Abstract
What makes video games unique as an audiovisual medium is not just that they are interactive, but that this interactivity is rule bound and goal oriented. This means that player experience, including experience of the music, is somehow shaped or structured by these characteristics. Because of its emphasis on action in perception, James Gibson’s ecological approach to psychology—particularly his concept of affordances—is well suited to theorise the role of music in player experience. In a game, players perceive the environment and gameplay situations in terms of the goal-oriented actions they afford. Nondiegetic music, not tied to any place in the digital game world, can play a unique role in the structuring of these affordances. Through a series of case studies, I will show that music creates and structures situations both in the game environment (such as the appearance of enemies in Unreal) and beyond the game environment (such as the death of an avatar and the restart of a level in Super Mario Bros.).
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Notes
Or, in William James’ words, the world as “one great blooming buzzing confusion” (James 2007, p. 488).
For a more complete overview of the ecological approach to music, see Windsor and de Bézenac 2012.
Grimshaw (2012, p. 350) also suggests that “the design of many digital games (especially FPS games) does recognise a distinction between diegetic and nondiegetic sound through the inclusion of separate volume controls for sound effects and music.”
See also Grimshaw, Tan and Lipscomb (forthcoming) for a short discussion on the differences between the notion of diegetic/nondiegetic sound in films and video games.
A normal cutscene is a short sequence containing some narrative exposition during which the player is unable to interact with the game. The trick Unreal uses to achieve similar narrative progression is to momentarily halt the player’s progress by locking the doors to the room they are in, and having sounds come from the next room.
Whenever I use the term “dynamic” or “nondynamic”, I’m not referring to dynamics in music terminology, but concepts introduced by Karen Collins (2008) to denote the different ways in which music is designed and composed to (cor)respond to player interaction. The more dynamic the music, the more it will change based on what the player does in a game: where they go, what enemies they encounter and so on.
In this sense, the contrast between Lara’s “butch (her guns/athletic prowess)” and “femme (exaggerated breast size, tiny waist, large eyes, large mouth)” modes of representation that Helen Kennedy (2002) notes correspond roughly to the difference between the features we see through, i.e. her abilities, and the features we look at.
The “Overworld Theme” is temporarily interrupted by other themes when Mario enters another area, or picks up a star powerup.
This is quite similar to the use of fleurs de lys and leaves as ornaments or parts of arabesques in architecture, which Scruton (1997, p. 127) compares to musical imitation.
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Kamp, M. Musical Ecologies in Video Games. Philos. Technol. 27, 235–249 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0113-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0113-z