Institute of Digital Games - University of Malta, 2019
This dissertation applies the concept of ‘musicking’, introduced by musicologist Christopher Smal... more This dissertation applies the concept of ‘musicking’, introduced by musicologist Christopher Small, to the analysis of digital games. According to Small, “to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practising, by providing material for performance (composing) or by dancing” (Small, 1998, p. 9). If that is the case, in what capacity players of digital games take part in musical performances? This dissertation provides a detailed answer to this question, situating it within the discipline of Game Studies. Digital games are considered for their cybernetic qualities (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) as objects that can be traversed and reconfigured by means of ergodic effort. (Aarseth, 1997). The intersection of ergodic effort and musicking practices manifested in digital games generates a new musicking form : ergodic musicking. Ergodic musicking is identified as a modern form of musicking, capable of deconstructing established musical roles such as composing, improvising, or dancing. Ergodic musicking, however, is not just a mixture of previous forms: it is instead a unique musicking, only available to digital games. Thanks to their cybernetic qualities, digital games have provided music with an unprecedented platform, actualising a new form of musical participation. The subject matter of musicology of digital games is therefore to be understood as the study of musical forms of participation in digital games. Musicking is debated as a new paradigm for musicological enquire of digital games, challenging critical perspectives that have predominantly focused on the study of musical contents. Ostensibly musical digital games such as ‘Guitar Hero’ (Harmonix/RedOctane, 2005) or ‘Taiko no Tatsujin’ (Namco, 2001) are analysed for their musicking potential. These examples are then contrasted with musical games that do not remediate known musical situations, like ‘Thumper’ (Drool, 2016) or ‘BIT.TRIP RUNNER’ (Gaijin Games, 2010). This dissertation includes a detailed case study of the digital games designed by Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai, understood as a pioneer of musicking. Ergodic musicking is presented as a modality also available in digital games that feature sparse and occasional musical content, detailing an ‘experimental’ modality drawn from theories of indeterminate works. Finally, ergodic musicking is situated within the larger frame of technological musicking defined by Borgo as transmusicking (2007 ; 2013), realising the futuristic possibilities of digital and networked technologies.
In this article we present ludomusicological research associated with the development of the vi... more In this article we present ludomusicological research associated with the development of the video game Otogarden. Players of Otogarden are able to repeat short musical phrases through the use of a loop mechanic, juxtaposing sounds extemporaneously. By using the methodology of research through design, Otogarden addresses aesthetic and design issues related to musical participation in video games. Specifically, this article argues that video games, a contemporary venue for technologically augmented musicking, can allow access to novel forms of musical improvisation. In fact, while video games afford a remarkable variety of musicking, examples related to musical improvisation remain underexplored, with popular games favoring score-based interactions, as established by titles such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. In similar examples, music is presented as a task to be completed, mediated by prerecorded compositions and simplified notations. Notable exceptions, such as the experimental game Electroplankton, have been criticized specifically for their lack of composition-oriented functionalities, seemingly neglecting the inherent value of improvisatory musical practices in video games.
Otogarden challenges this understanding of a “music game” by focusing on the largely untapped potential of musical improvisation, “an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression.”1 In order to gain feedback on Otogarden’s special characteristics, we held a playtesting session with a sample of university students (N=21) with a special interest in music and music education. We collected research data from this session in the form of a survey. Analysis reveals different manifested perspectives, offering players novel creative opportunities. In addition, the game has surprising potential as a music-education tool. We conclude that it is possible to deliberately stimulate players’ perspective on the game in an improvisatory musical direction, making evident the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement.
Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association
This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco 2001/ 2018) franchise and the musical lit... more This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco 2001/ 2018) franchise and the musical literacy it conveys. While previous accounts of game musical literacy have focused on the competence necessary to interpret references across media (van Elferen 2016), this paper expands on the concept, and includes the discussion of live performances and oral traditions.The musical compositions included in Taiko no Tatsujin pertain to the Japanese phenomenon of media convergence known as media mix (Steinberg 2012), as they have been previously popularized by anime and geemu ongaku (or game music) (Yamakami and Barbosa 2015). However, the musical participation initiated extends its references to the practice of Japanese taiko drumming, a largely oral, non-notated musical form, which cannot be reduced to a musical repertoire. The resulting, emerging ludo mix, a form of media mix centered around digital games (Blom 2019; Bjarnason 2019; Picard and Pelletier-Gagnon 2015; Steinberg 2015), prese...
DiGRA '19 - Proceedings of the 2019 DiGRA International Conference: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo-Mix, 2019
This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco, 2001/2018) franchise and the musical lit... more This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco, 2001/2018) franchise and the musical literacy it conveys. While previous accounts of game musical literacy have focused on the competence necessary to interpret references across media (van Elferen, 2016), this paper expands on the concept, including forms of musical participation such as live performances and oral traditions. The musical compositions included in Taiko no Tatsujin pertain to the Japanese phenomenon of media convergence known as media mix (Steinberg, 2012), as they have been previously popularized by anime and geemu ongaku (or game music) (Yamakami & Barbosa, 2015). However, the musical participation extends its references to the practice of Japanese taiko drumming, a largely oral, non-notated musical form, which cannot be reduced to a musical repertoire. The conclusions show that game musical literacy is constructed not only on media literacy, but also on various different forms of participation in musical performances, or musicking (Small, 1998), which concur in constructing game musical literacy. The musical culture associated with digital games is therefore expressed through a large variety of musical practices.
11th International Philosophy of Computer Games Conference , 2017
This paper aims to discuss the ontological status of digital game players’ musical activities. Al... more This paper aims to discuss the ontological status of digital game players’ musical activities. Although in specific cases digital game play appears to be comparable to other musical forms of actions, for instance in the case of so-called music games, its complexities make for a variety of challenging cases.
In fact, digital games engage with musical content in widely different ways, often affording players the possibility to interact with music. Popular examples of that are music games such as the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, in which players act in musical performances that have been defined as schizophonic (Miller, 2009, 2012). In these cases, original compositions and ad-hoc peripherals are provided to mimic emblematic musical actions of rock performers.
However, digital games that are arguably not primarily focused on music seem to involve degrees of musical action, too. For example, player’s activities affect the playback of music compositions in the cases of dynamic and adaptive music (Collins, 2008), commonly present in very different digital game genres. Moreover, it has been observed that procedural music “evolves in real time according to specific sets of rules” (Collins, 2009) in reaction to player’s inputs, further complicating the musical status of player’s actions.
A similar occurrence has been noted in relation to the notion of diegesis. Imported from film studies, diegesis has been adapted in different ways to digital games. This has brought to analyses of players’ action in relation to their diegetic placement (Collins, 2008; Grimshaw & Schott, 2007; Jørgensen, 2007). For instance, a player can act within the diegetic space following extradiegetic musical cues such as “background music”, short-circuiting the clear cut distinction of diegetic space (Jørgensen, 2007).
According to these diverse examples, player’s actions have often meaning in a musical sense. Players, willingly or less so, control parts of musical content, juxtaposing them during gameplay. What are the musical actions of players? What is the ontological status of such interactions? In other words, what is the relationship in between digital game players musical activities and those of instrumentalists, conductors, listeners, or any other kind of musical performer?
To answer these questions, this paper will look into resources ranging from philosophy of music, to musicology and ethnomusicology. In fact, the analysis of musical action is already well debated within these fields. Several key references in this regard consider musical actions, such as improvisation, as an under-researched kind of musical activities, with the bulk of attention mostly devoted to analyses of musical works. As such, the dichotomy in between musical work and music-as-action assumes central role.
According to Alperson, “Anglophone philosophy of music [...] has seen music as an aesthetic practice centered on the creation of objects - musical works of art” (2018). His concern is clearly shared by Small, who criticise musicology for its tendency to equal “music” with “musical work” (1998). Instead, he argues that music should be understood as a range of activities: "to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing" (Small, 1998). These actions, and more, are to be considered “musicking”.
This paper therefore argues that digital game players often act in ways that are musically meaningful, whether the musical action in question is more or less self-standing (such as in music games) or it is connected to other in-game actions. The concept of “playing” - ideally, the quintessential action of the game player - has already been considered as a broad umbrella term, which cannot accurately describe the diverse actions players perform, such as labor-like activities (Calleja, 2011). This paper explores the musical side of the spectrum of actions afforded by digital games, by providing an initial overview of the musical facets of game playing. To do that, the paper inscribes the ontological status of digital game playing within the ongoing research on musicking and musical performances.
Staging Illusion: Digital and Cultural Fantasy Conference. University of Sussex., 2011
Staging Illusion: Digital and Cultural Fantasy Conference. University of Sussex.
WWE SmackDown! ... more Staging Illusion: Digital and Cultural Fantasy Conference. University of Sussex.
WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw (THQ/Yuke’s 2004-2009) is a videogame franchise, developed by Yuke’s and published by THQ for multiple videogame consoles, based on a license to use World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)’s intellectual property: talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, and logos that are popular thanks to WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows.
After providing an introduction to professional wrestling and the WWE, this paper will discuss WWE’s crossmedial production and focus on the process of content transferring from the WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows to the videogames. This process was addressed differently in different editions of the franchise, particularly regarding the narrative elements. As an example, we will examine the first and the currently last episodes of the franchise. We will define what is being transferred (universe, events, objects, characters), discuss the different structures of the events in the games by applying the taxonomy proposed by Aarseth (2009), and analyze the franchise as a series of “documentary games” (Aarseth 2009), an approach that will extend the understanding of the transfer by considering the possibilities for counterfactuality or metafactuality.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for an application of Lévy’s theory of virtua... more The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for an application of Lévy’s theory of virtualization (Lévy 1998) to the evolution of videogames input devices. The evolution takes place thanks to processes of virtualization and subsequent actualization. The problematic knot of issues that generates the process of virtualization will be discussed and placed into the field of the Virtualization of the Body, with further examination concerning the concept of the tool, an actualization that is “fulcrum for the resolution of a class of problems”. The input device becomes in this regard a platform of collective work for hardware producers, software designers and end users.
Even if it follows an historical perspective, this paper is not intended as a detailed history of input devices. The framework will instead be applied to selected examples from different periods, such as William Higinbotham’s Tennis For Two (1958), the first videogame with a dedicated input device, the Atari VCS (1977), as one of the first cartridge-based machines, and Nintendo’s Wii (2006) and DS (2004) consoles.
One of the general outcomes of virtualization is the fragmentation and specialization of knowledge, positively regarded in Lévy’s theory. The conclusions connect it with the importance of new available input devices, highlighting their positive importance into the problematic dimension of the input device.
Emerging from a legitimate contest regulated by a set of rules, professional wrestling is today a... more Emerging from a legitimate contest regulated by a set of rules, professional wrestling is today a fictional product, where no actual competition takes place. Those same rules serve as a setting for a particular kind of narration: the kayfabe, the fictional framework for all professional wrestling’s narrative, a fictional world with the characteristic of having a 1:1 ratio between real time and fictional time. Professional wrestling and videogames deal in different contexts with the same elements: rules and fiction (Juul 2005) [13]. By combining aspects of narrative theory and game studies research, this paper will analyze the narrative of professional wrestling utilizing the tools commonly used or specifically developed for videogames. An understanding of professional wrestling elements is necessary to explain and criticize the different approaches that videogame designer have used when creating wrestling videogames, a popular sub-genre that present specific peculiarities.
The first chapter will provide a background to the history and the evolution of professional wrestling tracing the transformation from wrestling as a legitimate contest to a constructed media spectacle. The on-going constructed nature of contemporary wrestling will be addressed using Chatman’s concept of narrative. We will then use the theory of scripted narrative and alterbiography (Calleja 2009) [4] to explain how the pre-designed elements in a staged match are only partially scripted. This will be the ground for three subsequent passages, each one enlarging the view on the object of study: what happens in the ring, what happens just outside of the ring, and what happens in the fictional world of professional wrestling. By considering the transmediality (Jenkins 2003, 2004) [11, 12] of professional wrestling, we will analyze those conclusions and see how they are used by professional wrestling videogames: the territory where real rules have to be fleshed out in order to simulate the “fake rules” of professional wrestling.
The paper concludes that theoretical frameworks developed within game studies have produced useful tools that can be deployed in different contexts, in this case to understand the constructed story that so deeply informs the agonistic (Caillois, 1962) [5] aspects of professional wrestling. The concept of scripted narrative and alterbiography clarifies how the narrative is enacted in and outside of the ring, integrating previous studies about wrestler fan behaviour (Ford 2007) [8], and claryfing the role of the wrestler as both a storyteller and an actor. By considering wrestling as a serialized fictional product, it is possible to analyze the kayfabe as a unique narrative frame, capable of keeping narrative coherence operating with a 1:1 ratio between real time and fictional time. The concept of transmediality, also discussed in game studies, proves to be deeply affected by the kayfabe. Wrestling has strong transmedial narrative elements: it is sufficient to feature few elements of the wrestling enviroment to project the contents of the kayfabe. With that said, making a game out of the mixture of dramatization, physical performance, and symbolical meaning of professional wrestling is no easy task. A theoretical framework can be useful to approach design issues: wrestling fictional elements appears in videogames thanks to its deep rooted transmediality, but the subtleties of professional wrestling’s narrative are still understated in wrestling videogames.
