David Raybould

This chapter will describe a novel approach to exploring the relationship between video game music and the player experience by focusing on rhythmic entrainment and the impact it might have on the player’s behaviours, actions, and subjective experience. Due to the apparent universal and unconscious effect of rhythmic entrainment, music has been shown to exert an influence which can lead to a range of benefits in terms of physical and attentional processes. There is also the potential for negative impacts on the player experience, should the seemingly ubiquitous process of rhythmic entrainment be inhibited or prevented due to conflicts between the rhythms of the level design and that of the accompanying music. The research discussed within this chapter adopts a multi-disciplinary approach; firstly through the utilisation of pre-existing game footage and a process of coding to infer the player’s actions and intentions, and secondly by borrowing an experimental methodology from the field of rhythm perception and applying it to the analysis of in-game data captured within a custom video game. The aim to determine whether rhythmic entrainment occurs in terms of both the objective behaviour and subjective perception of the video game player. It is the hope that other researchers will find the methodologies described useful in their own work.

This thesis contributes to knowledge by taking established research methodologies from the study of musical rhythm and its effect on humans and applying them to the examination of the video game player’s behaviour and experience. Through a multidisciplinary approach it attempts to investigate whether the process of rhythmic entrainment occurs during the act of video game play and the impact that it might have on the player’s behaviours, actions, and subjective experience. In order to explore how games can influence how the player might behave, the concept of rhythm in relation to the design and development of video games is explored. Through the use of level design game developers can create rhythms in the overarching experience, which in combination with the use of music, and its associated rhythms, encourage certain kinds of playstyles and behaviours in the player. Due to the apparent universal and unconscious effect of rhythmic entrainment, music exerts an influence which can lead to a range of benefits in terms of physical and attentional processes. There is also the potential for negative impacts, on the player experience, should the seemingly ubiquitous process of rhythmic entrainment be inhibited or prevented due to conflicts between the rhythms of the level design and that of the accompanying music. The goal of the empirical research discussed within this thesis is to determine whether rhythmic entrainment occurs within the behaviour and the perception of the video game player. This is undertaken in two forms; the first utilised pre-existing game footage and through a process of coding inferred the player’s actions and intentions, while the second utilises a custom developed online game to gather in-game metrics and timings in real time. Overall, the results suggest that in terms of the player behaviour, rhythmic entrainment does not occur, but that the player’s perception of their own actions and in-game events can be influenced by rhythmic entrainment at a perceptual level. Related research outputs: https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/11077 (presentation: Rhythmic Entrainment and its Impact on the Video Game Player) https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/11078 (presentation: Investigating Rhythmic Entrainment Within Video Games)

Game Audio Implementation offers a unique practical approach to learning all about game audio. If you've always wanted to hear your sound or music in a real game then this is the book for you. Each chapter is accompanied by its own game level where you can see the techniques and theories in action before working through over 70 exercises to develop your own demo level. Taking you all the way from first principles to complex interactive systems in the industry standard Unreal Engine© you'll gain the skills to implement your sound and music along with a deep transferable knowledge of the principles you can apply across a range of other game development tools. The accompanying website (www.gameaudioimplementation.com) includes: 12 downloadable demonstration games; A unique exercise level for you to develop for your portfolio; An up-to-date online bibliography with further reading for each chapter; A free sound library with hundreds of game SFX.

Design and implement video game sound from beginning to end with this hands-on course in game audio. Music and sound effects speak to players on a deep level, and this book will show you how to design and implement powerful, interactive sound that measurably improves gameplay. If you are a sound designer or composer and want to do more than just create audio elements and hand them over to someone else for insertion into the game, this book is for you. You'll understand the game development process and implement vital audio experiences-not just create music loops or one-off sound effects. The Game Audio Tutorial isn't just a book-you also get a powerful website (www.thegameaudiotutorial.com), which includes:.

Based on the data from the 2006/7 multimedia exhibition, RePossessed, during which over 400 members of the public watched scenes from Hitchcock's Vertigo, this paper describes the basis of an approach to the use of eye-tracking techniques, visualisations, and metrics to measure the influence of directorial techniques on film viewers' experience. Used as part of a repertoire of tools, the visualisation and quantitative evaluation of eye movement data can provide an intuitive and accessible approach to the evaluation of moving image based media and allow the conventions, assumptions and intuitive practices of film-making to be examined.

