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The Musical Parameters of Immersion and Flow: Involving the Player, Emotionally and Physically, in a Video-Game

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The Musical Parameters of Immersion and Flow: Involving the Player, Emotionally and Physically, in a Video-Game University of Huddersfield Repository Smith, Jennifer The musical parameters of immersion and flow: involving the player, emotionally and physically, in a video-game Original Citation Smith, Jennifer (2016) The musical parameters of immersion and flow: involving the player, emotionally and physically, in a video-game. Masters thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/31368/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full items free of charge; copies of full text items generally can be reproduced, displayed or performed and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided: • The authors, title and full bibliographic details is credited in any copy; • A hyperlink and/or URL is included for the original metadata page; and • The content is not changed in any way. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ THE MUSICAL PARAMETERS OF IMMERSION AND FLOW: INVOLVING THE PLAYER, EMOTIONALLY AND PHYSICALLY, IN A VIDEO-GAME. Jennifer Smith A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MA BY RESEARCH THE UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD JULY 2016 2 Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns any copyright in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Huddersfield the right to use such Copyright for any administrative, promotional, educational and/or teaching purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts, may be made only in accordance with the regulations of the University Library. Details of these regulations may be obtained from the Librarian. This page must form part of any such copies made. iii. The ownership of any patents, designs, trade marks and any and all other intellectual property rights except for the Copyright (the “Intellectual Property Rights”) and any reproductions of copyright works, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property Rights and Repro- ductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions. 3 Synopsis Player involvement in a video game is increasingly important to the success of a game and its developers. A musical soundtrack plays a large role in this success, having the ability to enhance a player’s sense of physical and emotional involvement with a game world. It is imperative, therefore, of a video game soundtrack to incorporate the ideas of flow and immersion, areas of interest which have been debated thoroughly by increasingly large numbers of aca- demic works. This thesis takes the main argued parameters of flow and immersion and applies them to a model, identifying how a composition can increase, or subsequently decrease, a sense of involvement for a player, in narra- tive, action-adventure RPG genres of video games. Each parameter in the model explains its relation to flow and, or, immersion and how it can be combined with the other parameters to enhance player involvement. A consistent representation of an audio, visual, and player relationship is important to the formation of flow and es- tablishing a convincing game world for the player, without any misrepresentation of sound or jarring transitions. With a player’s sense of physical involvement through flow, immersion can then be achieved, as the player becomes invested emotionally with the game world, culture, and its characters. The supporting composition and two case studies in the thesis help prove that, when following the different parameters of the model, player involvement can be enhanced through a soundtrack. 4 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 2: Literature on flow and immersion ................................................................................................................ 10 Flow ............................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Immersion ................................................................................................................................................................... 13 Chapter 3: Modelling flow and immersion ..................................................................................................................... 18 Tier One ....................................................................................................................................................................... 20 Interactivity ............................................................................................................................................................. 20 Believability ............................................................................................................................................................. 22 Transitioning ........................................................................................................................................................... 23 Feedback ................................................................................................................................................................. 25 Gamer’s Preference .................................................................................................................................................... 26 Tier Two ...................................................................................................................................................................... 27 Engagement ............................................................................................................................................................ 27 Emotional Involvement ........................................................................................................................................... 32 Chapter 4: Case Studies .................................................................................................................................................. 35 Transistor .................................................................................................................................................................... 35 Game Background ................................................................................................................................................... 36 Musical Background ................................................................................................................................................ 37 Narrative Vs Mutism ............................................................................................................................................... 38 Vocal works ............................................................................................................................................................. 40 Transitions ............................................................................................................................................................... 43 Instrumental works Synthesis v Guitar ................................................................................................................... 44 The Banner Saga ......................................................................................................................................................... 45 Game Background ................................................................................................................................................... 45 Musical Background ................................................................................................................................................ 46 Travelling ................................................................................................................................................................. 47 The use of Narrative ................................................................................................................................................ 49 Fight Sequence ........................................................................................................................................................ 50 Chapter 5: Applying models of flow and immersion in a creative context ..................................................................... 53 Interactivity ................................................................................................................................................................. 54 Believability ................................................................................................................................................................. 55 Feedback
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