Australasian Jazz and Improvised Research Network Conference, 2021
This paper presents the ludomusicological research associated with the development of a digital g... more This paper presents the ludomusicological research associated with the development of a digital game: Otogarden (Oliva, 2021). If “making an actual game [...] is useful to materialize the design question [or] aesthetic issues [...] that are being addressed” (Khaled, Lessard, & Barr, 2018), Otogarden is intended as a playable support to research on musical participation with digital games. Specifically, this paper understands digital games as a contemporary venue for technologically augmented musicking (Borgo, 2007; 2013), potentially allowing access to forms of musical improvisation to a variety of users and players. While digital games afford a remarkable variety of possible musicking (Oliva, 2017; 2019a; 2019b, 2019c), examples related to musical improvisation remain few and underexplored, with most games favoring score-based interactions, as made popular by titles such Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) or Rock Band (Harmonix, 2007). In similar examples, music is presented as “a task to be achieved, a disciplinary activity in which the player should “play” again and again until the game (and thereby music) is mastered” (Kassabian & Jarman, 2016). Crucially, in these examples “music” is understood as pre-recorded compositions performed with the aid of simplified notation (Biamonte, 2011). Notable exceptions, such as the experimental music game Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005), have been criticized by reviewers specifically for their lack of composition-oriented functionalities (Pilchmair, 2007), indicating an underlying set of expected qualities which constitute a barrier to the emergence of improvisatory musical practices in digital games. Otogarden challenges this understanding of “music game”, by focusing on musical improvisation, "an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression” (Bailey, 1993, p. 83, 84). Players of Otogarden are able to repeat short phrases through the use of a “loop” mechanic, musicalizing potentially extra-musical (Kahn, 1999, p. 103) acoustic juxtapositions. While retaining the “intimate and reactive musical bond” (Grimshaw, Tan, & Lipscomb, 2013) typical of the music game genre, Otogarden does not feature canonic game characteristics, such as a winning condition, compatibly with recent understandings of game definitions (Juul, 2019, p. 224). The conclusions show that it is possible to deliberately stimulate the players’ perspective (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) on the game towards an improvisatory musical direction, rendering manifest the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement (Oliva, 2019c).
This paper aims to offer a theoretical tool to identify musical situations in digital games. Ethn... more This paper aims to offer a theoretical tool to identify musical situations in digital games. Ethnomusicologist John Blacking posed at the center of his enquiry the “musical situation”, considering his discipline as “an approach to understanding all musics and music-making in the context of performance and of the ideas and skills that composers, performers and listeners bring to what they define as musical situations” (1987, p. 3). The musical situation is identified for its cultural relativeness, rather than for its structural components. Compatibly, digital games determine a variety of musical situations, generated by the plurality of participants active within their musical discourse. Such situations are not limited to games that present an explicitly musical scenario, but are instead found in a much larger number of cases. In order to structure a comprehensive understanding of “musical situations” in digital games, this paper focuses on their cybernetic qualities, identifying four constitutive elements: “the representational (or surface) sign, the mechanical system, the material medium, and the player” (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). Musical situations will be discussed in relation to these elements, with examples ranging from music games such as Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) and Thumper (Drool, 2016), to non-music games such as Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017). As described by Blacking, “it [is] clear that musical things are not always strictly musical” (1973, p. 25); this understanding will be applied to the ephemeral, non-totalizing musical situations determined by digital games.
Mapping Spaces, Sounding Places Geographies of sound in audiovisual media, 2019
This paper explores acousmatic experiences in digital games. Understood by Schaeffer as "a sound ... more This paper explores acousmatic experiences in digital games. Understood by Schaeffer as "a sound that one hears without seeing what causes it" (1966), the acousmatic has been analyzed in relations to a number of different cases (Kane, 2014), but remains understudied in digital game studies. Thanks to the extensive use of spatialized mixing techniques, the virtual environments of digital games are a contemporary venue for acousmatic situations. Sound designers consistently use "3D audio […] to localize the sound behind the player, [allowing] to focus simultaneously on the fore and aft perspective" (Miller, 1999), thus generating potential for acousmatic listening experiences. This paper addresses the localization of sound in a virtual acoustic space experienced in a virtual environment through a discussion of acousmatic situations and modes of listening (Collins, 2013). Examples of digital games with acousmate sound, defined as "sound that one imagines hearing" (Kane, 2014), are also introduced. This paper is contextualized within the Schaefferian tradition and the writings of Film theorist Michel Chion. Acousmatic situations are presented as a frequent occurrence in player's experiences, providing an original theoretical perspective to the study of sounds in virtual environments.
This paper introduces the concept of ergodic musicking, defined as a form of ergodic effort (Aars... more This paper introduces the concept of ergodic musicking, defined as a form of ergodic effort (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) in which the non-trivial act of traversing a cybermedium involves degrees of musicking. At the same time, ergodic musicking is also considered as a form of musicking (Small, 1998), in which participation in a musical performance involves the exertion of ergodic efforts.
Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005) is the most elaborate and rich digital game designed by the Japa... more Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005) is the most elaborate and rich digital game designed by the Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai. Released for the Nintendo DS console, it comprises ten musical vignettes, inviting players to a range of diverse interactions. This paper analyzes the multiple modalities of musical participation afforded by Electroplankton, inscribing its analysis within the theoretical concepts of musicking (Small, 1998) and ergodicity (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). The resulting concept of “ergodic musicking” is presented as a comprehensive analytical tool in order to assess the multiple musical roles explored within the game. Electroplankton is first contextualized as a cybermedium, understood as a class of media objects to be traversed or reconfigured by means of a nontrivial, ergodic effort (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). While digital games are in general considered as a cybermedium, the paper emphasizes that Electroplankton does not necessarily show some of the archetypal characteristics of games, such as winning/losing conditions. Rather than as a conventional digital game, Toshio Iwai designed Electroplankton as a compendium of previous artworks, expanding it with a set of new pieces. Huhtamo recalls a conversation with Iwai about this aspect: ““Iwai once surprised me by stating that Electroplankton was his version of Duchamp’s Boite en Valise (1941). After some reflection it made sense: the tiny game cartridge indeed contained many aspects of his career as a “miniature museum” (Huhtamo, 2016, p. 92). The possibility space of this miniature museum is certainly playful in nature, but it also maintains a consistent focus on different musical aspects. Across the various vignettes, players can record their voice, re-arrange a musical table, or tap on the screen to structure extemporaneous sound loops. The different musical forms of Electroplankton are understood under the umbrella concept of musicking. Musicologist Christopher Small warns against elevating the analysis of musical objects, such as musical compositions, to the primary subject of musicology. Small argues, "music is not a thing at all, but rather an activity" (1998, p. 2). As such, it should be understood as a verb: “to music”. “To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing” (1998, p. 9). Electroplankton explores these forms of participation, bringing unprecedented musical opportunities to the medium of digital games. This paper will focus on aspects related with musical improvisation, identifying in the musicking of Electroplankton a form of idiomatic improvisation (Bailey, 1993). Subsequently, the player’s interventions will be contextualized within Eco’s “open work” paradigm, and described “not [as] an amorphous invitation to
indiscriminate participation, [but rather as] an oriented insertion into something which always remains the world intended by the author” (Eco, 1989, p. 19). Finally, the ergodic musicking identified will be applied to address the problematic critical reception of Electroplankton (Pilchmair, 2007), emphasizing the innovative and idiosyncratic nature of Iwai’s musicking.
DiGRA 2019: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo Mix, 2019
This paper applies the concept of “musicking”, introduced by musicologist Christopher Small, to t... more This paper applies the concept of “musicking”, introduced by musicologist Christopher Small, to the analysis of digital games. According to Small,“music” should not be considered as a noun, but rather as a verb:“to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing” (Small, 1998, p. 9).
Despite the abundance of resources chronicling the evolution of digital games, the process of his... more Despite the abundance of resources chronicling the evolution of digital games, the process of historicization of this data started relatively recently. As per Huhtamo (2005), “the current state of writing on game history could be called its chronicle era.” As such, chronicles are considered to lack the critical stance that a proper historical reconstruction must adopt. According to Bordwell and Thompson (1994), a biographical history can be one of the different explanatory frameworks available to build film histories. By adapting this concept to digital games, this paper will provide a short biographical history of Japanese digital game author and media artist Toshio Iwai. From 1987 to 2006, Iwai has experimented with creative use of audio in games with the musical shoot’em up O tocky (ASCII Corporation 1987), the audio visual mashup Sim Tunes (Maxis 1996), and the more accomplished Electroplankton (Nintendo 2005). Ludomusicology, or the field of studies concerned with the analysis of sound in games, is particularly lacking critical resources concerning Iwai, with a few exceptions (Herber 2006). This paper argues that the common trait of Iwai’s works is found in the possibilities afforded to the players, which are able to use the potentialities of digital games as tools to actualize musical realizations. Such affordances will be analyzed in light of Small’s concept of "musicking" (1998), focusing on music as a human behaviour, rather than a preconstructed piece of work.
Replaying Japan 2015: 3rd International Japan Game Studies Conference, Kyoto.
What makes a digit... more Replaying Japan 2015: 3rd International Japan Game Studies Conference, Kyoto.
What makes a digital game a “classic”, revered by players and studied by academics? Different aspects like technological innovations, design features, or commercial success contribute to this status.
Otocky, designed by Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai in 1987, predated in a number of ways so-called music games, connecting music generation with the established tropes of the shoot’em up genre. It anticipated not only contemporary examples of music-centered gameplay, but also explored the boundaries of games’ formal properties, juxtaposing traditional game characteristics with extemporaneous musical creativity.
This paper addresses the innovation of Otocky, and aims to position it in the current academic discourse surrounding game history, which according to Huhtamo is in its "chronicle era" (Huhtamo 2005). Available journalistic writings about Otocky consider it a curiosity, and a proper historicization process never took place, possibly due to the fact that the game has never been published outside of Japan and was only available for the Famicom Disk System, an add-on for the original Nintendo Famicom.
Interacting with sound is arguably Otocky’s main affordance. Analysis of sound and music in digital games is the topic of numerous academic writings; Collins (2008) defines dynamic audio as “sounds that reacts to changes in the gameplay environment and/or in response to a user”, and identifies different degrees of dynamic activity, taking as examples games such as Grim Fandango (Lucas Arts 1998) and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 1998). Otocky, however, structures a simple interaction with its musical content, preferring bizarre improvisations rather than well timed sound cues. This musical system hardly fits Collins’ categorization, and constitutes a relevant example that is currently absent from game sound analysis literature. This paper argues that the game can be addressed as an example of an “open work”, as discussed by Eco (1979) in relation to composition systems such as Klavierstücke XI by Stockhausen.
Even if Otocky is an example of creative freedom awarded to players, it is firmly rooted in the tradition of the shoot’em up: for a contemporary sensibility, it is arguably a very punishing game. Rigid competition and free performance are two polarizing elements in Otocky, which lives out of their sheer incompatibility.
Finally, this paper will position Otocky in the discussion about game genres and forms. With its comedic look, Otocky reassesses the shoot’em up genre tropes, arguably offering a parody version, amplified by the unclear nature of its winning condition. In this sense, the game is akin to contemporary examples such as Jostle Bastard by game auteur Pippin Barr (2013), a satirical take on the popular game Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games 2012).
Conclusion shows that current academic tools in use to analyze digital games can be used to reposition relevant games, rendered little known due to contingencies, positively contributing to the available academic discourse.
Collins, Karen (2008). “Game Sound”. The MIT Press.
Eco, Umberto (1979). “The Role of the Reader”. Indiana University Press
Huhtamo, Erkki (2005). “Slots of Fun, Slots of Trouble - An Archaeology of Arcade Gaming”. Published in “Handbook of Computer Games Studies”, edited by Joost Raessens & Jeffrey Goldstein. The MIT Press.
Society for Cinema & Media Studies 54th Annual Conference, Seattle.
VIDEO GAMES AND COMEDY Panel... more Society for Cinema & Media Studies 54th Annual Conference, Seattle.
VIDEO GAMES AND COMEDY Panel
Among audiovisual media, the peculiar aspect of digital games is in the nontrivial effort required from the user to traverse them (Aarseth, 1997). Not everything is prescript in a linear fashion, allowing a certain amount of juxtapositions and discrepancies among audiovisual elements, narrative situations, and semiotic meanings. Those can afford the perception of comedic situations. The Half-Life 2 community couldn’t help but notice the fact that even if they were armed with explosives, they couldn’t open a banal wooden door that was just not designed to be opened.
