situations and emotions. However, once our screen is turned off, in the long term, what we’ll remember for the most part won’t be so much the situations experienced (with a few exceptions, of course), but the atmosphere that emerged from the work, enveloping these famous situations. It’s not for nothing that series theme songs (and in particular their musical themes) require a monumental amount of work to perfectly match their identity: the most ardent fans should feel the chills every time they hear the first notes, with a hint of nostalgia. And with good reason: all it takes is a good piece of music or introduction to set the mood. Personally, as soon as I launch the Valheim survival game, the main theme is enough to instantly plunge me into a mood of adventure, a call to nature and a desire to chill out in a comforting home.

The importance of a good ambience for a work of art is not to be taken lightly. With its impact not only on short-, medium- and long-term emotions, but also on the behavior of the viewer/player, it’s important to apply oneself in order to best serve the interest of the work. Let’s take a look at how to do this, particularly in the context of video games.

How to create an atmosphere ?

The process of creating atmosphere in a video game doesn’t differ so much from that used in other media, or even from other aspects of video game creation: game design, screenplay… As always, it’s a question of starting from a stable base, gathering information, then going on to develop your ideas. Let’s take a step-by-step approach.

Aparté: a process for an ideal world?

The process of imagining an ambience will be more or less time-consuming, depending on the time available, the means at your disposal and its importance at a given moment. Although we’re going to look at the most complete means possible, we’ll need to take these constraints into account and simplify the process if necessary. What’s more, although this process can be applied to every scene in the game, it’s more common to see it used upstream, during the game’s prototyping phase (a phase I wrote an article about), to bring out the main ideas, which can then be reused during development. So, if a game generally has a recognizable overall atmosphere, followed by more specific atmospheres within certain sequences, recycling will often be necessary to avoid spending a considerable amount of time on it, particularly in the case of low or moderate financial resources. With this in mind, however, it’s important to avoid repetition (which could lead to a monotonous atmosphere), so as not to bore the player.

1 – Determine the type of ambience to be created

The base

In the creation of video games, there is often an overarching idea (narrative or gameplay), summed up in a few words, which drives the entire project. For example, for the Batman Arkham Asylum / City games, the idea was to “embody the Batman”. This may seem obvious, but when we go into too much detail, it’s regularly necessary to return to this initial base to avoid spreading ourselves too thin: is what I’m doing really relevant to our goal? From this base, sub-ideas will emerge which, put together, will support the overall idea of the game.

I’m telling you this because this process is also used to create an atmosphere. First of all, when creating a sequence, you need to ask yourself: what idea is this scene trying to convey? What is the gameplay intended to convey? What is the player’s goal? Questions like these help us to take a step back, remembering that an atmosphere must not only be aesthetic, but also functional. It must support the game.

being the batman in video games

“Embodying the Batman”, the overarching idea that has guided Rocksteady in the creation of its masterpieces.

Constraints

Once the function of a scene has been established (and you’ve probably already thought of a few ideas), the next step is to consider the technical constraints, which will have a definite impact on the feasibility and relevance of certain ideas. On this subject, the questions will therefore be of a more technical nature. For example

  • Narration: Is there any dialogue in this scene? Are there special events to highlight?
  • Gameplay: Will we be facing enemies, or exploring instead?
  • Resources: How much time do I have to devote to this scene? How many financial resources do we have?

Once these questions have been answered, we’ll have a clearer picture of what we can and can’t do. Freedom is a constraint.

Synergy

We now have all the keys we need to make initial hypotheses. By taking into account the idea to be conveyed and the means we have at our disposal to do so, we can make more concrete hypotheses. For example, if the game is about madness and the gameplay is action-oriented with a third-person view, then we could imagine an anguished atmosphere that plays on paranoia (yes, this is the example of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice).

At this stage, however, it’s not yet appropriate to go into detail. First of all, it’s a good idea to look…

2 – Acquiring references

… at references !

