THE SONIC ENVIRONMENT OF CITIES IN COMPUTER GAMES: WHY IT IS OF INTEREST TO SOCIOLOGISTS

Abstract

The article explores the sociological dimensions of urban soundscapes reproduced in computer games, where sound functions not as a secondary effect but as a medium of cultural memory, identity, and social critique. The study aims to demonstrate how the practice of listening to game cities generates new modes of perceiving and interpreting urban environments. The first part analyzes the sonic strategies of memorialization and historicization: the archiving of vanished sounds, the reconstruction of acoustic epochs, and the documentary or museological logics embedded in game design. Drawing on examples from “Assassin’s Creed”, “Mafia III”, “L.A. Noire”, and “The Witcher”, “Atomic Heart” the article argues that games construct an “audio archive” of history in which the soundscape becomes a lived form of the past and a medium of emotional memory. The second part focuses on the political and satirical functions of sound. Titles such as “Grand Theft Auto”, “Sleeping Dogs”, “Night Call”, and “Like a Dragon/Yakuza” are examined as acoustic laboratories of the metropolis, where noise, accents, radio shows, advertising signals, and urban voices operate as instruments of social reflection. Through sound, the player recognizes the “other” - by voice, intonation, or the density of urban noise - and thus enters a space of ethical engagement. Applying the frameworks of soundscape studies and the sociology of everyday listening, the article interprets computer games as audiovisual laboratories of the contemporary city. In these digital environments, hearing becomes not only a means of navigation and empathy but also a form of social cognition that interweaves memory, politics, and aesthetics.