Related Papers
The Virtual Musical Other
Jeremiah French
The post-apocalypse is a narrative context that focuses on the destruction and rebirth of civilization, society, and culture. Familiar signs are mixed with the unfamiliar to create something new, a unique post-apocalyptic Other as the decontextualization, recontextualization, and resignification of sound breed new possibilities for identity. Videogames allow players to explore this new identity as an expressly interactive and immersive medium, while eclectic digital music embodies and communicates this identity within the medium in ways that it cannot in others. In this work, I analyze the musical approaches in three post-apocalyptic videogames, Borderlands, Bastion, and Fallout 3. In these games, the eclectic musical approach aims to evoke an ambiguity and originality achieved through digital production using synthetic and instrumental sounds found in sound library software. Also, pre-existing music from a specific time period is recontextualized in the futuristic post-apocalypse, establishing a temporal Other through temporal displacement. Both are possible due to the global digital database, a growing, easily accessed digital archive epitomized in sound library software and digital composition. It is in this database and through the use of technology that sound becomes a simulacrum of its former self, and the barrier created by terms like “Western” and “non-Western” decays. The virtual Othering in these three games draws attention to the value of sound in music-making and, consequently, to the redirection of meaning in musical sound and the virtual world.
Journal of Sound and Music in Games
Negative Ecologies, or Silence’s Role in AffordanceTheory
2021 •
Erick Verran
Through critical appropriation of J. J. Gibson’s theory of ecological affordance, this speculative article broadens our understanding of ludic ecology as that which virtual environments offer players in anticipation of their use: a sort of inside-out niche. Adapted to a study of diegetic and nondiegetic sound, this adjacency of ecology to video games is applied to an understanding of silence as negative affordance; that is to say, as a nondeterminative opportunity for the player to express themself aurally as well as kinetically against a soundtrack’s absence. Whether included by a video game’s creative director as dramatic segues “inside of” the traditional, top-down soundtrack or as part of the industry’s shift away from film-esque sound design toward one that has begun to approach the ambience of naturalist theater, the role of silence in digital entertainment is argued to be strictly a dramatic one that allows body- and environment-related noise to be appreciated in vacuo. On the basis of these assertions, I claim that the player’s magnified ability to puncture the auditory equilibrium of a storyworld with a shout or offensive lunge at monsters, a form of manual intervention symptomatic of cultural products in general, is newly emboldening. As the musical fullness of the soundtrack age is replaced by a diegetic soundscape equal in sonic lushness, the autonomous game player is thrown into all the greater phenomenal relief.
Master's Theses
Making video game music more accessible for visually impaired
2023 •
Rudolf Westerholm
This thesis is done in collaboration with a Finnish video game company Housemarque. This master's thesis consists of a literature review, an interview round, artistic project, validation round and conclusions. Literature review focuses on ludomusicology, video games in the accessibility landscape regarding visually impaired gamers and analyzing the music of Returnal. After the literature review, the first interview round was conducted in order to gain a deeper understanding of potential difficulties that gamers with visual impairments are facing. Interview round also included a control group of gamers with no visual impairment in order to assess the differences of experience. From this basis, gameplay material from Housemarque’s Returnal was used in Interview rounds. From these findings along with musical analysis tools and the study case on music of Returnal, artistic compositions were created and tested in validation rounds addressing some of the problems discovered in the video game music in the realm of accessibility. The main findings were that there are ways in making video game music more accessible and informative for both groups. For this, the accessibility considerations could be included in the composing and video game development design phase along with modifiable options in-game and suggested in as early as possible in the development cycle. The findings in this thesis can hopefully be thought of in the process of composing and implementing music in video games with the accessibility in mind.
Musicology Research
2017 •
Kingsley Marshall
With the recent publication of the edited collection Brian Eno: Oblique Music (Albiez & Pattie, 2016) and the distribution of Brian Eno’s 26th solo studio album Reflection in 2017 on vinyl, CD and as an innovative software application, the time is ripe for a reconsideration of the way in which software has been used by the musician, composer, record producer and visual artist Brian Eno. This paper explores how Eno has used simple but innovative ideas and processes to inform his music over the course of his career, and considers how his work with collaborators – specifically the musician and software designer Peter Chilvers – has converged with the emergence of touchscreen technologies and modes of distribution. We will demonstrate how Apple’s App Store global distribution platform has further disseminated Eno’s ideas of ‘generative music’ to a wider audience through he and Chilvers’ Bloom (2008), Trope (2009/2015), Scape (2012) and Reflection (2017a) software applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, and the impact on the distribution and reception of Eno’s own music. Echoing Eno’s own processes of appropriation, remix and collaboration the authors wrote the paper through exchanges dictated by the turn of a card selected from the third edition of the Oblique Strategies deck, issued by Eno and Peter Schmidt in 1979.
Oxford Handbook of Music Education Volume II
Let's play!: Learning music through video games and virtual worlds
2012 •
Evan Tobias
Enhancing Inclusivity for Visually Impaired Individuals in Video Games: A Study on Sound Design Research dissertation for the Master of Music degree Applied to Visual Arts Publicly supported and presented in 2023 by
2023 •
Federica Alfano
This dissertation investigates the discourse on video game accessibility specifically for individuals with visual impairments, distinct from other physical challenges. It highlights the ambiguity of the term "accessibility" in gaming, often conflated with game difficulty or playability for those with sensory impairments. The focus on visual impairments is justified by the unique challenges each disability presents and the potential of audio design to enhance accessibility for visually impaired players. Despite advancements in audio spatialization and the enhanced auditory skills of visually impaired individuals, video game development remains predominantly visuocentric, exacerbating accessibility barriers. The dissertation proposes that integrating sound design from the early stages of game development can improve accessibility and inclusivity. It explores fully accessible audio games, critiques the current late-stage accessibility fixes by studios, and presents innovative solutions to reframe accessibility as a core design principle rather than a post-production adjustment.
Audio Mostly 2006
The Drum Pants
2006 •
Alexander R Jensenius
Do Androids Dream of Computer Music? Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Music Conference 2017
2017 •
Warren Burt
The earliest mainstream examples of the first-person shooter game can be traced to the early to mid 1990s, during which one company above most others cultivated a genre that continues to dominant the global video games market. id Software was founded by John Carmack and John Romero, and of all their video games it is perhaps the 1993 DOOM that has been most influential and celebrated. Advancements in technological game development and creativity afforded DOOM exhilarating gameplay, killing monstrous enemies, spurred on by a synthesized, metal-infused soundtrack by Bobby Prince. The 2016 reboot of the serious, similarly titled DOOM, had one of the strongest legacies to live up to in the gaming world. To both respect the series’ lineage and give this new game a distinguishing identity, composer Mick Gordon developed unique technical and musical processes based on a philosophy of energy passing through objects, and so doing, corrupt them.
The Contribution of Ambient Sounds in Open World Video Games MA Music Technology Dissertation
Min Tsang Lee
Leaping Across Clichés and Thematic Boundaries: The Synthesis of an 'Anti-Score' in Bioshock Infinite
Antriksh Bali
