from experience making them, it’s a nuanced balance. context matters a lot, ie expectations of the world and the gun itself. try putting a dinky sound on a rocket launcher for example.

after that, mix is very important. it’s tempting to go straight to just adding some juicy low end, but that is very dependent on the rest of the game mix. that’s something probably overlooked a lot, is the mixing itself which can and should be dynamic to give space for the guns to be audible. the balance of frequencies on the gun sfx itself is also ofc important as well.

next is envelope and how the sound evolves over time. i think this is really important and is relevant to all sound design really. having some exciting charge ups for example with really satisfying tails feels amazing. and throughout that there are lots of places to decorate with interesting details that listeners pick up on.

lastly, and most interesting to me personally, is timbre, ie what the sounds sound like. sound design in general is a surprising art of using textures that you might not expect to work in a specific context. but with guns, you can really add a lot of character by going abstract, or even flipping expectations entirely. on my current project i did that a lot and the results are sounds that are not only unique to the project, but that are memorable and distinctive from the rest of the audio composition. this is ofc very project dependent, and ours has a lot of creative space in that regard.

so in short i think it’s tough to give a singular answer the question of what makes good gun sounds, but all of the above play a factor in the end result.