Michelle Lynn Grosser

Subjectivity is a term that has been used in many contexts and is often loosely defined. I throughout this series, I will use a definition presented by Stefano Gualeni and Daniel Vella:

A subjectivity is a consciousness that occupies a particular standpoint towards a certain experiential domain… In other words, a subject participates in a world and is conscious of it and of their particular standpoint within it.

Virtual subjectivity then, will refer to human subjects that consciously exist in interactive, computer generated (or digital) environments.

            Philosophers recognize that in the age of computers, the blending of work, leisure, and media problematizes the distinction between what can be seen as real and unreal (Baudrillard). This fuzzy boundary between the real and unreal, or the “hyperreal,” is ever-present in human-computer interaction. This is especially true in video games, I suggest, where the blending of diegetic and non-diegetic space, into a quasi-diegesis is a constant in the video gaming experience.

Several philosophers have laid the groundwork for the relationship between the avatar and the player in this quasi-diegetic space (Baudrillard, Hayles, and Harman). The avatar is a tool that is used to project the player, but it can also have an independent response through cut scenes and the game narrative as designed by the developer. There is a sense in which the avatar can exist outside of the human player, particularly when the avatar is a character with a backstory or history that the player is assigned to, rather than a body that the player creates at the beginning of the game. It is in this sense, where the avatar exists outside of the player, that object-oriented ontology allowed me to tease out the relationship between the human player and the avatar. Object Oriented Ontology emphasizes that “all objects must be given equal attention, whether they are human, non-human, natural, cultural, real, or fictional.”

José Ortega y Gasset’s “An essay in Esthetics by way of a Preface,” focuses on metaphor as a way to help us understand the relationship between two things through more than just their physical characteristics. He demonstrates in his text that metaphor allows us to distinguish between images of things as seen from the outside, or from the human perspective, and the idea of what it is to be something in and of itself (“Everything, from a point of view within itself, is an ‘I’”). By way of example, Ortega uses a metaphor from the poet López Pico “the cypress is like the ghost of a dead flame.” The object that Pico is describing in this metaphor is the cypress, and the qualities that are being applied to it are those of the flame. Ortega demonstrates that a work of art (in this case, poetry) makes it seem that the inwardness of things (the cypress) is open to us. However, that inwardness is not available to us. We cannot know what it is to be the cypress, and therefore, how can this inwardness of a cypress be a real object in our thoughts? Ortega suggests that what is really happening is that the describer is placing themselves in the place of the cypress. They are making the cypress their “I,” or in other words, they are imagining themselves as being the cypress. They then attribute the sensual qualities of the flame to themselves and project that understanding of themselves as being like a dead flame to what it would be like to be the cypress in the metaphor.

I suggest that Ortega’s observation can be adapted to apply to video games and can help to support our understanding of how the human player can relate to an avatar in a video game. With this understanding, we do not need to rely on the avatar being a sentient being in order to relate to it, but rather, we can put ourselves in the place of it. This can be seen in the language used by many players when referring to events that happen to the avatar in-game. Players rarely say, “Link died” when they are defeated in The Legend of Zelda, but rather say “I died.” Just as one projects themselves into the “I” of the cypress, as Ortega suggests, the player projects themselves into the “I” of Link.

This virtual subjectivity is facilitated through the use of music in game. In this project, I analyze music in video games through the lens of embodied cognition, or the understanding of music rooted in its relation to physical forces. Musical ideas can be understood in terms of how the human body experiences these forces. This lends to an understanding of musical movement and music as a social agent that can be understood by humans in terms of their own experience, contributing to the perception of relative congruence between music and on-screen actions and events. Feedback from music strengthens the connection between action and sound and when music occurs as a result of player action or in congruence with an in-game event it contributes to a coexperiening bond between avatar and player.

Further, the player can learn from information that is provided by musical cues. Implicit learning of music can occur through simple exposure, meaning that music can carry information to the player that the player can acquire without explicit attention. When a player’s action results in a visual effect and corresponding sound cue that are congruent, the player receives feedback from the music and the connection between action and music is strengthened, contributing to a strengthened avatar/player subjectivity.

So you are likely left with a question: How is music used in video games to achieve the goal of facilitating Virtual Subjectivity? This question is best answered by way of example. In the subsequent installments I will analyze several open-world games in order to see several ways that music is used to this end within a one genre of video games.  My analysis of each game began with playing the game myself and transcribing the soundtrack. This allowed me to develop questions related specifically to each game and establish a baseline expectation for how the music worked in each game. Transcriptions of the music contributed to an analysis of congruence between musical aspects such as pitch, rhythm, register, texture, and timbre, and the gestural and narrative aspects of gameplay; waveform diagrams illustrated the acoustic features that support the development of space in the game worlds. Knowing that my experience is subjective, I also gathered 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. In including these accounts, combined with literature on embodied cognition and theories of control, I aim to move past the idealized player that is often assumed in studies of experience and to understand the experiences of individual players. Each case study consists of music analysis (gesture or melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, and texture); analysis of congruence between music, image, and kinesthetics; description of and analysis of personal experience in gameplay; description of and analysis of observed gameplay experiences in video recordings and comments found on YouTube and gathered from peers; and description and analysis of data gathered from online forums such as Reddit and game Wikis.

Stay tuned for Installment 2, which will look at the “Dawn” and “Dusk” cues in Don’t Starve Together!