In classic Pirandello’s comedy theory, the humorist experiences an awareness of the opposites (Bassanese, 1997): the comical effect is triggered by the perception of a contradiction.
Chion explains that, in audiovisual media, whenever visual and audio are played simultaneously, the viewer/listener makes sense of the two streams by synchresis: “the spontaneous and irresistible weld produced between a particular auditory phenomenon and visual phenomenon when they occur at the same time” (Chion, 1994). The two elements, audio and video, can be used in way that produces the awareness of the opposites described by Pirandello. An example of that is found in the practice of mickeymousing, which consists in associating an unexpected musical figure to an on screen action. Examples are found in classic cartoons and digital games alike: in Super Mario Bros., “Mario's "jump" is accompanied by an ascending chromatic glissando” (Whalen, 2004).
How this interacts with the previously mentioned comedic affordances found in digital games? Digital games can be described as compound media containers; specifically, their audio content consists of different pre-composed sounds. This sonic palette is actualized in a soundscape during gameplay sessions, when the player juxtaposes to different degrees the aural content, producing a unique sonic output.
An example of that can be found in New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo 2009), where a multiplayer mode is introduced. When one of the participants has spent all of his character “lives”, he can still participate in the session by playing sounds through the buttons of the wiimote: different sound presets are available, and the user can switch among drum kit, percussions, 8-bit sounds, comedy sounds, and so on.
This is an example of a loosely predetermined soundscape, where the final output is not pre-composed, but rather left in the hands of the players: the sound palette is freely usable by the “dead” player. It is then possible to create counterpoints to the other player(s) action, by for example triggering a round of applause after a well executed maneuver; accompany the background music with a percussive groove; or disregard any other sound output coming from the speakers and be a disturbance to everyone by playing random sounds.
The possibility for comedic effect through the manipulation of the other player synchresis is in this case readily available, providing an ample range of comedic affordances.
Society for Cinema & Media
Studies 53rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.
The term soundmark is de... more Society for Cinema & Media Studies 53rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.
The term soundmark is defined by Schafer as derived from landmark and referring to “a sound which is unique or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by the people in a community” (Schafer 1994, p. 274). Alongside sound signals and keynote sounds, soundmarks are the main features to be found in a soundscape.
This paper considers digital games as objects for meaningful acoustic communication, and aims to analyze their sonic output by using the theoretical background of soundscape studies, as discussed primarily by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax. Soundmarks in digital games soundscapes will be identified, analyzed and compared.
Common examples of soundmarks “include distinctive bells and the sound of traditional activities” (Wrightson 2000, p. 1). Historical buildings or monuments, such as the Big Ben in London, or religious calls, such as the islamic Muezzin or the catholic bell, are customary of certain soundscapes.
The digital game soundmark is therefore identified in sounds specially regarded by different acoustic communities of digital game players. This paper considers different sonic environments in order to productively analyze different examples of digital games soundmarks. Single games such as “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” (Nintendo 1991) are included, considering the different sessions necessary to access the sounds. Game series such as the “Mario” (Nintendo 1985 – 2012) serie are examples of evolving soundmarks. Reworkings of soundmarks such as Aphex Twin's 1992 Pac-Man EP are also considered to address the relevance of digital game soundmarks in contemporary popular culture.
Music and the Moving Image Conference VII, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Deve... more Music and the Moving Image Conference VII, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University.
This paper proposes a methodological framework to analyze the sonic output of computer games by investigating and adapting available soundscape studies, as discussed primarily by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax. While the current academic research about sound in games highlighted the problematic nature of the application of film sound theory to videogames (Jørgensen 2007, 2009, 2011; Collins 2007), this paper considers studies concerning videogame audio, soundscapes and acoustic ecology (Grimshaw 2007; Grimshaw and Schott 2007; O' Keefe 2011; Droumeva 2011) by re-focusing the attention on existing soundscape methodologies, analyzing their theoretical validity and the productiveness of such an approach. By critically considering Truax (2001) analysis of an arcade game room soundscape, videogames will be repositioned by considering them objects for meaningful acoustic communication. An analysis of the sonic environment actualized by the videogame player during a play session is performed, identifying the key features (keynote sounds, sound signals and soundmarks) and the level of definition of a videogame soundscape (high or low definition). Examples are based on modern games such as Street Fighter IV (Capcom 2009) and Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games 2008), as well as classic titles like Pac-Man (Namco 1980) and Bomberman (Hudson Soft 1983).
WORKSHOP ON AUDIO FOR GAMES AND INTERACTIVITY
Gamification Lab, Leuphana University
The workshop... more WORKSHOP ON AUDIO FOR GAMES AND INTERACTIVITY Gamification Lab, Leuphana University
The workshop is aimed at game designers and sound designers, proposing a practical application to critical theoretical tools.
Participants are introduced to principles and theories of Soundscape Studies, that are discussed in conjunction with the study of digital games. Possible applications of the findings are proposed, discussed and practiced during the workshop.
Institute of Digital Games - University of Malta, 2019
This dissertation applies the concept of ‘musicking’, introduced by musicologist Christopher Smal... more This dissertation applies the concept of ‘musicking’, introduced by musicologist Christopher Small, to the analysis of digital games. According to Small, “to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practising, by providing material for performance (composing) or by dancing” (Small, 1998, p. 9). If that is the case, in what capacity players of digital games take part in musical performances? This dissertation provides a detailed answer to this question, situating it within the discipline of Game Studies. Digital games are considered for their cybernetic qualities (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) as objects that can be traversed and reconfigured by means of ergodic effort. (Aarseth, 1997). The intersection of ergodic effort and musicking practices manifested in digital games generates a new musicking form : ergodic musicking. Ergodic musicking is identified as a modern form of musicking, capable of deconstructing established musical roles such as composing, improvising, or dancing. Ergodic musicking, however, is not just a mixture of previous forms: it is instead a unique musicking, only available to digital games. Thanks to their cybernetic qualities, digital games have provided music with an unprecedented platform, actualising a new form of musical participation. The subject matter of musicology of digital games is therefore to be understood as the study of musical forms of participation in digital games. Musicking is debated as a new paradigm for musicological enquire of digital games, challenging critical perspectives that have predominantly focused on the study of musical contents. Ostensibly musical digital games such as ‘Guitar Hero’ (Harmonix/RedOctane, 2005) or ‘Taiko no Tatsujin’ (Namco, 2001) are analysed for their musicking potential. These examples are then contrasted with musical games that do not remediate known musical situations, like ‘Thumper’ (Drool, 2016) or ‘BIT.TRIP RUNNER’ (Gaijin Games, 2010). This dissertation includes a detailed case study of the digital games designed by Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai, understood as a pioneer of musicking. Ergodic musicking is presented as a modality also available in digital games that feature sparse and occasional musical content, detailing an ‘experimental’ modality drawn from theories of indeterminate works. Finally, ergodic musicking is situated within the larger frame of technological musicking defined by Borgo as transmusicking (2007 ; 2013), realising the futuristic possibilities of digital and networked technologies.
In this article we present ludomusicological research associated with the development of the vi... more In this article we present ludomusicological research associated with the development of the video game Otogarden. Players of Otogarden are able to repeat short musical phrases through the use of a loop mechanic, juxtaposing sounds extemporaneously. By using the methodology of research through design, Otogarden addresses aesthetic and design issues related to musical participation in video games. Specifically, this article argues that video games, a contemporary venue for technologically augmented musicking, can allow access to novel forms of musical improvisation. In fact, while video games afford a remarkable variety of musicking, examples related to musical improvisation remain underexplored, with popular games favoring score-based interactions, as established by titles such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. In similar examples, music is presented as a task to be completed, mediated by prerecorded compositions and simplified notations. Notable exceptions, such as the experimental game Electroplankton, have been criticized specifically for their lack of composition-oriented functionalities, seemingly neglecting the inherent value of improvisatory musical practices in video games.
Otogarden challenges this understanding of a “music game” by focusing on the largely untapped potential of musical improvisation, “an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression.”1 In order to gain feedback on Otogarden’s special characteristics, we held a playtesting session with a sample of university students (N=21) with a special interest in music and music education. We collected research data from this session in the form of a survey. Analysis reveals different manifested perspectives, offering players novel creative opportunities. In addition, the game has surprising potential as a music-education tool. We conclude that it is possible to deliberately stimulate players’ perspective on the game in an improvisatory musical direction, making evident the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement.
Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association
This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco 2001/ 2018) franchise and the musical lit... more This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco 2001/ 2018) franchise and the musical literacy it conveys. While previous accounts of game musical literacy have focused on the competence necessary to interpret references across media (van Elferen 2016), this paper expands on the concept, and includes the discussion of live performances and oral traditions.The musical compositions included in Taiko no Tatsujin pertain to the Japanese phenomenon of media convergence known as media mix (Steinberg 2012), as they have been previously popularized by anime and geemu ongaku (or game music) (Yamakami and Barbosa 2015). However, the musical participation initiated extends its references to the practice of Japanese taiko drumming, a largely oral, non-notated musical form, which cannot be reduced to a musical repertoire. The resulting, emerging ludo mix, a form of media mix centered around digital games (Blom 2019; Bjarnason 2019; Picard and Pelletier-Gagnon 2015; Steinberg 2015), prese...
DiGRA '19 - Proceedings of the 2019 DiGRA International Conference: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo-Mix, 2019
This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco, 2001/2018) franchise and the musical lit... more This paper analyzes the Taiko no Tatsujin (Bandai Namco, 2001/2018) franchise and the musical literacy it conveys. While previous accounts of game musical literacy have focused on the competence necessary to interpret references across media (van Elferen, 2016), this paper expands on the concept, including forms of musical participation such as live performances and oral traditions. The musical compositions included in Taiko no Tatsujin pertain to the Japanese phenomenon of media convergence known as media mix (Steinberg, 2012), as they have been previously popularized by anime and geemu ongaku (or game music) (Yamakami & Barbosa, 2015). However, the musical participation extends its references to the practice of Japanese taiko drumming, a largely oral, non-notated musical form, which cannot be reduced to a musical repertoire. The conclusions show that game musical literacy is constructed not only on media literacy, but also on various different forms of participation in musical performances, or musicking (Small, 1998), which concur in constructing game musical literacy. The musical culture associated with digital games is therefore expressed through a large variety of musical practices.
11th International Philosophy of Computer Games Conference , 2017
This paper aims to discuss the ontological status of digital game players’ musical activities. Al... more This paper aims to discuss the ontological status of digital game players’ musical activities. Although in specific cases digital game play appears to be comparable to other musical forms of actions, for instance in the case of so-called music games, its complexities make for a variety of challenging cases.
In fact, digital games engage with musical content in widely different ways, often affording players the possibility to interact with music. Popular examples of that are music games such as the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, in which players act in musical performances that have been defined as schizophonic (Miller, 2009, 2012). In these cases, original compositions and ad-hoc peripherals are provided to mimic emblematic musical actions of rock performers.
However, digital games that are arguably not primarily focused on music seem to involve degrees of musical action, too. For example, player’s activities affect the playback of music compositions in the cases of dynamic and adaptive music (Collins, 2008), commonly present in very different digital game genres. Moreover, it has been observed that procedural music “evolves in real time according to specific sets of rules” (Collins, 2009) in reaction to player’s inputs, further complicating the musical status of player’s actions.
A similar occurrence has been noted in relation to the notion of diegesis. Imported from film studies, diegesis has been adapted in different ways to digital games. This has brought to analyses of players’ action in relation to their diegetic placement (Collins, 2008; Grimshaw & Schott, 2007; Jørgensen, 2007). For instance, a player can act within the diegetic space following extradiegetic musical cues such as “background music”, short-circuiting the clear cut distinction of diegetic space (Jørgensen, 2007).
According to these diverse examples, player’s actions have often meaning in a musical sense. Players, willingly or less so, control parts of musical content, juxtaposing them during gameplay. What are the musical actions of players? What is the ontological status of such interactions? In other words, what is the relationship in between digital game players musical activities and those of instrumentalists, conductors, listeners, or any other kind of musical performer?
To answer these questions, this paper will look into resources ranging from philosophy of music, to musicology and ethnomusicology. In fact, the analysis of musical action is already well debated within these fields. Several key references in this regard consider musical actions, such as improvisation, as an under-researched kind of musical activities, with the bulk of attention mostly devoted to analyses of musical works. As such, the dichotomy in between musical work and music-as-action assumes central role.
According to Alperson, “Anglophone philosophy of music [...] has seen music as an aesthetic practice centered on the creation of objects - musical works of art” (2018). His concern is clearly shared by Small, who criticise musicology for its tendency to equal “music” with “musical work” (1998). Instead, he argues that music should be understood as a range of activities: "to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing" (Small, 1998). These actions, and more, are to be considered “musicking”.
