Game Scoring: Towards a Broader Theory

“Game scoring,” that is, the act of composing music for and through gaming, is distinct from other types of scoring. To begin with, unlike other scoring activities, game scoring depends on — in fact, it arguably is — software programming. The game scorer’s choices are thus first-and-foremost limited by available gaming technology, and the “programmability” of their musical ideas given that technology, at any given historical moment. Moreover, game scores are unique in that they must allow for an unprecedented level of musical flexibility, given the high degree of user interactivity the video game medium enables and encourages. As such, game scoring necessarily constitutes an at least partially aleatoric compositional activity, the final score being determined as much through gameplay as traditional composition. This thesis demonstrates this through case studies of the Nintendo Entertainment System sound hardware configuration, and game scores, including the canonic score for Super Mario Bros. (1985)

Making the Virtual Actual: a research model to understand music of contemporary open-world video games

The global video game industry has in part achieved its ubiquitous cultural influence through the creation of increasingly realistic gameworlds. Of these, contemporary open-world games offer vast internal environments presenting complex narrative constructs and ever-higher production values, including music content. Research into these games has typically ranged from their characteristic technical design and storytelling attributes, to ethnographic studies of their gameworlds, through to commercially based evaluations of the games’ soundtrack content. Breaking new ground by merging these disparate lines of enquiry into a cohesive whole, the purpose of this study is to examine the music of open-world game soundscapes as sociocultural artefacts. This study seeks to offer a foundation for explaining the musical functions causal to the popularity of these games according to a research model that determines and separates the constitutive musical components of a gameworld’s soundscape into diegetic categories. These components are examined according to a tripartite model with a methodological basis in game music design principles, adopting a gameworld as a virtual ethnography fieldsite, and studies of game music in culture. This study takes Grand Theft Auto V as its focus in demonstrating an application of the proposed model. As an open-world game grossing more than any other form of media and featuring more musical content than any previous title of its series, it is shown that the proposed model does greater intellectual justice to the technical, aesthetic, and sociocultural sophistication of this artefact. The development and application of the proposed research model enables a shift of analytical approach in ludomusicology from an outside-in perspective to one of an inside-out nature. In addition to its application to other games, the offered model affords theorists and game designers a valuable analytical and conceptual tool to see the virtual music of a game as anchored in the actual world.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Elder Conservatorium of Music, 201

Understanding Game Scoring: Software Programming, Aleatoric Composition and Mimetic Music Technology

Game scoring, that is, the act of composing music for and through gaming, is distinct from other types of scoring. To begin with, unlike other scoring activities, game scoring depends on — in fact, it arguably is — software programming. The game scorer‘s choices are thus first-and-foremost limited by available gaming technology, and the programmability of their musical ideas given that technology, at any given historical moment. Moreover, game scores are unique in that they must allow for an unprecedented level of musical flexibility, given the high degree of user interactivity the video game medium enables and encourages. As such, game scoring necessarily constitutes an at least partially aleatoric compositional activity, the final score being determined as much through gameplay as traditional composition. This dissertation demonstrates how game scoring is software programming that is structured by gaming technology, and that constitutes a unique kind of aleatoric composition, through case studies of the Nintendo Entertainment System sound hardware configuration, and game scores, including the canonic score for Super Mario Bros. (1985)

The BG News September 20, 1996

The BGSU campus student newspaper September 20, 1996. Volume 79 - Issue 18https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/bg-news/7047/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, December 9, 1981

Volume 77, Issue 67https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6843/thumbnail.jp

Planet, Vol. 6, Nos. 1-10, 1986, Queensland Institute of Technology Union magazine

QIT Student Union newspaper "The Planet