Music and Game

Though battling virtual worlds in high fidelity started to spread from youth into mainstream culture decades ago the study of music in games is still a research desideratum of media studies and musicology. Particularly in German-speaking countries this issue has only been paid very little attention. This limited recognition is contradictory to a global game market worth 30 billion dollars, and as important for the production and distribution of music as other media sectors. Numbers of computer users have multiplied in recent years. Especially in the formative teenage years, games are just as important as movies and television for musical socialization, i.e. developing musical preferences and semantic assignments. Games of different genres use sophisticated musical concepts, which in turn rely on a variety of sound idioms. Notably this aesthetic approach is especially related to compositional techniques in the field of film and popular music specialized for creating specific moods, atmospheres and characters for virtual worlds that can be connected to the real world via unconscious musical means. Account must be taken, however, that music in games depends very much on user interactivity. Therefore loop-techniques and other means are part of a compositional system, which unfolds in ever new combinations according to user behaviour. Recipients significantly influence the course, duration, type and combination of modules. Par excellence, the performative qualities of this medium are manifested in such processes.