Noticing that the deadline for chapter proposals has been pushed forward to March 16th, I post here a link to the call for chapters to a book on game sound (ed. Mark Grimshaw) http://www.igi-global.com/requests/details.asp?ID=578

Selected copy-paste:

The heart of this book is the relationship between player and game sound; how this is both effected and affected by technology and how this relationship itself impacts upon the design of computer game sound and the development of technology. It deals with both technical and theoretical aspects in a way that that stimulates ideas and broadens the potential readership base beyond computer games.

[…]

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following (which may be combined in chapters):

• Hardware and software
• Sound synthesis and audio samples
• Similarity and difference in practice across game genres
• Sound stimulus
• Psychophysiology, emotion, meaning and sound
• Authenticity, realism and verisimilitude
• Audio icons and earcons in games
• Sonification
• Spatializing sound and localization
• Sound and image
• Sound and no image (audio-only games)
• Player(s) and soundscape(s)
• Sonic environment
• Engagement and flow
• Sonic interaction
• Immersion
• Virtual reality
• Relational agents
• Biofeedback

Citation info: Ekman, I. and Kajastila, R. (2009) "Localisation Cues Affect Emotional Judgements – Results from a User Study on Scary Sound", Proc. AES 35th Conference on Audio for Games, February 2009, London, UK. CD-ROM.
 
Abstract. The current paradigm for creating emotional impact in game sound is to carefully choose which sounds to play. This paper takes an alternative approach, suggesting that emotional impact of sounds can be affected by choosing how to play those sounds. We describe a novel concept for emotional sound design - emotional fine-tuning - and show how it is possible to systematically influence the emotional impact of a single sound sample. A controlled user study with 8 subjects confirmed that changing the reproduction of a sample so that source localization of the sound is challenged will increase its perceived scariness compared to the same sound with clearly detectable source. The work extends experimental research on emotion perception in sound. It has practical implications for sound design in games and other interactive media.
 
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Have been hunting for research papers lately, looking for studies on the spatialization of sound with bone conducting earphones. Here are a couple of interesting papers I’ve been able to find so far:

Stanley, R. M., & Walker, B. N. (2006). Lateralizaton of sounds using bone-conduction headsets. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES2006), San Francisco, CA (16-20 October).
    
Aleksander Väljamäe, A.; Tajadura-Jiménez, A.; Larsson, P.; Västfjäll, D. and Kleiner, M. (2008) Binaural bone-conducted sound in virtual environments: Evaluation of a portable, multimodal motion simulator prototype. Acoustical Science and Technology Vol. 29 (2008) , No. 2 pp.149-155

Apparently, the idea of bone related transfer functions is not completely impossible - that is the focus of Mr. Stanley’s research. Some issues with bone conducting sound much faster than air, especially with low frequencies, which seriously challenges the use of inter-aural time differences as a spatial cue. Apparently the first tests manage, though, to produce lateralization even if the amplitude difference between ears is not equivalent to what we see in air-conducted sound. Cool.