Video games open portals into fantastical worlds where imaginative play prevails‎.‎ The virtual medium seemingly provides us with ample opportunities to behave and act out with relative safety and impunity‎.‎ Or does it‎?‎ Sound Play explores the aesthetic‎,‎ ethical‎,‎ and sociopolitical stakes of our engagements with gaming‎'‎s audio phenomena‎-from sonic violence to synthesized operas‎,‎ from democratic music‎-making to vocal sexual harassment‎.‎ Author William Cheng shows how the simulated environments of games empower designers‎,‎ composers‎,‎ players‎,‎ and scholars to test and tinker with music‎,‎ noise‎,‎ speech‎,‎ and silence in ways that might not be prudent or possible in the real world‎.‎ In negotiating utopian and alarmist stereotypes of video games‎,‎ Sound Play synthesizes insights from across musicology‎,‎ sociology‎,‎ anthropology‎,‎ communications‎,‎ literary theory‎,‎ and philosophy‎.‎ With case studies that span Final Fantasy VI‎,‎ Silent Hill‎,‎ Fallout 3‎,‎ The Lord of the Rings Online‎,‎ and Team Fortress 2‎,‎ this book insists that what we do in there‎-in the safe‎,‎ sound spaces of games‎-can ultimately teach us a great deal about who we are and what we value ‎(‎musically‎,‎ culturally‎,‎ humanly‎)‎ out here‎.‎