Worldbuilding Voices in the Soundscapes of Role-Playing Video Games
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University of Huddersfield Repository Jennifer, Smith Worldbuilding Voices in the Soundscapes of Role Playing Video Games Original Citation Jennifer, Smith (2020) Worldbuilding Voices in the Soundscapes of Role Playing Video Games. Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/35389/ 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/ Worldbuilding Voices in the Soundscapes of Role-Playing Video Games Jennifer Caron Smith A thesis submitted to the University of Huddersfield in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Huddersfield October 2020 1 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. 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, trademarks 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 Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and/or Reproductions. Material from Chapters three, four, five, and six have been published in a special edition of the journal The Soundtrack as: Smith, Jennifer. (2020) ‘Vocal disruptions in the aural game world: The female entertainer in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Transistor and Divinity: Original Sin II’, The Soundtrack, 11(1–2), pp. 75–97. https://doi.org/10.1386/ts_00006_1. Material from Chapter four has been published on the blog site medium.com, April 4, 2019 as: Smith, Jennifer. (2019) ‘A Beautiful Song: The Adaptive Music of NieR: Automata’, Medium, 4 April. Available at: https://medium.com/the-sound-of-ai/a-beautiful-song-the-adaptive-music-of-nier- automata-4b29e5d7f2f3. 2 Acknowledgements Writing this thesis has not been without its ups and downs, but it is thanks to the people that have followed me through this process that I have made it to this moment of completion. The encouragement and advice from my supervisory team, Catherine Haworth and Steven Jan, has been especially incredible. I would like to thank them for keeping me on-track throughout the years and always believing in me and my work. The staff and students at the University of Huddersfield, and Huddersfield Students’ Union, have also provided me with endless support and given me the opportunities to improve my teaching and academic skills that I value greatly. The support I have received from the UK ludomusicology community has been immense across my career so far. Thank you to Tim Summers, Michiel Kamp, Mark Sweeney, and Melanie Fritsch for listening to my ideas and always providing me opportunities to have my research heard. Thank you also to my wonderful friends in the academic research community, without whom I would not have been so frequently inspired. None of this would have been remotely possible without the emotional and financial aid of my parents Caron and Peter Smith. Neither would I have survived this process without my good friend Josh Dibble, and my partner Chris Knight who have both provided me with endless support, love, and advice without complaint. To my Grandma who would have loved to have seen me complete my PhD. 3 Abstract Role-playing video games are designed to immerse their players in virtual worlds. In order to create these worlds, certain worldbuilding processes need to be followed to create a coherent, consistent, and organic space that feels authentic for the player. This thesis explores the role of voices within soundscapes that engage with these worldbuilding processes. Voices are examined in various case studies to explore their implementation and effectiveness when building an authentic game world in the, often lore-heavy, worlds of role-playing video games. I propose that the worldbuilding processes which incorporate voices take place across two fundamental areas: environmental worldbuilding, and worldbuilding characterisations. Environmental worldbuilding is the building of features such as climate, terrain, and location which integrate people and culture. Worldbuilding characterisations are the formation of character-based identifiers that the player can engage with, possibly leading to a reflection of self between player and character. To involve the player in these complex environments, the game world must effectively ‘build’ itself through a combination of gameplay, visuals, and soundscape. An adaptive soundscape can build this organic game world by engaging with the player’s actions, and the agency of their playable character. I identify how voices are implemented within the soundscape to engage with the player’s physical and narrative position in a game world. I demonstrate how voices highlight player actions in order to immerse and engage them within an organic-seeming role-playing game-world, through techniques including the identification of voice as language-based-meaning, and vocalisations that act as communicators of emotion. Alongside several shorter case studies, the following role-playing games are analysed in detail: NieR: Automata (Dev. PlatinumGames, 2017, Comp. Keiichi Okabe) Transistor (Dev. Supergiant Games, 2014, Comp. Darren Korb) Divinity: Original Sin II (Dev. Larian Studios, 2017, Comp. Borislav Slavov) Final Fantasy XV (Dev. Square Enix Business Division 2, 2016, Comp. Yoko Shimomura) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Dev. CD Projekt Red, 2015, Comp. Marcin Przybyłowicz) 4 Contents Copyright Statement .................................................................................................................... 1 Acknowledgements...................................................................................................................... 2 Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... 3 Contents ...................................................................................................................................... 4 List of Tables ....................................................................................................................................... 6 List of Figures ...................................................................................................................................... 6 List of Examples .................................................................................................................................. 7 Abbreviations .............................................................................................................................. 8 Chapter One: Introduction ........................................................................................................... 9 Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 11 Case Study Scope .............................................................................................................................. 12 Overview of the Structure................................................................................................................. 13 Chapter Two: Game Music and Sound ........................................................................................ 16 Games: Worldbuilding and Immersion ............................................................................................. 18 Immersion ..................................................................................................................................... 22 Outsourced Worldbuilding ............................................................................................................ 24 Diegesis Worldbuilding: Game Interfaces and In-Game Audio .................................................... 29 Interacting with Video Game Worlds ............................................................................................... 35 Player Embodiment