Video gamers worldwide may be risking irreversible hearing loss and/or tinnitus—persistent ringing/buzzing in the ears—finds a systematic review of the available evidence, published in the open access journal BMJ Public Health.

What evidence there is suggests that the sound levels reported in studies of more than 50,000 people often near, or exceed, permissible safe limits, conclude the researchers.

And given the popularity of these games, greater public health efforts are needed to raise awareness of the potential risks, they urge.

While headphones, earbuds, and music venues have been recognized as sources of potentially unsafe sound levels, relatively little attention has been paid to the effects of video games, including e-sports, on hearing loss, say the researchers.

  • @darthelmet@lemmy.world
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    241 year ago

    Every time I open a new game, the volume is set to the absolute max, which is orders of magnitude louder than any other sound on my computer. When I go to change the sound settings, I usually have to put the slider comically low before it gets to an acceptable volume range. At that point fine tuning it becomes kind of difficult.

    Seriously, why can’t most games get volume right?

    • verysoft
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      1 year ago

      Just laziness or ignorance, I made a game and set the volume to 30% by default (it was a bit quiet for my setup), there were no loud splash screens, just some music on the menu - why that is so difficult for developers to do, I don’t understand.

      It’s also an extra crime when they force an unskippable cutscene on you or start a tutorial before you can even access the options screen. The very first screen you should get, should be the fucking options.

      • @darthelmet@lemmy.world
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        31 year ago

        Agreed. The funny thing is some games go the other way around but still kind of get it wrong: Games where the options are a part of a launcher, so you don’t actually get to experience your changes as you make them. I guess that’s still better than just throwing you into a loud cutscene on startup though.

        But seriously. When the game loads, I want the sound to be set to as low as possible, then just give me a slider that plays a sample sound that I can increase until it’s right.

    • @cyberpunk007@lemmy.world
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      31 year ago

      Weird, I don’t have this problem. Probably some bullshit manufacturers “gaming mode elite” software package setting.

      Some games I play I do find I have to crank dialog up and effects/music down.

    • Zorque
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      21 year ago

      Because it’s not what people want. They want loud, because louder is considered better in social consciousness. That has been the trend for decades.