This paper therefore argues that digital game players often act in ways that are musically meaningful, whether the musical action in question is more or less self-standing (such as in music games) or it is connected to other in-game actions. The concept of “playing” - ideally, the quintessential action of the game player - has already been considered as a broad umbrella term, which cannot accurately describe the diverse actions players perform, such as labor-like activities (Calleja, 2011). This paper explores the musical side of the spectrum of actions afforded by digital games, by providing an initial overview of the musical facets of game playing. To do that, the paper inscribes the ontological status of digital game playing within the ongoing research on musicking and musical performances.
Staging Illusion: Digital and Cultural Fantasy Conference. University of Sussex., 2011
Staging Illusion: Digital and Cultural Fantasy Conference. University of Sussex.
WWE SmackDown! ... more Staging Illusion: Digital and Cultural Fantasy Conference. University of Sussex.
WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw (THQ/Yuke’s 2004-2009) is a videogame franchise, developed by Yuke’s and published by THQ for multiple videogame consoles, based on a license to use World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)’s intellectual property: talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, and logos that are popular thanks to WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows.
After providing an introduction to professional wrestling and the WWE, this paper will discuss WWE’s crossmedial production and focus on the process of content transferring from the WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows to the videogames. This process was addressed differently in different editions of the franchise, particularly regarding the narrative elements. As an example, we will examine the first and the currently last episodes of the franchise. We will define what is being transferred (universe, events, objects, characters), discuss the different structures of the events in the games by applying the taxonomy proposed by Aarseth (2009), and analyze the franchise as a series of “documentary games” (Aarseth 2009), an approach that will extend the understanding of the transfer by considering the possibilities for counterfactuality or metafactuality.
The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for an application of Lévy’s theory of virtua... more The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for an application of Lévy’s theory of virtualization (Lévy 1998) to the evolution of videogames input devices. The evolution takes place thanks to processes of virtualization and subsequent actualization. The problematic knot of issues that generates the process of virtualization will be discussed and placed into the field of the Virtualization of the Body, with further examination concerning the concept of the tool, an actualization that is “fulcrum for the resolution of a class of problems”. The input device becomes in this regard a platform of collective work for hardware producers, software designers and end users.
Even if it follows an historical perspective, this paper is not intended as a detailed history of input devices. The framework will instead be applied to selected examples from different periods, such as William Higinbotham’s Tennis For Two (1958), the first videogame with a dedicated input device, the Atari VCS (1977), as one of the first cartridge-based machines, and Nintendo’s Wii (2006) and DS (2004) consoles.
One of the general outcomes of virtualization is the fragmentation and specialization of knowledge, positively regarded in Lévy’s theory. The conclusions connect it with the importance of new available input devices, highlighting their positive importance into the problematic dimension of the input device.
Emerging from a legitimate contest regulated by a set of rules, professional wrestling is today a... more Emerging from a legitimate contest regulated by a set of rules, professional wrestling is today a fictional product, where no actual competition takes place. Those same rules serve as a setting for a particular kind of narration: the kayfabe, the fictional framework for all professional wrestling’s narrative, a fictional world with the characteristic of having a 1:1 ratio between real time and fictional time. Professional wrestling and videogames deal in different contexts with the same elements: rules and fiction (Juul 2005) [13]. By combining aspects of narrative theory and game studies research, this paper will analyze the narrative of professional wrestling utilizing the tools commonly used or specifically developed for videogames. An understanding of professional wrestling elements is necessary to explain and criticize the different approaches that videogame designer have used when creating wrestling videogames, a popular sub-genre that present specific peculiarities.
The first chapter will provide a background to the history and the evolution of professional wrestling tracing the transformation from wrestling as a legitimate contest to a constructed media spectacle. The on-going constructed nature of contemporary wrestling will be addressed using Chatman’s concept of narrative. We will then use the theory of scripted narrative and alterbiography (Calleja 2009) [4] to explain how the pre-designed elements in a staged match are only partially scripted. This will be the ground for three subsequent passages, each one enlarging the view on the object of study: what happens in the ring, what happens just outside of the ring, and what happens in the fictional world of professional wrestling. By considering the transmediality (Jenkins 2003, 2004) [11, 12] of professional wrestling, we will analyze those conclusions and see how they are used by professional wrestling videogames: the territory where real rules have to be fleshed out in order to simulate the “fake rules” of professional wrestling.
The paper concludes that theoretical frameworks developed within game studies have produced useful tools that can be deployed in different contexts, in this case to understand the constructed story that so deeply informs the agonistic (Caillois, 1962) [5] aspects of professional wrestling. The concept of scripted narrative and alterbiography clarifies how the narrative is enacted in and outside of the ring, integrating previous studies about wrestler fan behaviour (Ford 2007) [8], and claryfing the role of the wrestler as both a storyteller and an actor. By considering wrestling as a serialized fictional product, it is possible to analyze the kayfabe as a unique narrative frame, capable of keeping narrative coherence operating with a 1:1 ratio between real time and fictional time. The concept of transmediality, also discussed in game studies, proves to be deeply affected by the kayfabe. Wrestling has strong transmedial narrative elements: it is sufficient to feature few elements of the wrestling enviroment to project the contents of the kayfabe. With that said, making a game out of the mixture of dramatization, physical performance, and symbolical meaning of professional wrestling is no easy task. A theoretical framework can be useful to approach design issues: wrestling fictional elements appears in videogames thanks to its deep rooted transmediality, but the subtleties of professional wrestling’s narrative are still understated in wrestling videogames.
Australasian Jazz and Improvised Research Network Conference, 2021
This paper presents the ludomusicological research associated with the development of a digital g... more This paper presents the ludomusicological research associated with the development of a digital game: Otogarden (Oliva, 2021). If “making an actual game [...] is useful to materialize the design question [or] aesthetic issues [...] that are being addressed” (Khaled, Lessard, & Barr, 2018), Otogarden is intended as a playable support to research on musical participation with digital games. Specifically, this paper understands digital games as a contemporary venue for technologically augmented musicking (Borgo, 2007; 2013), potentially allowing access to forms of musical improvisation to a variety of users and players. While digital games afford a remarkable variety of possible musicking (Oliva, 2017; 2019a; 2019b, 2019c), examples related to musical improvisation remain few and underexplored, with most games favoring score-based interactions, as made popular by titles such Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) or Rock Band (Harmonix, 2007). In similar examples, music is presented as “a task to be achieved, a disciplinary activity in which the player should “play” again and again until the game (and thereby music) is mastered” (Kassabian & Jarman, 2016). Crucially, in these examples “music” is understood as pre-recorded compositions performed with the aid of simplified notation (Biamonte, 2011). Notable exceptions, such as the experimental music game Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005), have been criticized by reviewers specifically for their lack of composition-oriented functionalities (Pilchmair, 2007), indicating an underlying set of expected qualities which constitute a barrier to the emergence of improvisatory musical practices in digital games. Otogarden challenges this understanding of “music game”, by focusing on musical improvisation, "an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression” (Bailey, 1993, p. 83, 84). Players of Otogarden are able to repeat short phrases through the use of a “loop” mechanic, musicalizing potentially extra-musical (Kahn, 1999, p. 103) acoustic juxtapositions. While retaining the “intimate and reactive musical bond” (Grimshaw, Tan, & Lipscomb, 2013) typical of the music game genre, Otogarden does not feature canonic game characteristics, such as a winning condition, compatibly with recent understandings of game definitions (Juul, 2019, p. 224). The conclusions show that it is possible to deliberately stimulate the players’ perspective (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) on the game towards an improvisatory musical direction, rendering manifest the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement (Oliva, 2019c).
This paper aims to offer a theoretical tool to identify musical situations in digital games. Ethn... more This paper aims to offer a theoretical tool to identify musical situations in digital games. Ethnomusicologist John Blacking posed at the center of his enquiry the “musical situation”, considering his discipline as “an approach to understanding all musics and music-making in the context of performance and of the ideas and skills that composers, performers and listeners bring to what they define as musical situations” (1987, p. 3). The musical situation is identified for its cultural relativeness, rather than for its structural components. Compatibly, digital games determine a variety of musical situations, generated by the plurality of participants active within their musical discourse. Such situations are not limited to games that present an explicitly musical scenario, but are instead found in a much larger number of cases. In order to structure a comprehensive understanding of “musical situations” in digital games, this paper focuses on their cybernetic qualities, identifying four constitutive elements: “the representational (or surface) sign, the mechanical system, the material medium, and the player” (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). Musical situations will be discussed in relation to these elements, with examples ranging from music games such as Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) and Thumper (Drool, 2016), to non-music games such as Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017). As described by Blacking, “it [is] clear that musical things are not always strictly musical” (1973, p. 25); this understanding will be applied to the ephemeral, non-totalizing musical situations determined by digital games.
Mapping Spaces, Sounding Places Geographies of sound in audiovisual media, 2019
This paper explores acousmatic experiences in digital games. Understood by Schaeffer as "a sound ... more This paper explores acousmatic experiences in digital games. Understood by Schaeffer as "a sound that one hears without seeing what causes it" (1966), the acousmatic has been analyzed in relations to a number of different cases (Kane, 2014), but remains understudied in digital game studies. Thanks to the extensive use of spatialized mixing techniques, the virtual environments of digital games are a contemporary venue for acousmatic situations. Sound designers consistently use "3D audio […] to localize the sound behind the player, [allowing] to focus simultaneously on the fore and aft perspective" (Miller, 1999), thus generating potential for acousmatic listening experiences. This paper addresses the localization of sound in a virtual acoustic space experienced in a virtual environment through a discussion of acousmatic situations and modes of listening (Collins, 2013). Examples of digital games with acousmate sound, defined as "sound that one imagines hearing" (Kane, 2014), are also introduced. This paper is contextualized within the Schaefferian tradition and the writings of Film theorist Michel Chion. Acousmatic situations are presented as a frequent occurrence in player's experiences, providing an original theoretical perspective to the study of sounds in virtual environments.
This paper introduces the concept of ergodic musicking, defined as a form of ergodic effort (Aars... more This paper introduces the concept of ergodic musicking, defined as a form of ergodic effort (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) in which the non-trivial act of traversing a cybermedium involves degrees of musicking. At the same time, ergodic musicking is also considered as a form of musicking (Small, 1998), in which participation in a musical performance involves the exertion of ergodic efforts.
Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005) is the most elaborate and rich digital game designed by the Japa... more Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005) is the most elaborate and rich digital game designed by the Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai. Released for the Nintendo DS console, it comprises ten musical vignettes, inviting players to a range of diverse interactions. This paper analyzes the multiple modalities of musical participation afforded by Electroplankton, inscribing its analysis within the theoretical concepts of musicking (Small, 1998) and ergodicity (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). The resulting concept of “ergodic musicking” is presented as a comprehensive analytical tool in order to assess the multiple musical roles explored within the game. Electroplankton is first contextualized as a cybermedium, understood as a class of media objects to be traversed or reconfigured by means of a nontrivial, ergodic effort (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). While digital games are in general considered as a cybermedium, the paper emphasizes that Electroplankton does not necessarily show some of the archetypal characteristics of games, such as winning/losing conditions. Rather than as a conventional digital game, Toshio Iwai designed Electroplankton as a compendium of previous artworks, expanding it with a set of new pieces. Huhtamo recalls a conversation with Iwai about this aspect: ““Iwai once surprised me by stating that Electroplankton was his version of Duchamp’s Boite en Valise (1941). After some reflection it made sense: the tiny game cartridge indeed contained many aspects of his career as a “miniature museum” (Huhtamo, 2016, p. 92). The possibility space of this miniature museum is certainly playful in nature, but it also maintains a consistent focus on different musical aspects. Across the various vignettes, players can record their voice, re-arrange a musical table, or tap on the screen to structure extemporaneous sound loops. The different musical forms of Electroplankton are understood under the umbrella concept of musicking. Musicologist Christopher Small warns against elevating the analysis of musical objects, such as musical compositions, to the primary subject of musicology. Small argues, "music is not a thing at all, but rather an activity" (1998, p. 2). As such, it should be understood as a verb: “to music”. “To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing” (1998, p. 9). Electroplankton explores these forms of participation, bringing unprecedented musical opportunities to the medium of digital games. This paper will focus on aspects related with musical improvisation, identifying in the musicking of Electroplankton a form of idiomatic improvisation (Bailey, 1993). Subsequently, the player’s interventions will be contextualized within Eco’s “open work” paradigm, and described “not [as] an amorphous invitation to
indiscriminate participation, [but rather as] an oriented insertion into something which always remains the world intended by the author” (Eco, 1989, p. 19). Finally, the ergodic musicking identified will be applied to address the problematic critical reception of Electroplankton (Pilchmair, 2007), emphasizing the innovative and idiosyncratic nature of Iwai’s musicking.
