The term audio-visual (AV) may refer to works with both a sound and a visual component.
It’s not too much about budgets or game developers not going for great audio and sound, they do from Indie to AAA.
It’s more about the fact that dev people usually separate these two components. Which are totally the same: they need to match perfectly and in the best case, they enhance each other. For that you need to make them work together, all the time, the sooner the better.
But in a lot of case the producer just doesn’t see it that way, graphic first, sound later.
The only thing in common that games have with movies is that they both have a sound and a visual component. In movies, it’s been a while that sound is made at the same time that the visuals or even before: the lightsaber sound –yeah I always use the same example because it just works- has been made with notes, the script of the movie and roughs of the ultimate Jedi weapon. Not after shooting, not during, not on post-production, BEFORE all of that. Pretty sure it gave George Lucas some visual ideas.
See what I mean?
These movies from the 70s indies directors –Scorsese, de Palma, Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg- all share that: sound and visual are matching like crazy. Or not matching but playing together. I watched E.T. recently and the sound of men’s keys in the wood is brilliant, conveying this awful feeling of being locked or trapped. The high-pitched keys sound suggests oppression, jail. And there’s so much more interaction between audio and visual in this movie (and all the work of these directors).
Think about it. Emphasis on the sound part more than on the visual part of keys. Why? Because keys are not sexy and a close-up of them would be ridiculous. Pushy even.
That’s exactly what we do in games. We put too much effort on the visual to the point where it becomes ridiculous in a lot of ways: 3D graphic team sizes, outstanding visuals with generic audio (SF IV with sounds from sound banks everyone can buy), visual effects pornography (blur that shit, make the GPU sweat with useless particles just “because we can”) etc..
Everything is visual and if it’s the case, it doesn’t appeal the same way that if it’s audiovisual. More than trying to tell stories, it’s this delicate recipe of mixing two powerful components that we should go for in the game industry when we are looking at movies or tv.
Sound is easily forgettable –I didn’t remember the keys sound but watching it reminded me about it a lot- though. In the game industry we do think in months. A triple A game is making all its money in a matter of weeks. We globally don’t think our games as timeless creations.
Those who do that, success: Valve, Grim Fandango’s music and visual style, Everyday Shooter.. Damn, this game make me have tears sometimes. It’s a friggin’ shooter but the interaction and perfect match on the audiovisual part goes in places in my mind, in my heart that a little few games did go. It’s just overall a so much better experience, dare I say an unforgettable one.
We are building experiences. And we all have ears. Think about it when building the A/V content around your gameplay.