Papa Sangre is a newly released game for the iPhone, iTouch or iPad. I don't have the luxury of owning one of those devices but I have had the luck to know someone who has, and I've had a pleasure of having a brief play on this game. It is an amazing, unique experience where the best fun is had with your eyes closed. Put simply, you move forward (one step at a time) by hitting the two 'feet' icons and change your direction by swiveling the compass at the top.
Now imagine this open world where you have to collect things, or avoid enemies, or simply perform any sort of task, by only listening. Such is the premise of this game. Furthermore, I have to add it belongs in the horror genre. These facts alone should make you want to play this game, but at least, it most definitely warrants this game's existence.
At the moment, I am dreaming of playing this game on an iPad where I can play with my palms and change direction like a DJ - Daft Punk stylies. Or ultimately, using the iPad to change directions and a DDR-like foot controller to step forward. But then, what would be lacking is the sound reproduction...
And here is the kicker (and why it needed the iPhone for it to work) - this game will only work on headphones. For the short while I was playing this game, I found myself quickly turning my head towards the direction of whatever I might've been startled by - which I soon realized, would briefly interrupt, or perhaps even ruin your game experience depending on how dramatic a person you are. But you literally would not be able to play it without the use of headphones. That's why the trend of mobile gaming and the development of Papa Sangre is a perfect marriage, and probably why it took so long for a game of this type to come out.
All perspective is lost if you try and feed the audio through the even best home speaker system. Which is why I started researching ways in which we could overcome this problem and recreate the perfect auditory environment. I mean, imagine playing this game walking around a pitch black room with only audio to guide you. No matter where my ears are pointed or my body position in the room, I will realistically be transported to this virtual (audio) environment, and it will respond to every one of my smallest (or largest) gestures. That prospect alone makes me giddy.
HRTF refers to Head Related Transfer Function. Simply (and probably somewhat incorrectly), it relates to how sound is transmitted from a source to your head or more specifically, your two ears. Compare this from real-world environments to any attempt at recording, recreating, or replaying sound, and you will quickly realize that as the human race, first of all, we suck, but more specifically, we are nowhere close to recreating the beauty of our wild, green earth in an auditory sense, let alone any sense.
But what about 5.1?! Sure, you will get the correct directional information regardless of which way your head is pointed, but if I am sitting on the left side of the couch one day; and on the right had side of the couch the next, you get a skewed experience. But really, I should be hearing a completely different mix as I move around the environment relative to where I am. If we were in the "real-world" anyway. Distance is not perceptible in this sense beyond the limits of redefining the room as a single entity that is able to perceive sound.
If you disagree, here is a picture of my couch.
Binaural recordings gets closer, but only works on headphones. Load this video (Virtual Barbershop) if you want to hear the potential of binaural audio. [Make sure to listen to it on headphones.] The downside to this is it doesn't respond to the direction of my head. If I turn my head at any point during its playback, it would be like the whole world turned with me. Power trip, yes; but not really as cool as aforementioned "real-world"*.
*no proof has existed in history of presence of this "real-world" - this is referred to in a completely theoretical sense
Wise man once said: "there is always some crazy that has thought of that before you". And this is no different for me. Of course someone has thought of this before and further on, has gone far and beyond anything I would have attempted myself.
These are headphones with a receiver on the top to sense your head position and direction. If you have $3360 to drop on a pair of headphones, I hate you, but these would solve all that I am talking about above. The kicker here is that even if I had that kind of ridiculous cash, the set-up of this device sounds like the worst nightmare that I haven't even dreamt of yet.
Not to mention that, by default, it is only attempting to recreate the sound from your speakers. Not from the "real-world" environment. It is only to overcome the problem in headphones of: "ensuring that the Chicago Symphony isn't playing musical chairs every time you shift in your seat." However the fact remains because I am more than sure that their algorithm would be able to be 'transposed' to be able to recreate the type of gaming environment I've been talking about.
Now imagine if we had this set up in a room with a Kinect-like controller and there was multiplayer mode: a pitch black room with 4 people stumbling around like some weird, scary, (and kinky) perverse version of Marco Polo. I would totally buy that console.