DiGRA 2019: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo Mix, 2019
This paper applies the concept of “musicking”, introduced by musicologist Christopher Small, to t... more This paper applies the concept of “musicking”, introduced by musicologist Christopher Small, to the analysis of digital games. According to Small,“music” should not be considered as a noun, but rather as a verb:“to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing” (Small, 1998, p. 9).
Despite the abundance of resources chronicling the evolution of digital games, the process of his... more Despite the abundance of resources chronicling the evolution of digital games, the process of historicization of this data started relatively recently. As per Huhtamo (2005), “the current state of writing on game history could be called its chronicle era.” As such, chronicles are considered to lack the critical stance that a proper historical reconstruction must adopt. According to Bordwell and Thompson (1994), a biographical history can be one of the different explanatory frameworks available to build film histories. By adapting this concept to digital games, this paper will provide a short biographical history of Japanese digital game author and media artist Toshio Iwai. From 1987 to 2006, Iwai has experimented with creative use of audio in games with the musical shoot’em up O tocky (ASCII Corporation 1987), the audio visual mashup Sim Tunes (Maxis 1996), and the more accomplished Electroplankton (Nintendo 2005). Ludomusicology, or the field of studies concerned with the analysis of sound in games, is particularly lacking critical resources concerning Iwai, with a few exceptions (Herber 2006). This paper argues that the common trait of Iwai’s works is found in the possibilities afforded to the players, which are able to use the potentialities of digital games as tools to actualize musical realizations. Such affordances will be analyzed in light of Small’s concept of "musicking" (1998), focusing on music as a human behaviour, rather than a preconstructed piece of work.
Replaying Japan 2015: 3rd International Japan Game Studies Conference, Kyoto.
What makes a digit... more Replaying Japan 2015: 3rd International Japan Game Studies Conference, Kyoto.
What makes a digital game a “classic”, revered by players and studied by academics? Different aspects like technological innovations, design features, or commercial success contribute to this status.
Otocky, designed by Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai in 1987, predated in a number of ways so-called music games, connecting music generation with the established tropes of the shoot’em up genre. It anticipated not only contemporary examples of music-centered gameplay, but also explored the boundaries of games’ formal properties, juxtaposing traditional game characteristics with extemporaneous musical creativity.
This paper addresses the innovation of Otocky, and aims to position it in the current academic discourse surrounding game history, which according to Huhtamo is in its "chronicle era" (Huhtamo 2005). Available journalistic writings about Otocky consider it a curiosity, and a proper historicization process never took place, possibly due to the fact that the game has never been published outside of Japan and was only available for the Famicom Disk System, an add-on for the original Nintendo Famicom.
Interacting with sound is arguably Otocky’s main affordance. Analysis of sound and music in digital games is the topic of numerous academic writings; Collins (2008) defines dynamic audio as “sounds that reacts to changes in the gameplay environment and/or in response to a user”, and identifies different degrees of dynamic activity, taking as examples games such as Grim Fandango (Lucas Arts 1998) and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 1998). Otocky, however, structures a simple interaction with its musical content, preferring bizarre improvisations rather than well timed sound cues. This musical system hardly fits Collins’ categorization, and constitutes a relevant example that is currently absent from game sound analysis literature. This paper argues that the game can be addressed as an example of an “open work”, as discussed by Eco (1979) in relation to composition systems such as Klavierstücke XI by Stockhausen.
Even if Otocky is an example of creative freedom awarded to players, it is firmly rooted in the tradition of the shoot’em up: for a contemporary sensibility, it is arguably a very punishing game. Rigid competition and free performance are two polarizing elements in Otocky, which lives out of their sheer incompatibility.
Finally, this paper will position Otocky in the discussion about game genres and forms. With its comedic look, Otocky reassesses the shoot’em up genre tropes, arguably offering a parody version, amplified by the unclear nature of its winning condition. In this sense, the game is akin to contemporary examples such as Jostle Bastard by game auteur Pippin Barr (2013), a satirical take on the popular game Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games 2012).
Conclusion shows that current academic tools in use to analyze digital games can be used to reposition relevant games, rendered little known due to contingencies, positively contributing to the available academic discourse.
Collins, Karen (2008). “Game Sound”. The MIT Press.
Eco, Umberto (1979). “The Role of the Reader”. Indiana University Press
Huhtamo, Erkki (2005). “Slots of Fun, Slots of Trouble - An Archaeology of Arcade Gaming”. Published in “Handbook of Computer Games Studies”, edited by Joost Raessens & Jeffrey Goldstein. The MIT Press.
Society for Cinema & Media Studies 54th Annual Conference, Seattle.
VIDEO GAMES AND COMEDY Panel... more Society for Cinema & Media Studies 54th Annual Conference, Seattle.
VIDEO GAMES AND COMEDY Panel
Among audiovisual media, the peculiar aspect of digital games is in the nontrivial effort required from the user to traverse them (Aarseth, 1997). Not everything is prescript in a linear fashion, allowing a certain amount of juxtapositions and discrepancies among audiovisual elements, narrative situations, and semiotic meanings. Those can afford the perception of comedic situations. The Half-Life 2 community couldn’t help but notice the fact that even if they were armed with explosives, they couldn’t open a banal wooden door that was just not designed to be opened.
In classic Pirandello’s comedy theory, the humorist experiences an awareness of the opposites (Bassanese, 1997): the comical effect is triggered by the perception of a contradiction.
Chion explains that, in audiovisual media, whenever visual and audio are played simultaneously, the viewer/listener makes sense of the two streams by synchresis: “the spontaneous and irresistible weld produced between a particular auditory phenomenon and visual phenomenon when they occur at the same time” (Chion, 1994). The two elements, audio and video, can be used in way that produces the awareness of the opposites described by Pirandello. An example of that is found in the practice of mickeymousing, which consists in associating an unexpected musical figure to an on screen action. Examples are found in classic cartoons and digital games alike: in Super Mario Bros., “Mario's "jump" is accompanied by an ascending chromatic glissando” (Whalen, 2004).
How this interacts with the previously mentioned comedic affordances found in digital games? Digital games can be described as compound media containers; specifically, their audio content consists of different pre-composed sounds. This sonic palette is actualized in a soundscape during gameplay sessions, when the player juxtaposes to different degrees the aural content, producing a unique sonic output.
An example of that can be found in New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo 2009), where a multiplayer mode is introduced. When one of the participants has spent all of his character “lives”, he can still participate in the session by playing sounds through the buttons of the wiimote: different sound presets are available, and the user can switch among drum kit, percussions, 8-bit sounds, comedy sounds, and so on.
This is an example of a loosely predetermined soundscape, where the final output is not pre-composed, but rather left in the hands of the players: the sound palette is freely usable by the “dead” player. It is then possible to create counterpoints to the other player(s) action, by for example triggering a round of applause after a well executed maneuver; accompany the background music with a percussive groove; or disregard any other sound output coming from the speakers and be a disturbance to everyone by playing random sounds.
The possibility for comedic effect through the manipulation of the other player synchresis is in this case readily available, providing an ample range of comedic affordances.
Society for Cinema & Media
Studies 53rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.
The term soundmark is de... more Society for Cinema & Media Studies 53rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.
The term soundmark is defined by Schafer as derived from landmark and referring to “a sound which is unique or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by the people in a community” (Schafer 1994, p. 274). Alongside sound signals and keynote sounds, soundmarks are the main features to be found in a soundscape.
This paper considers digital games as objects for meaningful acoustic communication, and aims to analyze their sonic output by using the theoretical background of soundscape studies, as discussed primarily by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax. Soundmarks in digital games soundscapes will be identified, analyzed and compared.
Common examples of soundmarks “include distinctive bells and the sound of traditional activities” (Wrightson 2000, p. 1). Historical buildings or monuments, such as the Big Ben in London, or religious calls, such as the islamic Muezzin or the catholic bell, are customary of certain soundscapes.
The digital game soundmark is therefore identified in sounds specially regarded by different acoustic communities of digital game players. This paper considers different sonic environments in order to productively analyze different examples of digital games soundmarks. Single games such as “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” (Nintendo 1991) are included, considering the different sessions necessary to access the sounds. Game series such as the “Mario” (Nintendo 1985 – 2012) serie are examples of evolving soundmarks. Reworkings of soundmarks such as Aphex Twin's 1992 Pac-Man EP are also considered to address the relevance of digital game soundmarks in contemporary popular culture.
Music and the Moving Image Conference VII, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Deve... more Music and the Moving Image Conference VII, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, New York University.
This paper proposes a methodological framework to analyze the sonic output of computer games by investigating and adapting available soundscape studies, as discussed primarily by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax. While the current academic research about sound in games highlighted the problematic nature of the application of film sound theory to videogames (Jørgensen 2007, 2009, 2011; Collins 2007), this paper considers studies concerning videogame audio, soundscapes and acoustic ecology (Grimshaw 2007; Grimshaw and Schott 2007; O' Keefe 2011; Droumeva 2011) by re-focusing the attention on existing soundscape methodologies, analyzing their theoretical validity and the productiveness of such an approach. By critically considering Truax (2001) analysis of an arcade game room soundscape, videogames will be repositioned by considering them objects for meaningful acoustic communication. An analysis of the sonic environment actualized by the videogame player during a play session is performed, identifying the key features (keynote sounds, sound signals and soundmarks) and the level of definition of a videogame soundscape (high or low definition). Examples are based on modern games such as Street Fighter IV (Capcom 2009) and Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games 2008), as well as classic titles like Pac-Man (Namco 1980) and Bomberman (Hudson Soft 1983).
WORKSHOP ON AUDIO FOR GAMES AND INTERACTIVITY
Gamification Lab, Leuphana University
The workshop... more WORKSHOP ON AUDIO FOR GAMES AND INTERACTIVITY Gamification Lab, Leuphana University
The workshop is aimed at game designers and sound designers, proposing a practical application to critical theoretical tools.
Participants are introduced to principles and theories of Soundscape Studies, that are discussed in conjunction with the study of digital games. Possible applications of the findings are proposed, discussed and practiced during the workshop.
Uploads
Otogarden challenges this understanding of a “music game” by focusing on the largely untapped potential of musical improvisation, “an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression.”1 In order to gain feedback on Otogarden’s special characteristics, we held a playtesting session with a sample of university students (N=21) with a special interest in music and music education. We collected research data from this session in the form of a survey. Analysis reveals different manifested perspectives, offering players novel creative opportunities. In addition, the game has surprising potential as a music-education tool. We conclude that it is possible to deliberately stimulate players’ perspective on the game in an improvisatory musical direction, making evident the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement.
In fact, digital games engage with musical content in widely different ways, often affording players the possibility to interact with music. Popular examples of that are music games such as the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, in which players act in musical performances that have been defined as schizophonic (Miller, 2009, 2012). In these cases, original compositions and ad-hoc peripherals are provided to mimic emblematic musical actions of rock performers.
However, digital games that are arguably not primarily focused on music seem to involve degrees of musical action, too. For example, player’s activities affect the playback of music compositions in the cases of dynamic and adaptive music (Collins, 2008), commonly present in very different digital game genres. Moreover, it has been observed that procedural music “evolves in real time according to specific sets of rules” (Collins, 2009) in reaction to player’s inputs, further complicating the musical status of player’s actions.
A similar occurrence has been noted in relation to the notion of diegesis. Imported from film studies, diegesis has been adapted in different ways to digital games. This has brought to analyses of players’ action in relation to their diegetic placement (Collins, 2008; Grimshaw & Schott, 2007; Jørgensen, 2007). For instance, a player can act within the diegetic space following extradiegetic musical cues such as “background music”, short-circuiting the clear cut distinction of diegetic space (Jørgensen, 2007).
According to these diverse examples, player’s actions have often meaning in a musical sense. Players, willingly or less so, control parts of musical content, juxtaposing them during gameplay. What are the musical actions of players? What is the ontological status of such interactions? In other words, what is the relationship in between digital game players musical activities and those of instrumentalists, conductors, listeners, or any other kind of musical performer?
To answer these questions, this paper will look into resources ranging from philosophy of music, to musicology and ethnomusicology. In fact, the analysis of musical action is already well debated within these fields. Several key references in this regard consider musical actions, such as improvisation, as an under-researched kind of musical activities, with the bulk of attention mostly devoted to analyses of musical works. As such, the dichotomy in between musical work and music-as-action assumes central role.
According to Alperson, “Anglophone philosophy of music [...] has seen music as an aesthetic practice centered on the creation of objects - musical works of art” (2018). His concern is clearly shared by Small, who criticise musicology for its tendency to equal “music” with “musical work” (1998). Instead, he argues that music should be understood as a range of activities: "to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing" (Small, 1998). These actions, and more, are to be considered “musicking”.
