Supplemental sonification of a bingo game

Visual cues are typically used in video games to indicate to the player what input to provide and when. Cues represented in multiple modalities that are presented simultaneously can be detected at lower thresholds, faster and more accurately than when presented separately in each modality. This characteristic has not been explored in playing video games to reduce errors. This paper explores the use of supplemental audio feedback to reduce errors in playing Bingo, a game which is typically played in crowded and noisy environments by a demographic, which -due to their age- are more likely to suffer from sensory impairments such as low vision or hearing impairments. A user study explored three different types of sonification (pitch, timbre, and audio icons) versus using no sonification and found that supplemental sonification using timbre or audio icons significantly reduces player's errors.