Find references

Creating a moodboard is one of the basics for any technical artist. Looking for references of all kinds (games, videos, music, concept art, films…) that you can categorize is an excellent way of finding inspiration, as well as developing your culture. The more, the better! To simplify the task, there are several tools available to you:

  • Artists’ social networks: Pinterest / ArtStation / DevianArt for images; Deezer / YouTube / Spotify for music… So you can search by theme (soundscape for a boat, concept art for a museum in a post-apocalyptic world…), then let yourself go among the suggested artists and similar works.
  • Your own culture: films, TV series, games, books… anything you can think of that has similarities with what you want to create.
  • Search engine: based on works you already know, you can search for others that resemble them. Numerous sites based on “if you liked… then you should like…” or “Top 10 of the best… on this theme” will make your task easier.
  • Other people’s opinions: Reddit forums, game tests, Twitter reviews, Steam testimonials…: understanding what people liked about a particular work, or what they remember about it, is an excellent way of highlighting important points, opening up new perspectives that our artistic sensibility might not have considered. Similarly, the other person can sometimes suggest references that are too obscure for the search engines, but are nonetheless highly relevant!
  • In-depth research: if time allows, reading articles (or even books!) dealing in depth with places, lifestyles or atmospheres related to our future creation will provide very useful elements for forging a mental image. Google Scholar, Cairn.info and associated sites like Wikipedia will be your friends when it comes to specific research.
  • AI generator: ChatGPT for scenarios; Mid Journey / Dall-E for image creation; or others for the rest: animation, music… Although their use in pure creation is disputed, AI is a very good source of inspiration to get hypotheses about what you want to do, especially if it’s something specific with few real references.

Pressuring them

Once you’ve created your moodboard, a giant folder filled with side-by-side images giving you a global view of sites like Miro, you can spend some time categorizing all your finds to see them more clearly (a single reference with several points of interest for our research can of course be placed in different places on the diagram). This can be done, for example, by color palettes, graphic styles, visual effects… The idea here is to find common points between works dealing with more or less related subjects and/or featuring similar atmospheres, in order to discern relevant patterns that we can eventually mix, to create a new recipe. This work requires deconstruction: we try to objectively analyze the concrete components of a work.

For example, during the creation of Alan Wake 2 (which Julien talks about in his article The Art of Alan Wake 2), the developers were heavily inspired by thrillers such as the True Detective and Fargo series, and other works borrowed from director David Lynch, such as Mulholland Drive and the iconic Twin Peaks series. Once pooled, the need for slowness and certain color palettes emerged, enabling us to refine the right tone to adopt.

moodboard ambience

The creation of a Miro painting, an inspirational pleasure

3 – Make personal suggestions

We’ve thought about the needs and constraints of our ambience, and we’ve taken a look at what’s being done and has already been done on similar projects. Now that we’ve got everything down to earth, with an exhaustive list of every aspect useful to the creation of an ambience, we’ll be able to dig deeper into the various components of our ambience, drawing on our personal feelings as well as everything we’ve learned previously.

The main question to ask yourself at this stage is: how can each element contribute to the desired emotion? Then apply this to all the technical parameters you can implement in the game: lighting, sound effects, scenery… At this stage, it’s important to let go, because this is where we’ll keep coming back for inspiration, once the raw creative process has begun.

Suppose you want to create a horror game set on a cargo ship. After going through the previous steps, here’s what a coherent set of artistic choices might look like:

  • Lighting: rather rainy / stormy weather in daylight (narrative constraint), so diffuse light and flat shadows. A few oil lamps and lampposts, some of them flickering, could pave the way to subtly indicate the path to follow (level design constraint), while adding a warm tint of color.
  • Colors: a greenish sea (see “Sunless Sea” reference), a grayish hue for the boat deck, dotted with rust. An overall bluish hue to reinforce the threatening weather.
  • Soundscape: angry seagulls, wind, falling rain, waves slamming into the boat. Random cries of pain/panic (reinforcing narration), subtle notes of dramatic music.
  • Population/behavior/animation: no one on site other than a single employee who regularly runs, panicked, from one point to another. Here and there, seagulls look in various directions and change perch every fifteen seconds. Hanging oil lamps that sway to the rhythm of the waves.

