Attending a sporting event in person—or even watching one on television—is a spectacular aural experience. Sometimes, the crunch of a bone-crushing hit or the thundering roar of the crowd after a big play is more memorable than the play itself. In the world of sports videogames, advances in technologies have allowed incredible progress in terms of providing stunningly realistic visuals. Audio, for some reason, has seemingly been left behind. From shoddy announcing to lifeless crowd noise, sound in sports games almost seems like an afterthought.

In an article published last week, OS’ Carlos Hernandez examined the state of commentary in sports video games. Aside from a few notable exceptions, commentary could see a dramatic improvement, as repetition and lack of emotion usually cause gamers to turn off commentary altogether.

But play-by-play commentary is just one part of the overall audio package. I’ve identified five other categories that make up the audio offerings in sports videogames: crowd noise, PA announcers, player chatter, sound effects and in-game music.

Crowd Noise

This is perhaps the area in need of the biggest improvement. One thing I notice across the board with sports games is the crowd never is loud enough. Anyone who has ever been to Arrowhead Stadium or Cameron Indoor Stadium knows that you can feel when the crowd gets loud. Developers need to realize this and pump up the volume on venues that have notoriously loud fans. And when a walk-off home run or buzzer-beating shot goes down, I want the crowd to completely drown out the announcers. This would add a lot of excitement to game-winning plays.

The volume isn’t the only problem with crowd noise. A lot of sports games seem to have trouble with getting the crowd to react appropriately in certain situations. For example, my home crowd shouldn’t be going crazy if I kick a field goal late in the fourth quarter when I’m down by 28 in Madden. The crowd AI needs to better recognize which plays are important and react accordingly. Another nice touch would be to identify “hated” players (whether from trades/free agency or just bad blood) and have the crowd boo these players when appropriate. MLB: The Show has implemented this to a point, but I would like to see it expand to other sports games and become even smarter—such as differentiating between a player that left on good terms that would be cheered during a homecoming and a player that signed with a rival that would be viciously booed.

PA Announcers

In sports videogames, the PA announcing usually sounds like an intern recorded it in under an hour. But in real life, PA announcers can be just as colorful and entertaining as the guys in the booth. The game that has captured this best so far is NBA 2k8. Its PA announcer mimics how the real-life PA announcers for each team call out their players on scoring plays. It’s great when you sink a bucket with Carmelo Anthony and hear “Mellllooooo…!” over the PA. Other sports games should take this approach to PA announcing. Make the effort to listen how a team’s real-life PA announcers introduce players and situations, and have your voicing talent try to match.

Player Chatter

This applies to some sports (particularly football and basketball) more than others. I’d like to hear more from the players themselves in football and basketball games. More noise, more taunts, more back-and-forth, more talking in general. A good example is when basketball players occasionally yell out when taking a charge or swatting a shot attempt. To my recollection, none of the basketball games have included these emotionally-charged sounds.

Sound Effects

Over the years, developers have added sound effects, such as a cannon-like explosions when throwing deep balls in Madden, that just don’t seem to fit into a sim-style game. Making sounds like the crack of the bat, a bone-jarring hit and a rim-rattling dunk sound authentic really adds to the realism and atmosphere of the game. While progress has been made in getting these sounding true-to-life, we aren’t quite there yet.

In-Game Music

If they wanted to, developers could make this easy for themselves and just implement custom in-game audio, which is a feature that will be included in NCAA 09. This feature allows users to fashion their in-game audio experience as they see fit. NCAA’s system allows users to set custom sounds for 20 different scenarios. Want “Eye of the Tiger” to play during third downs? You got it. It’s this kind of customization that really gets me excited about the possibilities. MLB 2k8’s system even allows for player-specific entrance music. Every sports game needs to have this feature.

While player faces and shiny stadiums may get all of the attention and scrutiny, it is the audio that can make or break a game’s atmosphere and presentation. What do you think? What ideas do you have for improving audio in sports videogames?