Based on the data from the 2006/7 multimedia exhibition, RePossessed, during which over 400 members of the public watched scenes from Hitchcock's Vertigo, this paper describes the basis of an approach to the use of eye-tracking techniques, visualisations, and metrics to measure the influence of directorial techniques on film viewers' experience. Used as part of a repertoire of tools, the visualisation and quantitative evaluation of eye movement data can provide an intuitive and accessible approach to the evaluation of moving image based media and allow the conventions, assumptions and intuitive practices of film-making to be examined.

How do I get work in the games industry? Anyone involved in the discussions that follow this question in forums, conferences, and workshops worldwide will realize that many students in Higher Education who are aiming to enter the sector are not equipped with the knowledge and skills that the industry requires. In this workshop a range of speakers will discuss, and attempt to define, the various roles and related skillsets for audio within the games industry and will outline their personal route into this field. The panel will also examine the related work of the IASIG Game Audio Education Working Group in light of the recent publication of its Game Audio Curriculum Guidelines draft. This will be a fully interactive workshop inviting debate from the floor alongside discussion from panel members in order to share a range of views on this important topic.

This session will recap a number of common approaches to so called "interactive" music in games through a series of practical in-game demonstrations. We'll discuss what is understood by the terms reactive, adaptive, and interactive and put forward the argument that there's actually very little about the current use of music in games that is truly "interactive." The session will conclude with further examples of some potential future solutions of how we might better align the time-based medium of music with the nonlinear medium of games. This session is intended to be accessible to complete beginners but also thought provoking to old pros!

This article examines how the ‘Battlefield’ (EA Games) series of games generates authenticity in its soundtrack both through a meticulous approach to modelling the physical world and through the appropriation of audio characteristics from our, typically mediated, experience of conflict. It goes on to examine how we might reconcile such ‘authentic’ audio with the more ludic features of the soundtrack, required to support gameplay, that are typically presented as inauthentic. The absence of these sounds during narrative-based sequences and the acceptance of them without negative impact on immersion during gameplay implies that these inauthentic sounds appear not to disrupt the immersive qualities of the ‘authentic’ but only when clearly positioned as ego-ludic (heard only by the player, non-spatialized and synthetic in quality) and only within the context of challenge-based sequences of the game.

The game audio tutorial textbook encapsulates the outcome of research into the requirements of roles within the video game industry, the technical and creative practices within the industry, and proposes a new conceptual model for musical interactivity and game design. The Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG), formed in 1994 under the auspices of the MIDI Manufacturers association, has been influential in the development of audio standards, features, and APIs for desktop and mobile platforms. In the role of Chairman of the Education working group Stevens coordinated and undertook research to meet the growing demands from industry for an appropriately qualified workforce. This research involved a quantitative analysis of job roles posted during the survey period, formal surveys of industry professionals, category rating exercises, a job role mapping exercise (using custom software built by Raybould), a review of existing literature in the field, and expert interview. The resulting document (“Game Audio Curriculum Guidelines” published by the MIDI Manufacturers association on 1st March 2011) articulates some of the research undertaken and this is further elaborated on, together with a reflection of the process in the journal paper “Designing and international curriculum for game audio”. Simultaneous research undertaken by Raybould into the creative and technical implementation practices of game audio is combined with the IASIG curriculum within the ‘The Game Audio Tutorial’ (Focal Press), the first textbook in the discipline. As well as synthesising and communicating existing practice in a new way, (the book is accompanied by a unique interactive game level for learning), the book also proposes a new conceptual model for the use of music in games. First presented in the book these are articulated in more detail in the Oxford Handbook of Interactive Audio chapter “Designing a game for music : Integrated design approaches for Ludic Music and Interactivity.”

A significant factor in the aesthetics of video games is the need to compensate for a lack of, or poor fidelity of, sensory information that would be present in the physical world. Although dialogue, sound and music do play a ludic role, by providing information to compensate for this, in general there remains an over reliance on visual UI (User Interface) which has to fight for attention within an already overwhelmed sensory channel. Through a methodical analysis of the functions of audio in the stealth genre this paper identifies the limitations of current binary threshold approaches to audio feedback and puts forward music as a potential vehicle for providing richer data to the player. Music is accepted as a continuous audio presence and is able to provide information to help to prevent player failure, rather than sound effects or dialogue which often serve simply as a notification of failure.

Working with Electroacoustic Composer Nikos Stavropoulos the team are exploring the potential for game engines to act as tools for spatial music composition, realisation, and performance. These tools enable composers to visualise and interact with their music in 3D space in ways not possible within a traditional digital audio workstation, and with the addition of VR capabilities to experience spatial music in a truly immersive and engaging way.