This paper therefore argues that digital game players often act in ways that are musically meaningful, whether the musical action in question is more or less self-standing (such as in music games) or it is connected to other in-game actions. The concept of “playing” - ideally, the quintessential action of the game player - has already been considered as a broad umbrella term, which cannot accurately describe the diverse actions players perform, such as labor-like activities (Calleja, 2011). This paper explores the musical side of the spectrum of actions afforded by digital games, by providing an initial overview of the musical facets of game playing. To do that, the paper inscribes the ontological status of digital game playing within the ongoing research on musicking and musical performances.
WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw (THQ/Yuke’s 2004-2009) is a videogame franchise, developed by Yuke’s and published by THQ for multiple videogame consoles, based on a license to use World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)’s intellectual property: talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, and logos that are popular thanks to WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows.
After providing an introduction to professional wrestling and the WWE, this paper will discuss WWE’s crossmedial production and focus on the process of content transferring from the WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows to the videogames. This process was addressed differently in different editions of the franchise, particularly regarding the narrative elements. As an example, we will examine the first and the currently last episodes of the franchise. We will define what is being transferred (universe, events, objects, characters), discuss the different structures of the events in the games by applying the taxonomy proposed by Aarseth (2009), and analyze the franchise as a series of “documentary games” (Aarseth 2009), an approach that will extend the understanding of the transfer by considering the possibilities for counterfactuality or metafactuality.
Even if it follows an historical perspective, this paper is not intended as a detailed history of input devices. The framework will instead be applied to selected examples from different periods, such as William Higinbotham’s Tennis For Two (1958), the first videogame with a dedicated input device, the Atari VCS (1977), as one of the first cartridge-based machines, and Nintendo’s Wii (2006) and DS (2004) consoles.
One of the general outcomes of virtualization is the fragmentation and specialization of knowledge, positively regarded in Lévy’s theory. The conclusions connect it with the importance of new available input devices, highlighting their positive importance into the problematic dimension of the input device.
Professional wrestling and videogames deal in different contexts with the same elements: rules and fiction (Juul 2005) [13]. By combining aspects of narrative theory and game studies research, this paper will analyze the narrative of professional wrestling utilizing the tools commonly used or specifically developed for videogames. An understanding of professional wrestling elements is necessary to explain and criticize the different approaches that videogame designer have used when creating wrestling videogames, a popular sub-genre that present specific peculiarities.
The first chapter will provide a background to the history and the evolution of professional wrestling tracing the transformation from wrestling as a legitimate contest to a constructed media spectacle. The on-going constructed nature of contemporary wrestling will be addressed using Chatman’s concept of narrative. We will then use the theory of scripted narrative and alterbiography (Calleja
2009) [4] to explain how the pre-designed elements in a staged match are only partially scripted. This will be the ground for three subsequent passages, each one enlarging the view on the object of study: what happens in the ring, what happens just outside of the ring, and what happens in the fictional world of professional wrestling. By considering the transmediality (Jenkins 2003, 2004) [11, 12] of professional wrestling, we will analyze those conclusions and see how they are used by professional wrestling videogames: the territory where real rules have to be fleshed out in order to simulate the “fake rules” of professional wrestling.
The paper concludes that theoretical frameworks developed within game studies have produced useful tools that can be deployed in different contexts, in this case to understand the constructed story that so deeply informs the agonistic (Caillois, 1962) [5] aspects of professional wrestling. The concept of scripted narrative and alterbiography clarifies how the narrative is enacted in and outside of the ring, integrating previous studies about wrestler fan behaviour (Ford 2007) [8], and claryfing the role of the wrestler as both a storyteller and an actor. By considering wrestling as a serialized fictional product, it is possible to analyze the kayfabe as a unique narrative frame, capable of keeping narrative coherence operating with a 1:1 ratio between real time and fictional time. The
concept of transmediality, also discussed in game studies, proves to be deeply affected by the kayfabe. Wrestling has strong transmedial narrative elements: it is sufficient to feature few elements of the wrestling enviroment to project the contents of the kayfabe. With that said, making a game out of the mixture of dramatization, physical performance, and symbolical meaning of professional
wrestling is no easy task. A theoretical framework can be useful to approach design issues: wrestling fictional elements appears in videogames thanks to its deep rooted transmediality, but the subtleties of professional wrestling’s narrative are still understated in wrestling videogames.
While digital games afford a remarkable variety of possible musicking (Oliva, 2017; 2019a; 2019b, 2019c), examples related to musical improvisation remain few and underexplored, with most games favoring score-based interactions, as made popular by titles such Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) or Rock Band (Harmonix, 2007). In similar examples, music is presented as “a task to be achieved, a disciplinary activity in which the player should “play” again and again until the game (and thereby music) is mastered” (Kassabian & Jarman, 2016). Crucially, in these examples “music” is understood as pre-recorded compositions performed with the aid of simplified notation (Biamonte, 2011). Notable exceptions, such as the experimental music game Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005), have been criticized by reviewers specifically for their lack of composition-oriented functionalities (Pilchmair, 2007), indicating an underlying set of expected qualities which constitute a barrier to the emergence of improvisatory musical practices in digital games.
Otogarden challenges this understanding of “music game”, by focusing on musical improvisation, "an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression” (Bailey, 1993, p. 83, 84). Players of Otogarden are able to repeat short phrases through the use of a “loop” mechanic, musicalizing potentially extra-musical (Kahn, 1999, p. 103) acoustic juxtapositions. While retaining the “intimate and reactive musical bond” (Grimshaw, Tan, & Lipscomb, 2013) typical of the music game genre, Otogarden does not feature canonic game characteristics, such as a winning condition, compatibly with recent understandings of game definitions (Juul, 2019, p. 224). The conclusions show that it is possible to deliberately stimulate the players’ perspective (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) on the game towards an improvisatory musical direction, rendering manifest the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement (Oliva, 2019c).
Compatibly, digital games determine a variety of musical situations, generated by the plurality of participants active within their musical discourse. Such situations are not limited to games that present an explicitly musical scenario, but are instead found in a much larger number of cases. In order to structure a comprehensive understanding of “musical situations” in digital games, this paper focuses on their cybernetic qualities, identifying four constitutive elements: “the representational (or surface) sign, the mechanical system, the material medium, and the player” (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). Musical situations will be discussed in relation to these elements, with examples ranging from music games such as Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) and Thumper (Drool, 2016), to non-music games such as Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017).
As described by Blacking, “it [is] clear that musical things are not always strictly musical” (1973, p. 25); this understanding will be applied to the ephemeral, non-totalizing musical situations determined by digital games.
This paper analyzes the multiple modalities of musical participation afforded by Electroplankton, inscribing its analysis within the theoretical concepts of musicking (Small, 1998) and ergodicity (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). The resulting concept of “ergodic musicking” is presented as a comprehensive analytical tool in order to assess the multiple musical roles explored within the game.
Electroplankton is first contextualized as a cybermedium, understood as a class of media objects to be traversed or reconfigured by means of a nontrivial, ergodic effort (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). While digital games are in general considered as a cybermedium, the paper emphasizes that Electroplankton does not necessarily show some of the archetypal characteristics of games, such as winning/losing conditions.
Rather than as a conventional digital game, Toshio Iwai designed Electroplankton as a compendium of previous artworks, expanding it with a set of new pieces. Huhtamo recalls a conversation with Iwai about this aspect: ““Iwai once surprised me by stating that Electroplankton was his version of Duchamp’s Boite en Valise (1941). After some reflection it made sense: the tiny game cartridge indeed contained many aspects of his career as a “miniature museum” (Huhtamo, 2016, p. 92).
The possibility space of this miniature museum is certainly playful in nature, but it also maintains a consistent focus on different musical aspects. Across the various vignettes, players can record their voice, re-arrange a musical table, or tap on the screen to structure extemporaneous sound loops.
The different musical forms of Electroplankton are understood under the umbrella concept of musicking. Musicologist Christopher Small warns against elevating the analysis of musical objects, such as musical compositions, to the primary subject of musicology. Small argues, "music is not a thing at all, but rather an activity" (1998, p. 2). As such, it should be understood as a verb: “to music”. “To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing” (1998, p. 9).
Electroplankton explores these forms of participation, bringing unprecedented musical opportunities to the medium of digital games. This paper will focus on aspects related with musical improvisation, identifying in the musicking of Electroplankton a form of idiomatic improvisation (Bailey, 1993). Subsequently, the player’s interventions will be contextualized within Eco’s “open work” paradigm, and described “not [as] an amorphous invitation to
indiscriminate participation, [but rather as] an oriented insertion into something which always remains the world intended by the author” (Eco, 1989, p. 19).
Finally, the ergodic musicking identified will be applied to address the problematic critical reception of Electroplankton (Pilchmair, 2007), emphasizing the innovative and idiosyncratic nature of Iwai’s musicking.
According to Bordwell and Thompson (1994), a biographical history can be one of the different explanatory frameworks available to build film histories. By adapting this concept to digital games, this paper will provide a short biographical history of Japanese digital game author and media artist Toshio Iwai. From 1987 to 2006, Iwai has experimented with creative use of audio in games with the musical shoot’em up O tocky (ASCII Corporation 1987), the audio visual mashup Sim Tunes (Maxis 1996), and the more accomplished Electroplankton (Nintendo 2005).
Ludomusicology, or the field of studies concerned with the analysis of sound in games, is particularly lacking critical resources concerning Iwai, with a few exceptions (Herber 2006). This paper argues that the common trait of Iwai’s works is found in the possibilities afforded to the players, which are able to use the potentialities of digital games as tools to actualize musical realizations. Such affordances will be analyzed in light of Small’s concept of "musicking" (1998), focusing on music as a human behaviour, rather than a preconstructed piece of work.
What makes a digital game a “classic”, revered by players and studied by academics? Different aspects like technological innovations, design features, or commercial success contribute to this status.
Otocky, designed by Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai in 1987, predated in a number of ways so-called music games, connecting music generation with the established tropes of the shoot’em up genre. It anticipated not only contemporary examples of music-centered gameplay, but also explored the boundaries of games’ formal properties, juxtaposing traditional game characteristics with extemporaneous musical creativity.
This paper addresses the innovation of Otocky, and aims to position it in the current academic discourse surrounding game history, which according to Huhtamo is in its "chronicle era" (Huhtamo 2005). Available journalistic writings about Otocky consider it a curiosity, and a proper historicization process never took place, possibly due to the fact that the game has never been published outside of Japan and was only available for the Famicom Disk System, an add-on for the original Nintendo Famicom.
Interacting with sound is arguably Otocky’s main affordance. Analysis of sound and music in digital games is the topic of numerous academic writings; Collins (2008) defines dynamic audio as “sounds that reacts to changes in the gameplay environment and/or in response to a user”, and identifies different degrees of dynamic activity, taking as examples games such as Grim Fandango (Lucas Arts 1998) and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 1998). Otocky, however, structures a simple interaction with its musical content, preferring bizarre improvisations rather than well timed sound cues. This musical system hardly fits Collins’ categorization, and constitutes a relevant example that is currently absent from game sound analysis literature. This paper argues that the game can be addressed as an example of an “open work”, as discussed by Eco (1979) in relation to composition systems such as Klavierstücke XI by Stockhausen.
Even if Otocky is an example of creative freedom awarded to players, it is firmly rooted in the tradition of the shoot’em up: for a contemporary sensibility, it is arguably a very punishing game. Rigid competition and free performance are two polarizing elements in Otocky, which lives out of their sheer incompatibility.
Finally, this paper will position Otocky in the discussion about game genres and forms. With its comedic look, Otocky reassesses the shoot’em up genre tropes, arguably offering a parody version, amplified by the unclear nature of its winning condition. In this sense, the game is akin to contemporary examples such as Jostle Bastard by game auteur Pippin Barr (2013), a satirical take on the popular game Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games 2012).
Conclusion shows that current academic tools in use to analyze digital games can be used to reposition relevant games, rendered little known due to contingencies, positively contributing to the available academic discourse.
- References
Barr, Pippin; Horvath, Stu (2013). “The Jostle Letters”. Available at http://www.unwinnable.com/2013/11/19/the-jostle-letters/#.VMy8PIrF-0c (accessed Jan 27th, 2015)
Collins, Karen (2008). “Game Sound”. The MIT Press.
Eco, Umberto (1979). “The Role of the Reader”. Indiana University Press
Huhtamo, Erkki (2005). “Slots of Fun, Slots of Trouble - An Archaeology of Arcade Gaming”. Published in “Handbook of Computer Games Studies”, edited by Joost Raessens & Jeffrey Goldstein. The MIT Press.
