Michelle Lynn Grosser

Walking along the road at night, looking up at the stars. You’re all alone, nothing but the wind through the mountains and the deer bounding along in the distance. Your footsteps across the cobblestone fade into the background as the music starts. A very peaceful night, no bandits, no dragons, just you and the sky.

–JrFireMageTink

This is a description of one player’s experience when exploring in the open-world role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Through an avatar, the player virtually explores a vast and detailed world riddled with beauty and danger. Visual, kinesthetic, and aural senses are engaged together to tell the player about the environment that they are exploring.

            This quote reflects the phenomenon of avatar/player virtual subjectivity, or the way that the player experiences themselves in the game world through a character on screen. This blog series is going to approach two big questions related to this idea of virtual subjectivity: How does congruence between sound and game support player agency and immersion? What kinds of information do sound and music carry to influence player actions and decisions?

            In Part 1 we will learn about virtual subjectivity and different types of avatars, before looking into the foundations of a framework for understanding this experience. Together we will explore agency and control in games, question how music and sound in games facilitates the relationship between the player and their on-screen persona.

            The following installments will each present a different game that we will explore to examine the many ways in which music can influence virtual subjectivity. Each game analysis will begin with a description of the gameplay and analysis of musical transcriptions and waveform diagrams. Data from external sources such as peers’ gameplay recordings and textual data from online video game forums and streaming platforms such as YouTube, Reddit, and game Wikis, which provided a representation of a selection of gamers, namely those who felt strongly enough to post their opinions online.

            If you’ve ever wondered why you experience games so strongly, why you think “I died” when your character is attacked by bandits, or why you just felt the need to stop and look around in a beautiful game world, check out this series to learn more about the ways that video games work to make these experiences feel so real.