Identifying the Impact of Game Music both Within and Beyond Gameplay

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of and a brief critical reflection on game music’s impact on players both within and beyond the context of gameplay. The analysis is based both on the current literature as well as on preliminary (work-in-progress) observations of our research project Game Music Everyday Memories. We consider how the functions and uses of game music potentially extend to people’s everyday life, thus constituting a personally and culturally meaningful relationship with music that is not immediately connected to gameplay. On the other hand, we consider the ways game music and a person’s attachment to the music are involved in gameplay motivation and potential game retention. As a conceptual thematization, four approaches for identifying the broader musical impact of games are suggested and discussed. To substantiate the discussion, we combine some preliminary observations from two different datasets gathered within the ongoing project: (D1) personal narratives of fond game music memories (N = 183), and (D2) survey-data on favourite game music (N = 785).