VIDEO GAMES AND COMEDY Panel
Among audiovisual media, the peculiar aspect of digital games is in the nontrivial effort required from the user to traverse them (Aarseth, 1997). Not everything is prescript in a linear fashion, allowing a certain amount of juxtapositions and discrepancies among audiovisual elements, narrative situations, and semiotic meanings. Those can afford the perception of comedic situations. The Half-Life 2 community couldn’t help but notice the fact that even if they were armed with explosives, they couldn’t open a banal wooden door that was just not designed to be opened.
In classic Pirandello’s comedy theory, the humorist experiences an awareness of the opposites (Bassanese, 1997): the comical effect is triggered by the perception of a contradiction.
Chion explains that, in audiovisual media, whenever visual and audio are played simultaneously, the viewer/listener makes sense of the two streams by synchresis: “the spontaneous and irresistible weld produced between a particular auditory phenomenon and visual phenomenon when they occur at the same time” (Chion, 1994). The two elements, audio and video, can be used in way that produces the awareness of the opposites described by Pirandello. An example of that is found in the practice of mickeymousing, which consists in associating an unexpected musical figure to an on screen action. Examples are found in classic cartoons and digital games alike: in Super Mario Bros., “Mario's "jump" is accompanied by an ascending chromatic glissando” (Whalen, 2004).
How this interacts with the previously mentioned comedic affordances found in digital games? Digital games can be described as compound media containers; specifically, their audio content consists of different pre-composed sounds. This sonic palette is actualized in a soundscape during gameplay sessions, when the player juxtaposes to different degrees the aural content, producing a unique sonic output.
An example of that can be found in New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo 2009), where a multiplayer mode is introduced. When one of the participants has spent all of his character “lives”, he can still participate in the session by playing sounds through the buttons of the wiimote: different sound presets are available, and the user can switch among drum kit, percussions, 8-bit sounds, comedy sounds, and so on.
This is an example of a loosely predetermined soundscape, where the final output is not pre-composed, but rather left in the hands of the players: the sound palette is freely usable by the “dead” player. It is then possible to create counterpoints to the other player(s) action, by for example triggering a round of applause after a well executed maneuver; accompany the background music with a percussive groove; or disregard any other sound output coming from the speakers and be a disturbance to everyone by playing random sounds.
The possibility for comedic effect through the manipulation of the other player synchresis is in this case readily available, providing an ample range of comedic affordances.
Studies 53rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.
The term soundmark is defined by Schafer as derived from landmark and referring to “a sound which is unique or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by the people in a community” (Schafer 1994, p. 274). Alongside sound signals and keynote sounds, soundmarks are the main features to be found in a soundscape.
This paper considers digital games as objects for meaningful acoustic communication, and aims to analyze their sonic output by using the theoretical background of soundscape studies, as discussed primarily by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax. Soundmarks in digital games soundscapes will be identified, analyzed and compared.
Common examples of soundmarks “include distinctive bells and the sound of traditional activities” (Wrightson 2000, p. 1). Historical buildings or monuments, such as the Big Ben in London, or religious calls, such as the islamic Muezzin or the catholic bell, are customary of certain soundscapes.
The digital game soundmark is therefore identified in sounds specially regarded by different acoustic communities of digital game players. This paper considers different sonic environments in order to productively analyze different examples of digital games soundmarks. Single games such as “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” (Nintendo 1991) are included, considering the different sessions necessary to access the sounds. Game series such as the “Mario” (Nintendo 1985 – 2012) serie are examples of evolving soundmarks. Reworkings of soundmarks such as Aphex Twin's 1992 Pac-Man EP are also considered to address the relevance of digital game soundmarks in contemporary popular culture.
This paper proposes a methodological framework to analyze the sonic output of computer games by investigating and adapting available soundscape studies, as discussed primarily by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax.
While the current academic research about sound in games highlighted the problematic nature of the application of film sound theory to videogames (Jørgensen 2007, 2009, 2011; Collins 2007), this paper considers studies concerning videogame audio, soundscapes and acoustic ecology (Grimshaw 2007; Grimshaw and Schott 2007; O' Keefe 2011; Droumeva 2011) by re-focusing the attention on existing soundscape methodologies, analyzing their theoretical validity and the productiveness of such an approach.
By critically considering Truax (2001) analysis of an arcade game room soundscape, videogames will be repositioned by considering them objects for meaningful acoustic communication. An analysis of the sonic environment actualized by the videogame player during a play session is performed, identifying the key features (keynote sounds, sound signals and soundmarks) and the level of definition of a videogame soundscape (high or low definition). Examples are based on modern games such as Street Fighter IV (Capcom 2009) and Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games 2008), as well as classic titles like Pac-Man (Namco 1980) and Bomberman (Hudson Soft 1983).
Gamification Lab, Leuphana University
The workshop is aimed at game designers and sound designers, proposing a practical application to critical theoretical tools.
Participants are introduced to principles and theories of Soundscape Studies, that are discussed in conjunction with the study of digital games. Possible applications of the findings are proposed, discussed and practiced during the workshop.
Otogarden challenges this understanding of a “music game” by focusing on the largely untapped potential of musical improvisation, “an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression.”1 In order to gain feedback on Otogarden’s special characteristics, we held a playtesting session with a sample of university students (N=21) with a special interest in music and music education. We collected research data from this session in the form of a survey. Analysis reveals different manifested perspectives, offering players novel creative opportunities. In addition, the game has surprising potential as a music-education tool. We conclude that it is possible to deliberately stimulate players’ perspective on the game in an improvisatory musical direction, making evident the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement.
In fact, digital games engage with musical content in widely different ways, often affording players the possibility to interact with music. Popular examples of that are music games such as the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises, in which players act in musical performances that have been defined as schizophonic (Miller, 2009, 2012). In these cases, original compositions and ad-hoc peripherals are provided to mimic emblematic musical actions of rock performers.
However, digital games that are arguably not primarily focused on music seem to involve degrees of musical action, too. For example, player’s activities affect the playback of music compositions in the cases of dynamic and adaptive music (Collins, 2008), commonly present in very different digital game genres. Moreover, it has been observed that procedural music “evolves in real time according to specific sets of rules” (Collins, 2009) in reaction to player’s inputs, further complicating the musical status of player’s actions.
A similar occurrence has been noted in relation to the notion of diegesis. Imported from film studies, diegesis has been adapted in different ways to digital games. This has brought to analyses of players’ action in relation to their diegetic placement (Collins, 2008; Grimshaw & Schott, 2007; Jørgensen, 2007). For instance, a player can act within the diegetic space following extradiegetic musical cues such as “background music”, short-circuiting the clear cut distinction of diegetic space (Jørgensen, 2007).
According to these diverse examples, player’s actions have often meaning in a musical sense. Players, willingly or less so, control parts of musical content, juxtaposing them during gameplay. What are the musical actions of players? What is the ontological status of such interactions? In other words, what is the relationship in between digital game players musical activities and those of instrumentalists, conductors, listeners, or any other kind of musical performer?
To answer these questions, this paper will look into resources ranging from philosophy of music, to musicology and ethnomusicology. In fact, the analysis of musical action is already well debated within these fields. Several key references in this regard consider musical actions, such as improvisation, as an under-researched kind of musical activities, with the bulk of attention mostly devoted to analyses of musical works. As such, the dichotomy in between musical work and music-as-action assumes central role.
According to Alperson, “Anglophone philosophy of music [...] has seen music as an aesthetic practice centered on the creation of objects - musical works of art” (2018). His concern is clearly shared by Small, who criticise musicology for its tendency to equal “music” with “musical work” (1998). Instead, he argues that music should be understood as a range of activities: "to music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing" (Small, 1998). These actions, and more, are to be considered “musicking”.
This paper therefore argues that digital game players often act in ways that are musically meaningful, whether the musical action in question is more or less self-standing (such as in music games) or it is connected to other in-game actions. The concept of “playing” - ideally, the quintessential action of the game player - has already been considered as a broad umbrella term, which cannot accurately describe the diverse actions players perform, such as labor-like activities (Calleja, 2011). This paper explores the musical side of the spectrum of actions afforded by digital games, by providing an initial overview of the musical facets of game playing. To do that, the paper inscribes the ontological status of digital game playing within the ongoing research on musicking and musical performances.
WWE SmackDown! vs. Raw (THQ/Yuke’s 2004-2009) is a videogame franchise, developed by Yuke’s and published by THQ for multiple videogame consoles, based on a license to use World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)’s intellectual property: talent names, images, likenesses, slogans, wrestling moves, and logos that are popular thanks to WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows.
After providing an introduction to professional wrestling and the WWE, this paper will discuss WWE’s crossmedial production and focus on the process of content transferring from the WWE’s television broadcasts and live shows to the videogames. This process was addressed differently in different editions of the franchise, particularly regarding the narrative elements. As an example, we will examine the first and the currently last episodes of the franchise. We will define what is being transferred (universe, events, objects, characters), discuss the different structures of the events in the games by applying the taxonomy proposed by Aarseth (2009), and analyze the franchise as a series of “documentary games” (Aarseth 2009), an approach that will extend the understanding of the transfer by considering the possibilities for counterfactuality or metafactuality.
Even if it follows an historical perspective, this paper is not intended as a detailed history of input devices. The framework will instead be applied to selected examples from different periods, such as William Higinbotham’s Tennis For Two (1958), the first videogame with a dedicated input device, the Atari VCS (1977), as one of the first cartridge-based machines, and Nintendo’s Wii (2006) and DS (2004) consoles.
One of the general outcomes of virtualization is the fragmentation and specialization of knowledge, positively regarded in Lévy’s theory. The conclusions connect it with the importance of new available input devices, highlighting their positive importance into the problematic dimension of the input device.
Professional wrestling and videogames deal in different contexts with the same elements: rules and fiction (Juul 2005) [13]. By combining aspects of narrative theory and game studies research, this paper will analyze the narrative of professional wrestling utilizing the tools commonly used or specifically developed for videogames. An understanding of professional wrestling elements is necessary to explain and criticize the different approaches that videogame designer have used when creating wrestling videogames, a popular sub-genre that present specific peculiarities.
The first chapter will provide a background to the history and the evolution of professional wrestling tracing the transformation from wrestling as a legitimate contest to a constructed media spectacle. The on-going constructed nature of contemporary wrestling will be addressed using Chatman’s concept of narrative. We will then use the theory of scripted narrative and alterbiography (Calleja
2009) [4] to explain how the pre-designed elements in a staged match are only partially scripted. This will be the ground for three subsequent passages, each one enlarging the view on the object of study: what happens in the ring, what happens just outside of the ring, and what happens in the fictional world of professional wrestling. By considering the transmediality (Jenkins 2003, 2004) [11, 12] of professional wrestling, we will analyze those conclusions and see how they are used by professional wrestling videogames: the territory where real rules have to be fleshed out in order to simulate the “fake rules” of professional wrestling.
The paper concludes that theoretical frameworks developed within game studies have produced useful tools that can be deployed in different contexts, in this case to understand the constructed story that so deeply informs the agonistic (Caillois, 1962) [5] aspects of professional wrestling. The concept of scripted narrative and alterbiography clarifies how the narrative is enacted in and outside of the ring, integrating previous studies about wrestler fan behaviour (Ford 2007) [8], and claryfing the role of the wrestler as both a storyteller and an actor. By considering wrestling as a serialized fictional product, it is possible to analyze the kayfabe as a unique narrative frame, capable of keeping narrative coherence operating with a 1:1 ratio between real time and fictional time. The
concept of transmediality, also discussed in game studies, proves to be deeply affected by the kayfabe. Wrestling has strong transmedial narrative elements: it is sufficient to feature few elements of the wrestling enviroment to project the contents of the kayfabe. With that said, making a game out of the mixture of dramatization, physical performance, and symbolical meaning of professional
wrestling is no easy task. A theoretical framework can be useful to approach design issues: wrestling fictional elements appears in videogames thanks to its deep rooted transmediality, but the subtleties of professional wrestling’s narrative are still understated in wrestling videogames.
While digital games afford a remarkable variety of possible musicking (Oliva, 2017; 2019a; 2019b, 2019c), examples related to musical improvisation remain few and underexplored, with most games favoring score-based interactions, as made popular by titles such Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) or Rock Band (Harmonix, 2007). In similar examples, music is presented as “a task to be achieved, a disciplinary activity in which the player should “play” again and again until the game (and thereby music) is mastered” (Kassabian & Jarman, 2016). Crucially, in these examples “music” is understood as pre-recorded compositions performed with the aid of simplified notation (Biamonte, 2011). Notable exceptions, such as the experimental music game Electroplankton (Nintendo, 2005), have been criticized by reviewers specifically for their lack of composition-oriented functionalities (Pilchmair, 2007), indicating an underlying set of expected qualities which constitute a barrier to the emergence of improvisatory musical practices in digital games.
