Re-orchestrating Game Drama: The Immersive Experience of Dynamic Music in Video Games

Non-linear storytelling environments take us one step closer towards immersive experiences while relying heavily on the emotional congruency of the presented stimuli as a function of user action. Describing the drama of a given narrative framework, dynamic music scores also act adaptively as an individual component of perception and behaviour related phenomena of the player. Within the outlined context, a pilot study was conducted to explore imaginary and sensory immersion, suspension of disbelief, involvement, flow, spatial presence self location, possible actions as well as emotional valence and arousal in the context of dynamic and non-dynamic music in an action-adventure video game, while at the same time considering decoding skills and intensified emotional involvement in trait musical empathy and tendency for immersion, 60 subjects answered self-report questionnaires of experiential states each time after playing the game ‘Batman: Arkham City’ in one of three conditions accounting for 1) dynamic music, 2) non-dynamic music/low arousal potential and 3) non-dynamic music/high arousal potential, in this way manipulating affective arousal, structural-temporal alignment and emotional congruency of non-diegetic music separately. Whereas imaginary aspects of immersive presence are systemically affected by the presentation of dynamic music, sensory spatial aspects show higher sensitivity towards the arousal potential of the music score on which it is argued that a compatible integration of global and local game goals contributes to a motivational-emotional reinforcement that can be gained through musical feedback. Investigating the perceived drama related interactive qualities of dynamic music in the likes of a Theory of Mind approach, different layers of virtual mind sets between the player, avatar and game environment moderate a continuous regulatory modulation of emotional response, which by indications of the gathered data, might open the door to a decrease of post-game aggression achieved by contextual effects of dynamic music.