These four components I’ve mentioned are only part of what can impact an ambience. For a more complete picture, I invite you to refer to my previous article, in which I detail each of the components I’ve found in the course of my research.

4 – Making attempts

Unfortunately, we’re going to have to wait a little longer before we get down to the nitty-gritty of implementing this pictorial ambience in our game, effect by effect, sprite by sprite (image representing an element of the scenery). At this stage, as you will have noticed, you will have only textual information in addition to the visual and auditory content of your references. However, it will be extremely important to quickly have tangible visual and auditory elements, in order to :

  • First, to see if our artistic choices seem to work together,
  • Secondly, to have material to refer to regularly once the production is underway.

To meet these needs, this is when your first concept arts and musical themes will come in.

Aparté : concept arts

You’re probably already familiar with concept art, the visual creations of technical artists to convey ideas, so I won’t go into detail here. If you’d like to know more, I’d refer you (again and again) to the already classic book “Imaginaires du jeu vidéo. French concept artists” by Marine Macq.

Once completed, these visual and/or musical creations can then be judged to determine their relevance or otherwise. Depending on our satisfaction with them, we’ll repeat the trial with new restrictions or, on the contrary, extensions. As far as concept art is concerned, although these newly-created images can’t be animated, we’ll need to remain flexible in case problems arise once it’s time to implement them in the engine.

A little bonus: as Théophile Loaec, creator of “Sheepy: A Short Adventure”, intelligently explained in our interview (French), it is possible to cheat in order to aim our auditory creations just right. In fact, rather than waiting for each sound to be imported into the software and triggered by script, it’s a good shortcut to try things out beforehand by, for example, superimposing these famous sounds over a gameplay video of our game.

sheepy a short adventure mood

Sheepy: A Short Adventure, the hour-long game that gave us a real lesson in the power of a good atmosphere.

5 – Implementation and fine-tuning

The big moment! Now that we’ve got everything we needed to create our ambience, it’s time to actually implement it in our software. This will give us a chance to see if everything fits together and fits properly, and to finally appreciate this moving rather than static ambience. We’ll also be able to see whether, with the controller in hand, the desired effect is achieved. Sometimes, what you’ve imagined and the result you get can be quite different, so don’t despair. What’s more, even if the ambience produces a most satisfactory result, readjustments will certainly be necessary to fit in with constraints you might not have thought of. As the video game industry is made up of a whole range of professions that have to work together constantly, it’s not uncommon to have to make concessions on one side in order to allow another to get on with the job. The aim, as always, is to benefit the game.

For example, Frictional Games, developers of the Amnesia series of games, had initially thought of offering a daylight desert scare for their Amnesia: Rebirth project, for the first time in their history. During development, however, they realized that this was almost impossible to achieve, and so had to turn to caves and ancient temples for the scary passages.

amnesia rebirth deserts

Amnesia: Rebirth and its deserts, which won’t turn out to be as important as expected.

Conclusion

As you can see, the ideal process for setting the right mood is a long one. So, as I said earlier, we have to work with the means at our disposal. In this case, it’s very important to prioritize in order to know how much time you can allocate to the ambience.

On the other hand, the more you practice this process, the less time it will take, and the less ink will need to be spilled. In fact, automatics are likely to develop as you go along, and these different stages may be carried out more and more unconsciously.

Finally, as with everything that goes into creating an experience, subtlety will be the order of the day (unless, to a certain extent, overkill is a conscious bias of your game). In order to avoid controversies such as those caused by the over-use of yellow paint to show the player the way, commonly known as “backseat”, you’ll need to be rigorous about not revealing creative flaws too easily. The aim is to keep the player in that all-important atmosphere, without breaking immersion.

Acknowledgements:

The Point’n Think team (and in particular Hauntya, Julien Djoubri, David Torres, Camera Obscura), Alexandre Drouin (2L Studio)

Sources :

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