Otogarden challenges this understanding of “music game”, by focusing on musical improvisation, "an activity of enormous complexity and sophistication, or the simplest and most direct expression” (Bailey, 1993, p. 83, 84). Players of Otogarden are able to repeat short phrases through the use of a “loop” mechanic, musicalizing potentially extra-musical (Kahn, 1999, p. 103) acoustic juxtapositions. While retaining the “intimate and reactive musical bond” (Grimshaw, Tan, & Lipscomb, 2013) typical of the music game genre, Otogarden does not feature canonic game characteristics, such as a winning condition, compatibly with recent understandings of game definitions (Juul, 2019, p. 224). The conclusions show that it is possible to deliberately stimulate the players’ perspective (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015) on the game towards an improvisatory musical direction, rendering manifest the extemporaneous musical possibilities connected with digital game engagement (Oliva, 2019c).
Compatibly, digital games determine a variety of musical situations, generated by the plurality of participants active within their musical discourse. Such situations are not limited to games that present an explicitly musical scenario, but are instead found in a much larger number of cases. In order to structure a comprehensive understanding of “musical situations” in digital games, this paper focuses on their cybernetic qualities, identifying four constitutive elements: “the representational (or surface) sign, the mechanical system, the material medium, and the player” (Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). Musical situations will be discussed in relation to these elements, with examples ranging from music games such as Guitar Hero (Harmonix, 2005) and Thumper (Drool, 2016), to non-music games such as Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985) and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017).
As described by Blacking, “it [is] clear that musical things are not always strictly musical” (1973, p. 25); this understanding will be applied to the ephemeral, non-totalizing musical situations determined by digital games.
This paper analyzes the multiple modalities of musical participation afforded by Electroplankton, inscribing its analysis within the theoretical concepts of musicking (Small, 1998) and ergodicity (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). The resulting concept of “ergodic musicking” is presented as a comprehensive analytical tool in order to assess the multiple musical roles explored within the game.
Electroplankton is first contextualized as a cybermedium, understood as a class of media objects to be traversed or reconfigured by means of a nontrivial, ergodic effort (Aarseth, 1997; Aarseth & Calleja, 2015). While digital games are in general considered as a cybermedium, the paper emphasizes that Electroplankton does not necessarily show some of the archetypal characteristics of games, such as winning/losing conditions.
Rather than as a conventional digital game, Toshio Iwai designed Electroplankton as a compendium of previous artworks, expanding it with a set of new pieces. Huhtamo recalls a conversation with Iwai about this aspect: ““Iwai once surprised me by stating that Electroplankton was his version of Duchamp’s Boite en Valise (1941). After some reflection it made sense: the tiny game cartridge indeed contained many aspects of his career as a “miniature museum” (Huhtamo, 2016, p. 92).
The possibility space of this miniature museum is certainly playful in nature, but it also maintains a consistent focus on different musical aspects. Across the various vignettes, players can record their voice, re-arrange a musical table, or tap on the screen to structure extemporaneous sound loops.
The different musical forms of Electroplankton are understood under the umbrella concept of musicking. Musicologist Christopher Small warns against elevating the analysis of musical objects, such as musical compositions, to the primary subject of musicology. Small argues, "music is not a thing at all, but rather an activity" (1998, p. 2). As such, it should be understood as a verb: “to music”. “To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (composing), or by dancing” (1998, p. 9).
Electroplankton explores these forms of participation, bringing unprecedented musical opportunities to the medium of digital games. This paper will focus on aspects related with musical improvisation, identifying in the musicking of Electroplankton a form of idiomatic improvisation (Bailey, 1993). Subsequently, the player’s interventions will be contextualized within Eco’s “open work” paradigm, and described “not [as] an amorphous invitation to
indiscriminate participation, [but rather as] an oriented insertion into something which always remains the world intended by the author” (Eco, 1989, p. 19).
Finally, the ergodic musicking identified will be applied to address the problematic critical reception of Electroplankton (Pilchmair, 2007), emphasizing the innovative and idiosyncratic nature of Iwai’s musicking.
According to Bordwell and Thompson (1994), a biographical history can be one of the different explanatory frameworks available to build film histories. By adapting this concept to digital games, this paper will provide a short biographical history of Japanese digital game author and media artist Toshio Iwai. From 1987 to 2006, Iwai has experimented with creative use of audio in games with the musical shoot’em up O tocky (ASCII Corporation 1987), the audio visual mashup Sim Tunes (Maxis 1996), and the more accomplished Electroplankton (Nintendo 2005).
Ludomusicology, or the field of studies concerned with the analysis of sound in games, is particularly lacking critical resources concerning Iwai, with a few exceptions (Herber 2006). This paper argues that the common trait of Iwai’s works is found in the possibilities afforded to the players, which are able to use the potentialities of digital games as tools to actualize musical realizations. Such affordances will be analyzed in light of Small’s concept of "musicking" (1998), focusing on music as a human behaviour, rather than a preconstructed piece of work.
What makes a digital game a “classic”, revered by players and studied by academics? Different aspects like technological innovations, design features, or commercial success contribute to this status.
Otocky, designed by Japanese media artist Toshio Iwai in 1987, predated in a number of ways so-called music games, connecting music generation with the established tropes of the shoot’em up genre. It anticipated not only contemporary examples of music-centered gameplay, but also explored the boundaries of games’ formal properties, juxtaposing traditional game characteristics with extemporaneous musical creativity.
This paper addresses the innovation of Otocky, and aims to position it in the current academic discourse surrounding game history, which according to Huhtamo is in its "chronicle era" (Huhtamo 2005). Available journalistic writings about Otocky consider it a curiosity, and a proper historicization process never took place, possibly due to the fact that the game has never been published outside of Japan and was only available for the Famicom Disk System, an add-on for the original Nintendo Famicom.
Interacting with sound is arguably Otocky’s main affordance. Analysis of sound and music in digital games is the topic of numerous academic writings; Collins (2008) defines dynamic audio as “sounds that reacts to changes in the gameplay environment and/or in response to a user”, and identifies different degrees of dynamic activity, taking as examples games such as Grim Fandango (Lucas Arts 1998) and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 1998). Otocky, however, structures a simple interaction with its musical content, preferring bizarre improvisations rather than well timed sound cues. This musical system hardly fits Collins’ categorization, and constitutes a relevant example that is currently absent from game sound analysis literature. This paper argues that the game can be addressed as an example of an “open work”, as discussed by Eco (1979) in relation to composition systems such as Klavierstücke XI by Stockhausen.
Even if Otocky is an example of creative freedom awarded to players, it is firmly rooted in the tradition of the shoot’em up: for a contemporary sensibility, it is arguably a very punishing game. Rigid competition and free performance are two polarizing elements in Otocky, which lives out of their sheer incompatibility.
Finally, this paper will position Otocky in the discussion about game genres and forms. With its comedic look, Otocky reassesses the shoot’em up genre tropes, arguably offering a parody version, amplified by the unclear nature of its winning condition. In this sense, the game is akin to contemporary examples such as Jostle Bastard by game auteur Pippin Barr (2013), a satirical take on the popular game Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games 2012).
Conclusion shows that current academic tools in use to analyze digital games can be used to reposition relevant games, rendered little known due to contingencies, positively contributing to the available academic discourse.
- References
Barr, Pippin; Horvath, Stu (2013). “The Jostle Letters”. Available at http://www.unwinnable.com/2013/11/19/the-jostle-letters/#.VMy8PIrF-0c (accessed Jan 27th, 2015)
Collins, Karen (2008). “Game Sound”. The MIT Press.
Eco, Umberto (1979). “The Role of the Reader”. Indiana University Press
Huhtamo, Erkki (2005). “Slots of Fun, Slots of Trouble - An Archaeology of Arcade Gaming”. Published in “Handbook of Computer Games Studies”, edited by Joost Raessens & Jeffrey Goldstein. The MIT Press.
VIDEO GAMES AND COMEDY Panel
Among audiovisual media, the peculiar aspect of digital games is in the nontrivial effort required from the user to traverse them (Aarseth, 1997). Not everything is prescript in a linear fashion, allowing a certain amount of juxtapositions and discrepancies among audiovisual elements, narrative situations, and semiotic meanings. Those can afford the perception of comedic situations. The Half-Life 2 community couldn’t help but notice the fact that even if they were armed with explosives, they couldn’t open a banal wooden door that was just not designed to be opened.
In classic Pirandello’s comedy theory, the humorist experiences an awareness of the opposites (Bassanese, 1997): the comical effect is triggered by the perception of a contradiction.
Chion explains that, in audiovisual media, whenever visual and audio are played simultaneously, the viewer/listener makes sense of the two streams by synchresis: “the spontaneous and irresistible weld produced between a particular auditory phenomenon and visual phenomenon when they occur at the same time” (Chion, 1994). The two elements, audio and video, can be used in way that produces the awareness of the opposites described by Pirandello. An example of that is found in the practice of mickeymousing, which consists in associating an unexpected musical figure to an on screen action. Examples are found in classic cartoons and digital games alike: in Super Mario Bros., “Mario's "jump" is accompanied by an ascending chromatic glissando” (Whalen, 2004).
How this interacts with the previously mentioned comedic affordances found in digital games? Digital games can be described as compound media containers; specifically, their audio content consists of different pre-composed sounds. This sonic palette is actualized in a soundscape during gameplay sessions, when the player juxtaposes to different degrees the aural content, producing a unique sonic output.
An example of that can be found in New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo 2009), where a multiplayer mode is introduced. When one of the participants has spent all of his character “lives”, he can still participate in the session by playing sounds through the buttons of the wiimote: different sound presets are available, and the user can switch among drum kit, percussions, 8-bit sounds, comedy sounds, and so on.
This is an example of a loosely predetermined soundscape, where the final output is not pre-composed, but rather left in the hands of the players: the sound palette is freely usable by the “dead” player. It is then possible to create counterpoints to the other player(s) action, by for example triggering a round of applause after a well executed maneuver; accompany the background music with a percussive groove; or disregard any other sound output coming from the speakers and be a disturbance to everyone by playing random sounds.
The possibility for comedic effect through the manipulation of the other player synchresis is in this case readily available, providing an ample range of comedic affordances.
Studies 53rd Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.
The term soundmark is defined by Schafer as derived from landmark and referring to “a sound which is unique or possesses qualities which make it specially regarded or noticed by the people in a community” (Schafer 1994, p. 274). Alongside sound signals and keynote sounds, soundmarks are the main features to be found in a soundscape.
This paper considers digital games as objects for meaningful acoustic communication, and aims to analyze their sonic output by using the theoretical background of soundscape studies, as discussed primarily by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax. Soundmarks in digital games soundscapes will be identified, analyzed and compared.
Common examples of soundmarks “include distinctive bells and the sound of traditional activities” (Wrightson 2000, p. 1). Historical buildings or monuments, such as the Big Ben in London, or religious calls, such as the islamic Muezzin or the catholic bell, are customary of certain soundscapes.
The digital game soundmark is therefore identified in sounds specially regarded by different acoustic communities of digital game players. This paper considers different sonic environments in order to productively analyze different examples of digital games soundmarks. Single games such as “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” (Nintendo 1991) are included, considering the different sessions necessary to access the sounds. Game series such as the “Mario” (Nintendo 1985 – 2012) serie are examples of evolving soundmarks. Reworkings of soundmarks such as Aphex Twin's 1992 Pac-Man EP are also considered to address the relevance of digital game soundmarks in contemporary popular culture.
This paper proposes a methodological framework to analyze the sonic output of computer games by investigating and adapting available soundscape studies, as discussed primarily by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax.
While the current academic research about sound in games highlighted the problematic nature of the application of film sound theory to videogames (Jørgensen 2007, 2009, 2011; Collins 2007), this paper considers studies concerning videogame audio, soundscapes and acoustic ecology (Grimshaw 2007; Grimshaw and Schott 2007; O' Keefe 2011; Droumeva 2011) by re-focusing the attention on existing soundscape methodologies, analyzing their theoretical validity and the productiveness of such an approach.
By critically considering Truax (2001) analysis of an arcade game room soundscape, videogames will be repositioned by considering them objects for meaningful acoustic communication. An analysis of the sonic environment actualized by the videogame player during a play session is performed, identifying the key features (keynote sounds, sound signals and soundmarks) and the level of definition of a videogame soundscape (high or low definition). Examples are based on modern games such as Street Fighter IV (Capcom 2009) and Grand Theft Auto IV (Rockstar Games 2008), as well as classic titles like Pac-Man (Namco 1980) and Bomberman (Hudson Soft 1983).
Gamification Lab, Leuphana University
The workshop is aimed at game designers and sound designers, proposing a practical application to critical theoretical tools.
Participants are introduced to principles and theories of Soundscape Studies, that are discussed in conjunction with the study of digital games. Possible applications of the findings are proposed, discussed and practiced during the workshop.